A Birthday Present

Yesterday we celebrated a birthday, Christmas and New Year's all in one! Dave's uncle's birthday was at the beginning of December but he lives out of town and wasn't able to make it back here on Christmas Eve due to him working and the weather. So instead we got to celebrate all three at once. Dave asked me if I would make a cake for him and he wanted it to look like a present. I decided to go with a square cake to look like a box.


For the cake I just used a chocolate pre-made cake mix. I made a chocolate ganache for the filling and used chocolate buttercream for the frosting. When using a filling you need to pipe a thick line of frosting around the edges of the first layer and THEN fill will the filling. This is to keep the filling inside the cake and prevent it from dripping down the sides of the cake. I then refrigerate it for about 15 minutes to firm up before I continue.

Then I place the second layer on and frosted a crumb coating with the chocolate butter cream to keep all the crumbs from mixing in with the rest of the frosting. This really isn't that important for this kind of cake since I covered it with fondant but I find it easier to frost the cake as this one was very moist! Once the crumb coat is on you put in the refrigerator again just to firm up and then you can frost your cake beautifully. Once frosted I covered it with marshmallow fondant I tinted green. I then tinted some fondant brown and rolled out ribbons and a name tag.

Chocolate Ganache

Bring 3/4 cup heavy cream, 1 Tbsp butter and 1 Tbsp sugar to a boil. Stir until sugar is dissolved. Place 1 1/2 cups chocolate chips in a medium bowl. Pour mixture over chocolate chips and let stand for 5 minutes. Stir until smooth let stand 15 minutes or until filling reached desired consistency. As the chocolate mixture cools it gets thicker.

I love seeing all the layers!