American Baker in Germany

 I have a friend who always wants a dragon cake for her birthday. So, I try to make something new every year. Here are a few I've made in the past: But this year I wanted to do something different.  First I melted and tempered some white chocolate. And placed it in a piping bag. Then I got a couple of skewers. And piped some chocolate wings. I also piped some horns and small little horns out of white chocolate. I have one layer each of vegan chocolate cake of 6-inch, 5-inch and 4-inch. The 6-inch and 4-inch layers I cut in half. And I cut a wedge out of the 5-inch cake. And I set up the cake like this. The center of the dragon is the 6-inch layer. The legs on either side is the 4-inch cake. Then the 5-inch layer is cut into a wedge for the head and strips for the neck, tail and front legs. I stuck the cake down with Swiss meringue buttercream. Then I rounded the edges and made the connections to other cake layers more seamless. Loving it so far. Then I frosted the cake with wh...

 Let's face it. Chocolate can be finicky. Anyone who has ever had chocolate seize on them can attest to this. *photo credit: food52.com Now, I don't want to talk about what to do if chocolate seizes. We'll save that for another day. But today I want to discuss how to prevent chocolate from seizing or burning when melting it and how to get it to set up again after it's been melted, also known as tempering. Now, chocolate melts fairly easily. But it doesn't need very high temperatures. It melts by agitation. So, what you want to do when melting chocolate is to apply low heat and stir often. That means that it is easiest to melt chocolate when it is in small pieces. Begin by chopping your bars of chocolate into small pieces. I prefer melting chocolate in a microwave. If you want to melt it over the stove, however, please use a double boiler (also known as bain marie). Melting it directly in a pot over the heat, will be too hot and will likely burn the chocolate. If you...