After returning from our recent trip to America, Leanne decided that what she really wanted for her birthday was a Grand Canyon cake.

Not one to shy away from a challenge (and not like I had much choice, after Leanne had invited people to a “Come and eat Grand Canyon cake” party), I was determined to pull it off.

“No problem!” I thought, “A quick search for ‘grand canyon cake’ will tell me exactly how to make one”.

How foolish I was.

Every single one of Google’s reference to Grand Canyon cakes seemed to be about cakes that had gone wrong and collapsed - “It fell apart, oh how we laughed!” - apart from one made intentionally, an incredibly ornate affair that I could have custom made by a bakery in Las Vegas.

I felt like I was looking for something somewhere in the middle of those two extremes. With the internet proving no help whatsoever, I was going to have to work out how to do this by myself.

And that I did. And here I present a behind-the-scenes look at how it was done, just in case you find yourself in a similar cake-based predicament one day.

Ingredients

• 3 x rectangular sponge cakes (3 eggs each)
• Jam
• 700g buttercream icing
• Red and yellow food colouring
• Sour Blue Raspberry Gel Pop (the Colorado River)
• Nestle Munchies and Milkybar Moments (boulders)

Assembly

Done.