Exploring New Horizons: Chocolate plastic and buttercream

Mothers day was approaching and I was going to get my mother flowers. I was then faced with the dilemma of how to keep the flowers alive before I was able to get them to her. Unable to come up with a way to prevent my mother from receiving dead flowers, I decided instead to make her chocolate flowers; but I couldn't just make her chocolate flowers, they had to go on a cake. So I went on a baking spree yesterday, making two cakes, four chocolate flowers, and two batches of buttercream frosting.

I made the cake using a recipe from Smitten Kitchen:
This recipe was originally intended for two two-inch thick ten inch cakes. I made two one-inch thick nine inch cakes and one three-inch thick six inch cake.
3 ounces semi-sweet chocolate
1 1/2 cups hot brewed coffee
3 cups sugar
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups unsweetened cocoa powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
3 large eggs
3/4 cup vegetable oil
1 1/2 cups buttermilk
3/4 teaspoon vanilla

Set the oven to 300 degrees. The recipe suggests that you line the bottom of the pans with parchment paper. Since I didn't have any parchment paper, I used aluminium foil. Butter the pans, cut a piece of parchment paper/aluminium foil and butter that as well.

Chop the chocolate into tiny pieces, mix it with the hot coffee, and let it melt.

Measure out the sugar, flour, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Sift them together in a large bowl. To do this I used my mesh pasta strainer, placed it over a large bowl, and dumped the dry ingredients into it to sift them together.

Combine the eggs in a mixing bowl and beat them till they're frothy, thinkened, and lemony coloured. I used a whisk to do this because I did not have an electric mixer.

Add the oil, buttermilk, vanilla, and coffee chocolate mixture to the whipped eggs. Beat together until well mixed.

Slowly add the dry mixture to the chocolate mixture and beat until well mixed. It's okay if the batter isn't perfectly smooth, it actually helps the cake cook better.

I divided the batter evenly between the three pans, about four cups per pan. Cook the nine inch pans for 45 minutes, cook the six inch pan for about an hour or until a toothpick, when entered into the centre, comes out without any batter on it.

After the cakes cool a bit, run a spatula around the edge and place them upside-down on a cooling rack. After an hour or so, I transferred them to Ziploc bags to place them into the freezer. It's easier to frost cakes when they're frozen. These cakes did stick to the bags, however, so if you aren't planning on frosting the cake (for some crazy reason) and want a smooth top, you shouldn't put them in the bags.

I chose a buttercream frosting because I have had terrible luck with cream cheese frostings.

I got the buttercream icing recipe from All Recipes:
This recipe will be enough to frost the nine-inch, two layer cake. To frost both cakes, multiply the recipe by 1.25
1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
3 teaspoons vanilla extract
4 cups confectioners' sugar, sifted
4 tablespoons milk (I only used one)

Cream the butter with a whisk. Slowly add the confectioners sugar in small batches, continuing to beat well. I ended up switching from a whisk to a fork because it was getting too hard to mix. Beat in the vanilla and milk. I only used one tablespoon of milk because I wanted a thicker frosting.

Once the cakes are cooled, I put a thin layer of frosting on the cake, to catch any crumbs, before fully frosting the cake.

Next step is making the chocolate roses. The chocolate roses are made out of a mixture called chocolate plastic. It's pretty much like chocolate play-doh!

To make this mixture, I used a recipe from the blog, Cake on the Brain:
6 oz bittersweet chocolate
1/3 cup corn syrup

I didn't have bittersweet chocolate, so I used 3 oz semi-sweet chocolate (54% caco) and 3 oz unsweetened chocolate (100% caco).

Start a pot of simmering water, place a sauce pan over it and melt the chocolate and corn syrup together.

Place a sheet of plastic wrap over a baking tray and spread the chocolate mixture evenly over it. Place another sheet of plastic wrap over the tray and put it in the fridge overnight (or at least a few hours).

To make the cold chocolate plastic malleable, play with it for a bit, and roll it into a ball.

On a wooden (or marble or plastic) cutting board, roll the chocolate plastic flat till it's about 1/8" thick.

Cut the plastic chocolate into 1" circles for the petals (I used 13 petals on each rose). I didn't have a 1" cookie cutter, so I used the top of one of our spice jars. With a 2" cookie cutter, I cut out a circle of chocolate plastic to create the centre of the rose. Roll the 2" circle into a ball and create a teardrop shape.

The site that I got the chocolate plastic recipe from also gives a tutorial for chocolate roses. She suggested that you press the petals flat with your fingers. I made two roses this way, didn't love how they turned out and searched for a different technique. I found this one. The flower was so pretty (it might have been the white chocolate...) I didn't end up using this technique, as I thought it was a bit too excessive (cooling the petals one at a time for two minutes as a time).

I ended up rolling the top half of the circles out, leaving the bottoms thick and the tops really thin and petal like.

I started with a teardrop centre . The first peal I wrapped around close to the teardrop, not too tall. I cut off the bottom of the petal with a knife.

The second petal was a bit taller, overlapping the first petal by about half, still close to the bud. I cut off the bottom of the petal, too.

All the successive petals are started at the bottom of the teardrop.

Each petal is started about halfway to two thirds of the way around the petal below it. I used a toothpick to shape the petals into something I felt looked natural.