After weeks of thematic cake requests – Noah’s Ark, a tree-inspired wedding cake, pirate ship etc., this cake was a refreshing change. The challenge was to make a delicious and understated birthday cake. No bells and whistles, nothing kitschy. The honouree is a reluctant birthday celebrant so we didn’t want to overwhelm her with something too big or flashy.
I’ve been thinking about how to create a chocolate stencil effect like this for a while and this seemed like a good opportunity to experiment. The cake is covered in white fondant and the sides are panels of delicious chocolate dough. (The dough is made by melting chocolate and combining it with corn syrup to create a product that can be rolled out or formed into shapes.) I do own several attractive stencils but nothing as large and dramatic as what I had in mind for this cake. So I printed out a picture of a flower and then traced the shape directly onto the dough. I then carefully carved out the pieces with an X-Acto knife. Surprisingly, this turned out to be rather painstaking work. (I did not, however, slice open my fingers as I have on several other occasions using this knife. So we can already count this as a win.)
Each side was slightly different although I’m not sure anyone noticed but me. For the top I considered doing a negative image of the stencil. After a couple of attempts I recognized that it would be too difficult for people’s eyes to translate it into something recognizable. Instead, I opted for a modest chocolate lily made from layers of chocolate dough.
Happily, when I finished I had quite a bit of chocolate dough left over. Instead of me snacking on it (yum!), please somebody, anybody, place an order soon!
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