Wooden Chess Board Cake

Sarah was celebrating her 5th wedding anniversary and needed something made out of wood for her gift. After thinking through a few options, she came up with the chess board theme. The 8-inch square cake was covered in homemade marshmallow fondant and the pieces are also made of MMF. In order to make the "wood" look as real as possible, I rolled out side panels of brown fondant to fit the sides of the cake. I then used a pizza cutter to make lines or indents in the panels. After adhering them to the side of the cake, I used a paintbrush to brush on brown food coloring in different layers. I also hand-painted the top of the chess board so that the colors matched the side wood panels. In order to make the pieces, I mimicked a chess board that I had and simply rolled different shapes and skewered them on a toothpick to keep them together.

The cake was a White Chocolate Dipped Cherry Cake (vanilla-cherry cake with cherries baked in, layered with white chocolate ganache) and I was afraid that it would be too sweet because if you've ever tried white chocolate ganache, you know it's SWEET. Luckily, Sarah wrote back the next day saying, "We loved, loved, LOVED this cake. We both couldn't believe how great the 'wood' came out. The wood 'grain' was amazing. We probably kept checking it out for over an hour before we were willing to cut into it. We felt bad about cutting into it until we tasted the cake. I think it was the tastiest cake so far! Nate did think it was a touch too sweet but since I don't eat the fondant, for me, it was perfect!" Thank you so much, Sarah! I'm excited to make three more cakes for this month! :)