I offered to make a cake for my brother’s birthday, who doesn’t want a homemade cake?! So, I asked him what flavors were his favorite and the winner was chocolate cake with chocolate frosting, a fine choice.
I haven’t made a homemade chocolate cake in years, and I forgot how rich it was, but since there was some leftover batter, I do have some chocolate cupcakes to keep me going too. The chocolate frosting was light and easy to work with, I think I should have let it sit a bit then whipped it again, just to get it truly smooth.
I had the idea to make flowers out of candy melts brewing in my head for awhile. Somewhere I saw a video about using the back of a spoon to create the petal shape and I would say that was a great idea. Since the cake was for my brother, and I know he loves fishing, I thought water lilies would be a good choice.
I used several spoons of slightly different shapes to create the petals, and I’ve even thought of some other ways to stream line the process for a larger batch. For the centers I used a Russian Tip with vanilla buttercream to shape the inside petals and little stamen, then sprinkled a little yellow petal dust for definition. The chocolate petals were stuck into the buttercream mound in staggered layers to create the open bloom.
All in all, this was a fun project. I think I could even make some other flowers using this technique. The 3-D effect of the blooms is quite dramatic and really makes a statement! so give it a try, the good part is if you don’t like the petals, or a bunch break while in molding, you can just remelt them and try again. Win-win!
Tip to Tail Gourmet 