Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Flowery goodness

I'm super excited about this post - I've always wanted to try this - didn't think I would get it right first time, but TADA!!
And if I can do it SO CAN YOU :)
  This tutorial is more about the decoration than the cake - but here is where I found my recipe for the chocolate cake. And here is the vanilla frosting recipe.
 I baked two chocolate cakes and left them to cool. (I cut off the tops to make them flat)
Then I covered them in vanilla frosting, just a thin layer - according to my youtube sources its called a crumb layer. Then I refrigerated the cakes till the frosting hardened.
 Next I covered the cakes in a second layer of frosting - I used this nifty spatula thing which I picked up for super cheap at Homeplus (for those of you in Korea). 
Then I placed the *pattern that I wanted on my cake (which I had fitted to my cake before I covered it in frosting) on the table. I put down a large layer of wax paper. AND then a second layer of wax paper which is also the same size as the cake (I taped all of this to the table). 

Then I melted the chocolate and used this plastic thing that I also found at Homeplus, but I think a ziplock bag with a snipped off corner might have worked better.
As you can see it doesn't look exactly like the original pattern, but I expected a WAY worse end product.
It dries quite quickly so you need to make sure that you pipe the chocolate out quickly. When it is very close to setting, but still slightly soft - you should pick it up and wrap it around the cake. 
Judging when the chocolate was ready was probably the most difficult part of this experiment. NB TIP: if you leave edges on your wax paper (about 3cm on the left and right sides) it makes it easier to pick up. 
 I peeled off the wax paper super carefully. 
And decorated it with some strawberries we had.
 Mission complete - WHOOP WHOOP! 
This might be easy for the general baking public, BUT it was a massive achievement for me. 
You can do it too - and if you do, please send me photos of your marvelous creations!
*by the way, for the pattern - I found a picture of a lampshade with this pattern on, enlarged it, printed it and photocopied it a few times, taped it together and cut it to size (find a pattern that you like and go for it!)

11 comments:

Sherri B. said...

That is so cool and you make it look so easy, I think I might even be able to do it. Great job!

Lindsey Lett said...

That is one gorgeous cake! Job well done! ... great, now I am craving cake... oh how you torture me! ;)

airali said...

good idea!!! thank you!
ciao :)

Pollyanna said...

That is absolutely the most amazing thing I have ever seen. Thanks for sharing!!

Anonymous said...

Amazing! I am so going to try this!

Aetiquette said...

its absolutely gorgeous. newbie or not. amazing still.

Unknown said...

Super great idea!! It looks fab and easy !!

Unknown said...

Awesome cake and lovely step by step photos. Can I just check - did you have to temper the chocolate?

EM BUSCA DE SUA MELHOR VERSÃO said...

It's beautiful!!!

EM BUSCA DE SUA MELHOR VERSÃO said...

It's beautiful!!!

Unknown said...

What type of chocolate did you use? And after you wrapped your cake with the lace chocolate did you put it in the refrigerator to get hard? You really did not explain...