Checkmate!

In retrospect, it was probably fortunate that Smunch decided he wanted a "chess party" for his birthday this year. Because, if you know me, you know the first thing on my mind is how I'm going to make a chess cake. I thought about it for a good, long time because I just wasn't sure.

Yeah. I could make a bunch of chess pieces out of fondant, but I don't play with fondant that often and I had no faith that I could make a set of relatively uniform chess pieces by rolling the play-dough-like stuff in my hands. Fortunately, I had an epiphany that there must be chocolate molds for this sort of thing. Ah, the internet is a wonderful thing!I spent the last couple of weeks putting together life-sized chocolate chess pieces a few at a time. I also got a chocolate mold that made quarters of a chess board. I found myself a 16" square cake pan and some high quality cake mix that I've used before. Finally, by the end of this week, it was all coming together. The two layers of cake (one devil's food and one white) were baked and Friday afternoon, I put the cake together with chocolate mousse in the middle and a "crumb coating" on the outside. This morning, I put on the final coat of crumb-free frosting.I added the chocolate chess board quarters. Unfortunately, they bowed a little as they hardened, so they weren't perfectly flat, but close enough.I added some chocolate bead borders to hide some imperfections and tidy things up a bit.I had a vision for how I wanted things to go from there, but it looked so neat and tidy that I almost chickened out and left it as it was. But I'd bought some plastic frogs and bugs to add and it really didn't make a lot of sense without a little greenery. Originally, I thought I'd go for grass, but I opted for leaves instead and added just a few flowers...not too girly, just decorative.After all, a snail and a frog cancel out the flowers and butterfly, right? And the finishing touch, of course, was to add the chess pieces.
Not sure how we'll do this in the end. I may have Daddy set the cake up so it looks like a game is being played rather than having the pieces set in their starting positions. It should be a fun party...even if we'll be winging much of it!