Tractor cake

Line a wide, shallow oven pan with greaseproof paper. Grease the paper and sprinkle lightly with flour.

Combine the cocoa powder, milk and sugar in a saucepan and bring to the boil. Allow to cool. Mix the sugar and butter/margarine until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time. Mix together the flour, vanilla sugar and baking powder and fold into the mixture along with the milk mixture. Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Bake in the lower part of the oven at 175 °C for about 30 minutes.

Turn the cake out onto a sheet of greaseproof paper and leave to cool. Mix together all the ingredients for the filling. Cut the tractor body and two wheels out of the cake. Cut out two of each shape so that each part can be assembled in two layers. Spread filling on one layer of each part and cover with the second layer. Cover the tractor body with the green marzipan. Trim away the surplus marzipan.

Work the icing sugar into the almond paste. Colour a quarter of the almond paste yellow, and colour the rest black. Roll out the marzipan into a thin sheet. Cover the wheels with the black marzipan. Cut two discs out of yellow marzipan and place them on the wheels. Decorate the rest of the cake any way you like with leftover marzipan and melted chocolate.