Chess Tournament Cake

As promised, I am updating the blog with the chess cake! I had the privilege of making a cake for an awesome school chess team in Philadelphia. A friend asked me to make a cake for the team that her boyfriend, another friend of mine, is the coach of. The team was doing really well this year and was going to be in a tournament that was coming up. She wanted to do something really special for the team and asked me to make a chess board for them. After brainstorming some ideas with my fiance, we came up with the idea to make a chess board with the final move; checkmate!

I started the cake by making a 1 foot by t foot vanilla cake that I covered in some homemade chocolate buttercream. This was one of the first times I used this chocolate buttercream recipe. I was a little disappointed because no matter what I tried it would not smooth out on top of the cake, but it ended up looking pretty nice ant a little like a wooden board. For the next hour or so I cut one inch squares of white and black fondant which I laid on top of the cake. My fiance and I played a game of chess together so that we could finish the end of the cake. When we saw how our game of chess ended we drew a picture of where all of the pieces were. I used that drawing to make a bunch of white and black pieces out of fondant. I placed each of the pieces on the cake and held them in with toothpicks.

The cake came out pretty nicely. Let me know what you think! :)