Gameboy Cake

Lookswise, this isn't one of my best over the years, as I unfortunately had the space of half an hour to make decorating happen (one of the problems of Easter break falling at the same time as a birthday, so my boyfriend was in all the time). But I absolutely loved the concept and would really like to give it a proper go sometime.

The cake inside is just a regular Victoria Sponge as that is our favourite. I made this in square tins and then cut off one edge and sandwiched it on to the adjacent one, using buttercream, to create the rectangular shape needed. Gameboys have one rounded corner edge (bottom right), so I cut this in at this stage too.

For this I used grey roll out icing, black roll out icing, red, blue, green and orange food colouring (I used the pen variety for the orange and green, as did not have a small brush to hand) and a single red Smartie.

Start off by rolling the grey icing so it smoothly covers the cake, and blend in the corner seams so it lies flat. Then you need to cut a square of the leftover grey, to make your screen, two circles and two very small rounded ended oblongs to make the 'Start' and 'Select' keys. Pop these aside for one minute and roll out some black icing. I bought ready made as did not have the time to dye it, but you only need a little of this really, so is worth colouring it yourself if you have time, to avoid too much excess.

Cut out a rectangle, once again with a rounded bottom right corner, like the cake shape itself, and make this so you can just see some grey around the outer edges of this when placing atop the cake. Your grey square should then fit inside this, leaving slightly more space either side than at the top and bottom. It took me a couple of cuts to get the right fit.

The next stage is up to you- as you need to decorate the screen. I opted to do this once on the cake, but it may be easier to do it at this stage, so you can press less lightly and are ok if you need to scrap it and start again. I chose a Mario design for mine, with the rolling green and orange hills, a blue cloudy sky and some question mark boxes hovering up above the landscape. Pick your favourite game though, or even recreate the start up Nintendo screen. One discrepancy in my cake is that I did a colour screen and modelled it on the original, non-colour, Gameboy in terms of shape, so you could do the original screen colours if your prefer. I just found it easier, in a hurry, to do colours. If I had time I would have either made a Gameboy Colour console, or changed the screen to match the original.

Once you have cut these all out, and decorated them if doing now, then fix them onto the cake (I used apricot jam, but obviously the choice is yours). Then add a single red smartie to the centre left, as the little light.

Make a directional pad out of black icing too and attach this below to the left, with the two circular buttons diagonally, across from it on the right. I painted these with red food colouring. It was still wet when I took the original picture, as you can tell, as it is best to leave it to dry for a while if possible.

Then below, centre, pop on your Select and Start buttons. Now all you need to do is the writing. I opted to scratch the majority of mine in with a toothpick, but you could use a pen to write them on if preferred. I used writing icing just to write GAMEBOY, as wanted this in black. You need Nintendo Gameboy TM below the screen, A and B below the red keys and 'Select' and 'Start' below the oblong ones. It is easy to get a picture up online to copy if you need.

The last stage is to use a knife to score diagonal lines along the curved bottom edge, to create your 'speaker', and also a line across the top of the cake, horizontally, to match the Gameboy's markings. There is also a light indent around the two circular keys, that just follows around them. Then pop it to dry for a while before serving up.

Someone else in our house fancied a little as well!