2D Finalist 1
Natural Dark
by Andrea Lloyd · submitted Aug 16, 2011 · 2011 contest
1 / 10
Description
I chose Natural dark because it is beautiful and I wanted something that was complicated and colourful.
I wanted to work with chocolate again. Everything worked exactly as planned in the prep stage. I cut out templates of each piece, rolled and cut them from modeling chocolate, and painted the pieces with dark, milk, and tinted white chocolate. A few pieces also had gold petal dust or cocoa power brushed on. All the pieces looked amazing!
The assembly was a little more difficult. Even though all the pieces were cut from templates to exactly fit together: they didn’t all line up exactly like the picture. There were a few pieces that stressed or broke because they couldn’t lie flat, they had to be layered.
The most difficult part was the hair. I knew I didn’t have a steady enough hand to paint the strands individually. I should have found a way to cut the strands from modeling chocolate so I could layer and shape them nicely. I ended up going with the “grass” tip and piping the chocolate on. It was terrifying but it worked out alright. I lined the piping bag with dark chocolate and then filled it with white chocolate so I got some varied tones and then brushed the hair with cocoa power to add some depth.
There was a recipe in O magazine a while back for Christina Tosi's Banana Cake that I really wanted to try. I looked up the recipe and it does sound really great but way too complicated for what I had time and ingredients for. Instead I took a standard yellow cake recipe and modified it. I separated the eggs so I could fold in the whipped egg whites at the end to make the cake a little lighter. I added in 2 bananas to the mix. Voilà! – Light banana cake. Yep, I forgot to take pictures of this!
Then I took a peanut brittle recipe and substituted hazelnuts. I chopped up some of the brittle into a finer pieces and added it to my vanilla buttercream recipe. I assembled the cake layers in the pan to keep the cake level and square. I was planning to leave the outer edge unfinished but it wasn’t looking as nice as I imagined so I knew I needed to cover it. But … out of icing sugar. I ended up making a simple butter ganache and pressing some of the hazelnut brittle pieces into it.
I worked on the chocolate topper over several days and made the cake the day before finishing it; all together about 12-15 hours including making the brittle and some cupcakes!
I wanted to work with chocolate again. Everything worked exactly as planned in the prep stage. I cut out templates of each piece, rolled and cut them from modeling chocolate, and painted the pieces with dark, milk, and tinted white chocolate. A few pieces also had gold petal dust or cocoa power brushed on. All the pieces looked amazing!
The assembly was a little more difficult. Even though all the pieces were cut from templates to exactly fit together: they didn’t all line up exactly like the picture. There were a few pieces that stressed or broke because they couldn’t lie flat, they had to be layered.
The most difficult part was the hair. I knew I didn’t have a steady enough hand to paint the strands individually. I should have found a way to cut the strands from modeling chocolate so I could layer and shape them nicely. I ended up going with the “grass” tip and piping the chocolate on. It was terrifying but it worked out alright. I lined the piping bag with dark chocolate and then filled it with white chocolate so I got some varied tones and then brushed the hair with cocoa power to add some depth.
There was a recipe in O magazine a while back for Christina Tosi's Banana Cake that I really wanted to try. I looked up the recipe and it does sound really great but way too complicated for what I had time and ingredients for. Instead I took a standard yellow cake recipe and modified it. I separated the eggs so I could fold in the whipped egg whites at the end to make the cake a little lighter. I added in 2 bananas to the mix. Voilà! – Light banana cake. Yep, I forgot to take pictures of this!
Then I took a peanut brittle recipe and substituted hazelnuts. I chopped up some of the brittle into a finer pieces and added it to my vanilla buttercream recipe. I assembled the cake layers in the pan to keep the cake level and square. I was planning to leave the outer edge unfinished but it wasn’t looking as nice as I imagined so I knew I needed to cover it. But … out of icing sugar. I ended up making a simple butter ganache and pressing some of the hazelnut brittle pieces into it.
I worked on the chocolate topper over several days and made the cake the day before finishing it; all together about 12-15 hours including making the brittle and some cupcakes!
