Welcome Back Cake

Today long-time friends who live overseas came back to Canada for a visit. This was very exciting since I haven't seen them in 3 years. My neighbour Elizabeth (who happens to be the sister of one friend) asked me to make a carrot cake for dessert. I happily obliged and iced it with cream cheese icing. The big decision was how to decorate it. Elizabeth said she wanted chocolate flowers so I said no problem. While I was at the library this morning I was looking through the cookbook aisle and saw The Whimsical Bakehouse. I had already looked through this book before and I knew they used melted chocolate to make designs. I took it home for inspiration.

A couple hours later this was the final product. I apologize for the poor picture quality but the Ontario skies did not co-operate with me and remained cloudy all day. The flowers, sun, stems, clouds and words are all melted and tinted white chocolate wafers. I drew the pictures out on parchment paper and traced them with the chocolate. I piped the grass on afterwards as well as the ubiquitous "V" birds most commonly seen in grade 5 drawings. It was great fun working with the melted chocolate. You can pretty much make any design your heart desires and hopefully I'll get better the more I try. I'm waiting in anticipation to do it again soon...its much easier to snack on chocolate wafers than buttercream icing.