Checkmate!

This was such an awesome project to work on, and our imaginations ran wild. We wanted to incorporate chess pieces for a 70th birthday, and we immediately came up with the idea to make 64 individual cake squares to represent the chess board and 32 chess pieces to go on top.  The party actually didn’t need that many pieces of cake, but my sister and I couldn’t allow a board game with missing pieces to leave our premises.

Initially, the chess pieces were to be solid chocolate because even though we were able to find a mold for the chess pieces, fitting cake inside a thin layer of chocolate seemed impossible. The plastic mold only accommodates one-half of six chess pieces at a time, so in order to create one 3-D chess piece, each mold has to be filled up twice, the halves need to be secured together with melted chocolate, and the seam of each piece requires caulking and smoothing out. We decided to step it up a notch and try putting cake in the middle of a very thin shell of chocolate and then doing all of the above, and after quite some time, we figured out a method.

Each square of the chess board was cut and then dipped to achieve nice corners for a snug fit.  Chocolate (dark) squares have dark chocolate cake inside, and the white squares have butter cake inside.  The chocolate chess pieces are all Cookies ‘n Cream, and the white chess pieces have butter cake on the inside.

There are a total of 32 chess pieces, and for each piece, we created 2 halves of the chocolate shell, stuffed each half with cake, secured the 2 halves together, and "caulked" and cleaned up the seam.  However, instead of 64 halves, we probably ended up making at least 80 halves due to trial and error and the fragile nature of cake as the supporting beam inside such a delicate shell.  The kings and bishops tended to behead themselves, and a few of the pawns also surrendered.  Each chess piece took anywhere between 10-20 minutes to make, but it was all worth it when we finally saw the finished product! 

 Our final touches included bronzing the chocolate pieces and pearlizing the white pieces for a sophisticated effect, and we were surprised to discover how much the chocolate queen resembled an actual copper chess piece.  The picture below doesn’t do it justice:

Here is a picture of my sister gingerly securing each letter onto the chessboard:

We couldn't stop taking pictures, and I couldn't decide on which pictures to post, so below are a couple more.  We hope all the guests enjoy this strategic creation, and many happy birthday wishes to the guest of honor!