This is possibly my greatest success so far with my cake making. I needed to create a winter themed cake for my mums birthday. I had the basic idea of creating some pinecones with cereal and using a chocolate flake as a log. I also had ideas of adding some chocolate orange segments and some mini marshmallows for a bit of colour. I was also very keen on trying out wrapping the cake in chocolate that protruded over the top of the cake.
The wrapping in chocolate worked quite well, but had some trouble having made it too tall. Luckily I was able to trim it back with some scissors before it set, but next time I'll measure it more accurately. I also wasn't sure how to join it up, may have been better to create 4 strips and layer the chocolate wrapping, so might try that next time. Otherwise, I need to try to get the beginning of the chocolate wrapping to set before the end so I can remove the grease-proof paper from a section to overlap.
While baking, I discovered I had a mould for letters, so created the words "Happy Birthday" with some chocolate which fitted nicely as a centre piece. Also decided to use some leaf moulds for some white and milk chocolate leaves. The pine-cones were made from a ball of chocolate fudge (same as the icing) which I pushed rows of broken up malted wheats into. It didn't look like it would work at first, but the outcome was pleasing enough. To finish off, I drew out some snow flake patterns, placed some grease-proof paper over it and used a piping bag to trace the snow flakes with white chocolate. Carefully peeling these off once set produced a nice set of snow flakes. I had some left over white chocolate in my piping bag, so decided to try out writing with it and ended up using my extras to decorate around the edge of my cake carrier. Finally a sprinkle of icing sugar to create some snow, I took the letters off for this so as to not obscure the message.
Will definitely re-use some of the ideas again.
