Ugly Drawings

This cake wasn't actually too hard to make, all it really required was a steady hand and a lot of time. For the sake of continuity, the pictures feature baking first and decorating second. In actuality, the decorating was done well in advance.

When I saw the pattern, I knew it'd come out well in a chocolate flood-fill, so I digitally flipped it, printed it, covered it in parchment and got down to work. The lines were painstakingly done in melted dark chocolate applied with a toothpick. This process took several days and what felt like thousands of trips to the kettle for more hot water to re-melt the chocolate. Once this was finished (and my eyesight and back were permanently ruined from spending so long hunched over the table staring at tiny little lines), I let the whole thing set before covering it in a layer of white chocolate. Once the whole thing had set, I peeled the parchment off, only to discover that some of the dark chocolate came away with it, prompting a patch-up job with (once again) melted chocolate on a toothpick.

I should point out that while I started the process in Ireland, my impending emigration interrupted the process somewhat, so the newly-created chocolate plaque got wrapped up in tissue and bubblewrap and transported all the way to Britain. Ensconced in my new home, I got back down to business.

I used an old family recipe for chocolate cake, it's the best chocolate-delivery system I know and it never fails to please. A simple square cake covered in vanilla icing and I was good to go. The plaque had survived the move and sat nicely on top, only causing a problem when it decided it didn't want to be cut up into convenient square pieces. Screw it, triangular cake is good too.

It was almost painful to cut through and eat the plaque I'd spent so long on, but it was worth it