Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds Cake

For my birthday this year, I thought it would be apt to make a Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds themed cake, it being 50 years since Sergeant Pepper came out (I am younger than Sergeant Pepper!).  One of my favourite songs on the Sergeant Pepper album is Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, and the imagery that accompanies that song  in the Yellow Submarine movie lends itself well to cake decorating.  

In Yellow Submarine, the cartoon Beatles find themselves in the foothills of the headlands, when John strikes up singing Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.  The first image in that song is a woman (presumably Lucy) inside the heads in two different colour schemes.  That is the image I used on my cake, using coloured rolled fondant.

I was too lazy to colour my own fondant, so I just used colours that I could buy in the supermarket.  It was interesting the different textures that different brands of fondant had - some was hard to roll out, like elephant hide, while some was very sticky and fragile. 

I drew on Lucy's features with edible pens.

The underlying cake was a chocolate cake recipe that I had not used before from Chocolate Coffee Caramel - A Cook's Book of Decadence.  I chose it because it contained blackberry jam, like Nigella's chocolate cake. Here is the inside of the cake:

To make this chocolate cake, you will need:

125g butter

125g sugar

40g icing sugar

2 lightly beaten eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

80g blackberry jam

155g self raising flour

60g cocoa powder

1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

250ml milk

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius.  Grease a 20cm round cake tin and line the base with baking paper.

Beat the butter and sugars together in a stand mixer until light and fluffy.  Add the eggs, vanilla and jam and beat 'til combined. Fold in the sifted flour, cocoa and bicarbonate of soda alternately with the milk in three batches, starting and ending with the flour mixture. 

Pour the batter into your prepared cake tin and bake for 45 minutes or until cooked through.  Turn the cake out onto a wire rack to cool.

Decorate as desired once cool.