Edible Zentangle Christmas Trees - how to

I combined my love for doodling and the need to use up a stash of chocolate into my Christmas gifts this year and this is the result - a zentangle christmas tree!

Start with a silicon chocolate mould. I used this chocolate mould by D'Line.

What happened next was an extremely steep learning curve (and a slap-in-the-face reality check!) on tempering chocolate. Tried various methods, made a big mess and still ended up with bloom - those white patches that make your chocolate look mouldy but they're harmless, just ugly to look at. My cake friend pastry chef Courtney finally showed me the easiest way to temper chocolate and it worked a charm... yay! 

Subsequently my lazy self took over and I got trusty Bimbi to do the tempering, and she did it with great ease and fabulous results. In retrospect, I should've gotten 4 of those tree moulds because tempering just a little bit of chocolate at a time is not the most efficient use of Bimbi nor my time.... (sigh).... live and learn.

Assemble the tree...

Make doodles. I started with zentangles which promptly turned into just doodles. I freehand drew the outline on a sheet of edible sugar paper (I used Kopykake) using an Americolor pen with edible black ink. I then painted splashes of colour with Americolor airbrush paint and added some Rainbow Dust glitter for that Christmassy feel.

I cut out and stuck the edible sugar paper on the tree, and decorated the tree with chocolate truffles and snowmen and a string of fairy lights (Christmas is not complete without fairy lights!).

Make a bunch of them and you get a forest!

Or make a Christmas scene.

SO pretty in the dark!

Uncle Bill's racing cake

A 90th birthday cake for Jo's uncle who likes horse racing. 

I make LCM shapes for the horses - head, body and legs.

Cover the shapes with fondant.

Assemble the body and leave it to harden overnight. My trusty silicone petit four mould to the rescue, as usual.

Next day I attach the heads and use paper towels to hold them in place. I then leave these for a few days to dry out and harden properly. This is necessary to ensure that the legs would support the weight of the body and head.

Add details. I pipe the hair and tail using a Makins clay extruder - used only for fondant. If you have a clay extruder that you've used for clay or polymer clay, you need to get a new one. I never mix food tools with non-food tools. The same goes for brushes and other equipment.

Don't forget to make 2 holes for the nostrils.

For the ears, start with 2 small teardrops.

Make a line indent on each teardrop.

Attach the ears.

I cut a cardboard cake board into a rectangular shape and cover with green fondant. I make railings out of toothpicks covered in white fondant.

Fine details are added - jockey complete with boots and caps and a fallen jockey adds to the drama.

Final cake is quite different from what I've originally planned! I initially thought of a rectangular cake iced with buttercream (Jo wanted the most simple flavours) and covered with green tinted desiccated coconut, topped with the horses and race track. But when I completed the topper, I realised I didn't have a cake box large enough for a rectangular cake. So, the cake design was converted from rectangular to round. Can't take credit for the design, though coz I found heaps of cakes like this on google. BUT, I can take credit for the fallen jockey idea! LOL.

Epic!

"As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again!"

Just like Gone With the Wind, this cake is epic! It's a 4-day saga.

Day 1, Thursday: Bake the cake. It's a super rich and dense chocolate mud cake from my Planet Cake book. Check out the super rich dark Lindt chocolate, 70% cocoa. Add to that, another 50gms of decadent Koko Black cocoa powder, eggs, and only a smidgen of flour but almost half a kilo of caster sugar! This is no cake. This is chocolate, pure and simple! By the end of Day 1, my house smells like a chocolate factory! Eat your heart out, Willy Wonka!

As if that's not enough of chocolate, add a layer of Darel Lea dark rocky road filling!

Day 2, Friday: Get 1.3kg of premium white chocolate... no, it's not a typo. It really was 1.3 KILOS!

Melt white choc with pure cream to get a smooth ganache. Slice the cake in half, fill with ganache and chopped rocky road. Sandwich cake together and leave to set overnight.

Day 3, Saturday: Ice the cake with white chocolate ganache prepared the day before. This is where hubby's cement rendering skills come in really handy...

      

Make sure the ganache is as smooth as a baby's bottom, or in this case, a mother's boob. LOL. Leave to harden overnight.

   

Day 4, Sunday: Decorate, decorate, decorate. Start with dressing up the gown in fondant...

   

It helps to make a template first. I basically use the template to create panels of the gown and attach them one panel at a time. This is because I simply don't have a rolling pin large enough to roll out a giant circle for the entire gown.

Add the doll, finish off the rest of the gown and accessorise. Doll's hair styled courtesy of Emma Walsh. Thank you so much for doing such a great job. When I first asked Emma to style her hair, she thought it was the weirdest request she's ever received. Emma is a qualified hairstylist and has done a lot of hair but never a dolly's hair. Still, she gave it her best and look at how glamorous she made my dolly.

         

Thanks to hubby, Greg for the great job in piping these royal icing flowers!

Day 5, Monday: A cake is meant to be eaten so Dolly's minutes are definitely numbered!

 Bring out the knife!

Attack!!

"I'll definitely not be hungry after eating you!" says the Birthday girl, Emma Wright.

BU-WAHAHAHAHA.......

First slice off Dolly's back...

Dolly's back all gone!