Nature's Battle

So Phase 1 was making many chocolate feathers. If I could go back in time I would have purchased more than 2 molds to accelerate this process. This had to be done twice since I had to make dark chocolate feathers and white chocolate feathers. So the first step was melting down the chocolate. I made my own double boiler by putting the chocolate in a big ole pyrex measuring cup and putting that in a pot of boiling water. Once the chocolate was all melted (which took a while!), I got to pour it in my molds. Then I leveled them off with the non-business side of a butter knife and stuck the molds in the freezer to make the chocolate harden quicker. Once they were hardened up, I popped them out of the molds and put them in a baggie and left them in the freezer for now. Then I repeated this process for about 3 hours until I thought I had accumulated enough feathers. Then I washed everything (there was chocolate everywhere!), popping my leftover chocolate in the fridge for later and got started on doing this process all over again with the white chocolate.

This time around I also started baking the actual cakes in the meantime. I could have just implemented my idea for the design on top of any old cake, but I really wanted the theme to be present throughout the entire cake. So first I made a white cake (from a box, oh well). And then I made a dark chocolate cake (also from a box). Then I leveled both of them off so they'd be flat. And then I used my cake leveler to cut a yinyang curve into the dark cake. I took half of that and put it on top of the white cake to use as a guide to do the same thing to the white cake. I then combined the halves to make 2 yinyangs. Then I used a round cookie cutter to pop a hole out of each half and then put that piece of cake into the hole I made of the opposite color. So I then had 2 yinyang cakes.

Now to combine them. I frosted one of the cakes, white frosting on top of the chocolate half and chocolate frosting on top of the white half. And then I flipped the other yinyang cake on top to make one big layered yinyang cake. This got left alone for a little white while I finished up making the rest of the white chocolate feathers. Once I was done with that, it was time to finish the cake. I used the leftover chocolate to "frost" the top and sides of the cake, putting the leftover white chocolate on the dark chocolate cake side and the leftover dark chocolate on the white cake side. I then sprinkled some coconut on the white chocolate and some chocolate sprinkles on the dark chocolate for filler feathers.

Then I assembled the birds using the chocolate feathers I'd made. The dark chocolate feathers seemed to want to melt quickly and I must confess the kitchen was quite hot, so I had to work quickly. So with that done as closely as I could get it to the design, there was just a few little details to take care of. The beaks are made of cashews that I coated in chocolate, the eyes are made of nerds that I coated in chocolate, and the black bird's legs are made of black licorice Twizzlers that I cut to suit my purposes.

It didn't come out looking exactly as I imagined it, nor do I expect to win, but it was a lot of fun! And quite delicious as well. I also wish my photos were better quality, but all I have for a camera is my cell phone...sorry!