This is a cake I made for a small wedding reception. It was a white cake with raspberry filling. I saw a cake wrapped in chocolate and thought it would be pretty (and tasty) to do the same with white chocolate and raspberries, so I pulled up my trusty youtube and googled how to wrap a cake in chocolate.
I didn't want the layers as high as my normal ones, so I only used two layers.
I cut each layer in half so I could alternate between filling and buttercream. I thought that would make the cake more elegant.
I started with raspberry filling...then butter cream...then raspberry again.
After it was all assembled I frosted it...
I didn't worry about smoothing it too much because I knew I was going to cover it anyway.
After both cakes were made, and refrigerated overnight, I added dowels to the bottom layer (to support the top) and stacked them. I thought it would be more prudent to wrap them already stacked rather than risk breaking the top as I tried to stack them.
Now comes the tricky part. I cut out parchment the size that I needed (just enough to slightly overlap the cake. I did this for both layers. I used Girardelli white chips. I would have liked to use a better quality chocolate but it would have cost a whole lot more to use actual bars. This was a cost effective compromise between real chocolate and candy coating (which I considered using).
I melted one bag of chips for the top layer, put it in a zip lock, cut a hole in the corner and piped it onto the parchment...I used about a bag and a half for the bottom layer...
Then I used my spatula to spread the candy across the paper. After it was covered, I waited a few minutes for it to set up a bit. You don't want it to run off your paper when you try to put it on the cake. I waited until it started to lose it's shine and I could see it was starting to set up.
When it was ready to wrap I pulled the cake from the fridge and carefully picked up the paper by its corners. I then gently wrapped it around the cake and immediately threw it back in the fridge for a couple of minutes to set up.
After it was set, I pulled the cake out again and gently peeled away the parchment paper. One of the things I learned about doing this is that you don't want your cake corners sharp and you can't tug very tightly on the paper when you apply the candy, or it will leave an open spot on the cake. You can see on this front corner that there is a white spot where the corner pushed through the candy. It was pretty subtle, but I did avoid it on the bottom cake by rounding the corners a bit and not tugging it quite so tight.
Wrapping the bottom tier was more tricky because it was so long. The parchment was 32 inches long and that was a lot of heavy paper to pick up and wrap around a cake. I would have asked my husband to help me support it as I wrapped, but he wasn't home. As is, I have a few wrinkles in the paper that I wasn't able to straighten out. Overall though, I was very happy with it for a first attempt.
The bottom layer also had a few bubbles in it. I suppose that could be avoided by working with the coating a bit more to make sure that it is smeared across the paper well...
Finally I covered the top and side with raspberries and it was complete. My mom mentioned it would have been pretty with a red ribbon tied around it and I think that would have made a nice finishing touch. Wish we would have thought of it before the party. Oh well, next time I guess. Overall though it turned out lovely. The cake was elegant and everyone enjoyed it's novelty. So I'd say it was a big success.
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