My husband turned 40 last week so this year I had to make him a special cake. Last year I had really bad morning sickness so he didn’t get much of one. This cake is 4 of his favourite computer manuals with an older style laptop on the top. For those who like authenticity I did a full querty keyboard, and the little ninja’s in the front are two little characters on the front of one of the manuals. I have finally achieved a proper black icing, starting with chocolate icing and adding lots and lots of black. I found that I needed to use copha to stop it sticking rather than cornflour, it was still sticking with cornflour but the copha made it a lot easier to handle with the added benefit of not having white on the black. I also let the books harden for a couple of days before stacking them. The lid of the laptop is stryofoam covered with modelling chocolate and then covered in black fondant. It’s the first time I’ve used modelling chocolate, I made it from scratch too, and love using it. Because it’s winter the modelling chocolate was quite hard before I kneaded it so I put it in the microwave, on defrost for 30 seconds. I don’t know if you’re supposed to do it but that worked and then I was able to start kneading it. I really liked the texture and can’t wait to use it again, although on my next cake I will need a LOT more, but that’s another cake for another time. To get the lid of the laptop to stay upright I used wooden dowels, sharpened at both ends, one end went into the styrofoam and the other into the cake.
What did I learn?
I CAN make black! Yay!
I love doing the little figures.
I NEED a cake leveler. I don’t know if you can notice but there was a slight slant that I noticed.
My piping is getter better and the royal icing was a better consistency for the size nozzle I used.
