Valentine's Day Chocolate Sculpture

Happy Valentine's Day from MPhillips cakes! Here's a Valentine's Day themed chocolate piece that's the first I've worked on since being back in New York at pastry school. All decorations are hand made out of white and dark chocolate to show a variety of different chocolate modeling skills

The color on the white chocolate pieces is from a hand made transfer sheet using liquid cocoa butter colors. I used tin foil to cast the base piece and make the crinkly texture, and the shimmer on the sphere is from luster dust. The butterflies perching on the sphere and column are hand piped and attached with another bit of liquid chocolate. 

Showpieces make great table centerpieces for special events and it will last for a while depending on temperature and humidity. You could also top a wedding cake with a small chocolate sculpture or use the individual components as decorations down the side. 

Chocolate is one of those mediums with endless possibilities for creativity. In some way or another, you can make anything out of chocolate and this sculpture just barely scratches the surface of what it can do. It's sweet, decorative and makes the whole room smell like chocolate-y goodness.

Red Poppy Wedding Cake

Back in August I started work on a dummy (styrofoam) cake with the intention of building it in layers to practice some new techniques I've been wanting to try. It started out with lots of plain white ruffles:

And then those ruffles got a paint job, making them pop out more against the white cake and look a little bit less like petals and a little bit more like strings or frills.

And now, they've grown into bright and beautiful poppies. Straight outta The Wizard of Oz ya'll.

Styrofoam cake for the win. I loved seeing how many different cakes I could stretch out of one! Poppies are one of my favorite flowers and I did them in a slightly abstract style, purposefully leaving brush strokes for a painted look.

I think I might like it without the leaves even better:

Same design, three really different ways. Which is your favorite?