Cookies

I have never decorated a cake before, in fact I never really had the desire to decorate a cake until I saw this competition. I love Threadless T-shirts and to find a competition that involves making and decorating a cake based on one of their awesome designs appealed to my non-baking, non-sweet toothed nature.

Having never done this before I did have to do some extensive research into how you actually go about making something like this. I chose the 'Cookies' design because I thought it was achievable for a first go and it also made me smile.

The whole process was a three day event. I made the first mud cake on Friday night, covered it in chocolate ganache on Saturday and iced it on Sunday. My original idea was to make cup cakes for the cookies, but as I was carving the cake on Saturday, chopping out the rounds for the eyes, I realised another cake with circles cut out of it would look better. So I rushed off to the shops for more ingredients for the white chocolate mud cake.

As I mentioned before I'm not a baker and I don't really have a sweet tooth, so I had to choose a cake that I would enjoy eating afterwards, hence the chocolate mud cakes.

Covering the cake with the ganache was the hardest part, the icing was easier than I expected. The cake is not as smooth as I would like, but I know it's because the ganache is not as smooth as it should be. I did my best for a first attempt and next time hopefully it will be easier and smoother.

With three days in the making I had to share the cutting moment with friends, I needed an audience for all this effort! Thankfully the effort was worth it. The cake tastes great, it is pretty dense, but in a good way. It is moist and gooey and best of all chocolatey. The cookies are equally gooey and chocolatey despite looking like a regular, plain cake.

Thank you Threadcakes, I will definitely make and decorate cake again, looking forward to next year already!