Clockwork Kit

A simple 2-d design this time. An orange cake for a clockwork orange design

This was a traditional orange sponge cake, so it took me a minute to figure out how to make it (I'd only ever made Victoria sponge cakes before). I ultimately fell back on my mergingue-making skills to get the right texture. With the cake out of the oven and cooled, I used orange glace icing to get a nice smooth background to work on. The first layer was too watery and went everywhere, but the second was nice and thick. Now for the fun part, the design.

I'd started preparing for this cake the previous evening. I printed out a mirrored version of the design, put a sheet of greaseproof paper over it and piped chocolate icing over the lines. Once that was dry, I poured melted white chocolate onto the white spaces and left it overnight. Once completely dry, I flipped the pieces over and filled in any gaps or cracks with more chocolate. The frame was harder to do. I had originally intended to pipe the frame in the same way I'd piped the items and then transfer them onto the cake, but the frame fell apart the second I tried to pick it up. Instead, I marked out the lines onto the cake and then piped more chocolate icing directly onto them. With that done, I fitted the items into their spaces (using more melted chocolate to stick them down) and I was finished.

This was fairly simple in comparison to my "Connect It" entry, but it still took two full evenings to complete. To be honest, it was the waiting around for stuff to cool and harden that took up most of my time. Also, some of the chocolate items developed the delightful habit of snapping, so the repair jobs were rather time-consuming. Working with melted chocolate is very fiddly at times, but the pattern made it a lot easier. It was definately a fun cake to make, and disposing of the left-over chocolate was a delicious task.

I'm not normally a fan of orange flavourings, but the cake itself had a nice light texture and the chocolate toppings gave it an extra something special. I was pretty happy with it overall