Old School Education Cake

The busiest time of the year for cake orders brought me a very exciting challenge as far as my decorating skills are concerned. For a retired teacher, I was asked to make a cake resembling an old school desk with typical old school equipment. I researched a bit into old school desks to make sure that I was getting the brief right and found that the desk would look even more authentic if I made it so that it was on a slant, which I had been asked to try and do anyway. I also found that an ink pot and fountain pen would look very "old school" and would run excellently with the theme. I would also include an exercise book to extenuate the school theme.
To make the actual cake I used a recipe that I have always and will always use as a base recipe as you may have noticed after reading other blog posts of mine. Ironically, the recipe itself is very old school as it is all measured in oz. I knew I had to make quite a large cake so I upped the quantity of cake batter by simply measuring 12oz rather than 4/6oz. I baked the cake in two identical rectangle cake tins as I was to sandwich the two halves together as the whole cake. I sandwiched them together using buttercream which I made using 100g butter and 300g icing sugar along with 2tbsp of cocoa powder. I spread half of the buttercream on top of one half of the cake before sandwiching the other half on top. Now, since this was to be an old school desk I used a bread knife to cut away at the cake so that it slanted slightly downwards towards the front of the desk. I then used the other half of the buttercream to cover the whole cake. Next, I coloured fondant icing dark brown and rolled it out carefully so that it was big enough to cover the cake. I placed the fondant on top of the cake and used my hands to manipulate it carefully, smoothing the top and smoothing it down the edges of the cake. I then used a smoothing tool to smooth down the icing as much as possible. The biggest challenge I faced was trying to get an authentic wood effect. I tried to make a woodgrain effect by rolling together a lighter and darker long strip of fondant with a method of folding and rolling, however I discovered that this only really worked authentically when making individual planks of wood, not when covering a whole cake...plan B. I went out on a limb and tried something of which I had no idea what the result would be, but it was all I had left time, idea and ability wise. So, after I had covered the cake in the dark brown fondant I got a bowl and put a lump of dark brown food dye paste into it along with a bit of water so that I had a runny paint consistency. I then got a brush and simply brushed the whole cake horizontally with the brown paint which gave a varnished wood effect. This was what I was looking for. I decorated the cake with an ink pot, an exercise book and a fountain pen, that I had previously made out of fondant icing,in running with the theme of old school education. This cake is a cake I will always remember.