The next stages in creating my 'Deal or No Deal' cake

The  cakes are now baked and once they are cooled it's time to level them and torte them ready for the jam and buttercream.

I make my buttercream using unsalted butter and icing sugar in a quantity of  1:2.  I then add whole cream milk at the end depending on if I am going to use the buttercream to sandwich a cake or use to pipe.  I also add about a teaspoon of vanilla paste for flavouring.

In this case the buttercream is for sandwiching and covering the cakes so it needs to be a little firmer.

First of all I give the bottom level of sponge a good covering of jam and then if possible I apply the buttercream to the top layer of the cake as it is really difficult to put on top of jam!  I also heat my spatula to spread the buttercream as this make it easier.  After this I gave the sponges a covering of buttercream to seal it, which helps prevent it from drying out and also gives a good surface to apply the marzipan to.

The next stage is to apply the marzipan.  For that I give a light coating of heated apricot jam to the buttercream (you can apply it without the jam but I find it adheres better with jam).

For this aprticular cake the angles need to be really sharp so i have spent a lot of time on the marzipan layer to make sure that I have as good a surface as possible to work from for the final layer of fondant.

While the marizipan is hardening a little I colour the fondant ready to apply.