This poker cake was made from a chocolate chip Madeira sponge, split then filled and covered with chocolate fudge frosting. It was then covered in fondant – green for the ‘baize top’, marbled shades of brown for the ‘wooden’ sides.

The playing cards were cut from Mexican paste using patchwork cutters and painted with Sugarflair gel colouring paste that had been thinned down with alcohol. The poker chips were cut using a simple round metal cutter out of a 50/50 mix of coloured fondant and modelling paste; the markings were painted on with Squire’s white gel colouring paste (which didn’t really want to stay and drove me nuts – next time I will take the more fiddly route of attaching very thin pieces of Mexican paste instead). The ’50′s were cut with FMM Tappits and attached to the chips with edible glue, before painting the whole disc with edible glaze.

The remaining visible board was covered with fondant after completing the cake; I rolled out a long sausage of paste, shaped it roughly to the layout of the board and rolled it flat before lifting it onto the board, trimming to fit and fixing in place with a dampened paint brush. The inscription was added using Klik-Stix.

For once, there wasn’t too much stress doing this cake as I was able to complete most of the decorations in advance at my own pace. I just need to be a bit more disciplined with doing as much as I can in advance for future ones instead of my usual last-minute, late night, stressy winging it and hoping for the best.