I need to make an Impressive looking cake for a raffle prize - HELP!

[FairyFay]

I am running a Bridge and Tea afternoon in aid of our school PTFA, this Friday. It's mostly being attended by ladies in their 50s and 60s.

Apparently last year it was suggested that a nice cake would be a good raffle prize - so now I have to make one!

I am a pretty good baker, but decration/presenttation is not my area of expertise! I can do basic icing, piping, etc but nothing more impressive than that.

Does anyone have any ideas of what sort of cake I could make that would look good / appeal to the ladies and not need too much advanced decorating skill!

Any suggestions very gratefully received!

I think if its for a Raffle prize a really good quality chocolate cake with chocolate ganache and just decorate with lots of chocolate shavings, curls or cigarols(sp)

as something that requires lots of time/money sort of defeats the purpose of the raffle iyswim

Lemon drizzle bundt cake, a nice fancy drizzle of thick lemon icing all the way around it, with very fine small pieces of candied lemon peel sprinkled over the icing. Nice and summery if nothing else

Someone made this Malteser Cake for our "guess the weight" stall and it gots lots of admiring looks and we made quite a bit of money from it.

I make a chocolate box cake which is a square rich chocolate cake covered in chocolate ganache, with chocolate truffles on top and a whole bar of chocolate (thin ones) on each side. Then a ribbon round, looks great.

Try Genaro Contaldo's red wine chocolate cake. Lovely chocolate icing and it looks really good for minimal effort

For that age group - how about a http://www.deliaonline.com/recipes/type-of-dish/entertaining/traditional-dundee-cake.html Dundee cake - keeps for ages so you don't have to have a large family at home or a specific occasion in mind, and decoration is just arrangement of fruit?

bugger. dundee cake

This one is lovely haven't linked to the cream cheese frosting, but I cannot bake and I make it and everyone is impressed

thanks SO much for all the ideas, I'm drooling. Now I just have to decide which one to choose......