Graffiti & Gum Balls

I had a last minute cake to make for one of my son's friends today. The whole thing, from baking to decorating and delivering had to be done within 9 hours, so the cake needed to be kept quite simple. There was no particular theme, but I know the young man likes chewing gum, so I got the idea to fill the top of the cake with gum balls, but then wasn't sure what to do with the rest of the cake.

I had a chat with my friend, hoping that bouncing ideas off of her would either help me find inspiration, or that she would come up with something brilliant. Well, I think we ended up with a combination of both, I'm not sure who actually said the word first, but we finally settled on the idea of  putting GRAFFITI around the sides of the cake.

I got an airbrush for Christmas (well, an early Christmas present... that I bought for myself), so I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to play with it a bit. I've only used it for simple stencilling and solid colouring so far!

I have to admit, I felt really nervous sitting in front of this blank white 'canvas'. I sat staring at it for quite a while before I finally took a deep breath, pulled back on the trigger and started laying down colour. I'm not 100% happy with the result, but I don't think it's too bad for a first try?

I made my favourite dark chocolate sponge for this cake - i'ts my reliable go to cake. I can mix it up in minutes and it comes out moist and delicious every time. It is my most requested cake flavour by far.

I filled the cake with soft, fluffy chocolate icing, damming the edges with chocolate ganache.

I didn't make quite enough ganache to properly finish the cake, and didn't have time to wait for the new batch to cool to the right spreading consistency, so I dumped it all out on my cool granite work surface and just spread it out to cool quickly. It worked like a charm! Instead of waiting 3-4 hours, my ganache was ready in about 10 minutes!

Happy Birthday Walter!!