Chocolate fences

Chocolate curls and fences, secured with ganache. A simple way to get a striking cake. Striping the curls makes it look even more impressive. This one was a chocolate mud cake, and served as birthday cake for a male friend.

This week in cakes

The week started off with Mothers' Day, celebrated with a chocolate cake covered in ganache and decorated with leaves made from chilli chocolate. Its tiered because I didn't have a deep 23cm pan, so ended up using a 20cm sandwich and 12.5cm deep.

Closely followed by a sheet sponge on Monday for a birthday dinner. No photo of that - it was pretty plain to look at, although I'm told the eating was good.

Thursday and Friday I made my first topsy turvy. Not a bad result for a first try. In fact, it was good enough to get me a query about a wedding cake!

The design was chosen by the birthday girl's mum, and is a pretty close replica of one made by Pink Box Cakes. Black fondant is not my friend!