Connect It

I'm pretty new to cake decorating, but after doing a decent job on my first threadcakes entry, I decided to go for something a little more ambitious. I decided to take the lazy way out this time and use a box mix for the cake, so the preparation was short and sweet. Next I headed into two evenings of decoration hell.

The first step was to carve the cake into a brain shape. I printed off a greyscale version of the design and pinned it to the cake. This was the point where I realised that the cake was smaller than the brain and scaling the design down would make it harder to work with. Luckily, I was able to reposition some of the cut-offs so that the cake was the right shape. Then I grabbed a stanley knife and started carving the cake through the paper along the lines of the grooves (sulci to the neurologically-inclined). After stabbing myself in the thumb repeatedly, I finally had all the grooves carved and the real fun began: the icing

I've never worked with fondant or buttercream, and royal icing doesn't really go with chocolate cake, so I decided to use white chocolate icing and tint it the various colours. I considered piping the icing, but it wasn't sticking well to the cake, so I went with Plan B. I thickened the icing and let it cool a little, then hand-shaped small pieces to each part of the cake. Next, I had to wire up the cerebellum using hand-rolled pieces of the icing. It was tough sticking to the pattern and maintaining the contours I'd carved into it, but I think it turned out ok.

And then there was my favourite part, the usb sticks. I created a template for 5 usb sticks and piped more white chocolate into the shapes. Once they'd cooled, I carved the details and then applied the writing in dark chocolate with a toothpick. I had limited space on the cakeboard, so I had to keep the connecting wires short, that was my only real deviation from the pattern.

Not having enough people in the house to eat an entire brain, I brought it into work to feed to my co-workers (who now think I'm a little bit crazy). They were dubious at first, but once the 3pm hunger pangs hit, the lure of chocolate became too great. It tasted pretty good (not as nice as home-made cake of course) and everyone was impressed with my decorating skills.

Overall, this was a tough design to cake-ify. It was hard to resist smashing the cake against a wall, but I'm glad I took up the challenge and I've got plans for a few more threadcakes