eat pray bake: I am a firm believer that if you score one goal the other team have to score two to win (Howard Wilkinson)

I would like to share with you my first experience of making a football shirt cake. It took me about 100 hours (or even 5) but I think it's fair to say that it came out looking pretty reasonable. I even have an order for a Tottenham cake next. Hopefully it won't take me quite as long.

Essential bits needed

- Cake. It needs to be baked in slabs so that you can make the shape.

- Logos printed on icing paper. I buy mine from a lovely lady called Julie Kirk at Photocake Occasions (www.photocake-occasion.co.uk). I think I will need to invest in my own equipment soon though because I spend so much money on these things.

- Sugarpaste icing in different colours or specialist food colouring. I actually used a mixture of both but I would always recommend buying as many ready-done things as possible. It saves so much time!

- Cake board/box etc

OK I'm bored of that bit, if you have any other specific questions please ask & I will divulge all. I actually have loads of equipment and bits & stuff but I'm getting fed up of writing :)

Making a Football Shirt Cake

Step 1 - Cut the cake to size. When making shapes out of cakes, it's best to work with cake slabs as it where and cut out what you need.

Step 2 - assemble all the pieces, sandwich the layers together with jam & buttercream & then coat with a thin layer of buttercream.

Step 3 - Cover with two layers of sugarpaste icing. I did two layers because I didn't think one was going to give the most professional look. I think you can see what I mean when you see how the cake looks after one layer.