Chess Birthday Cake

My son had really become interested in chess just before his 7th birthday so I decided to make him a chess board birthday cake. MADNESS!!!! The first thing was to find a mould for the chess pieces which were going to be made out of white and milk chocolate! I found one quite quickly on Ebay, but I would have to chocolate 'glue' the pieces together as the mould was a half piece one. 

I set about it about 2 weeks before his birthday and melted the chocolate the spooned it into the moulds and to speed up the setting I simply put the mould with chocolate in the freezer. This worked really well and within 3 days (evening only as he did not know what I was doing!) I had enough half moulds to make a complete chess set. 

 Along the journey several pieces broke so it was as well that I had made a few extra! 'Glueing' the chocolate halves together was quite tricky and required a fair bit of chocolate shaving to get the edges smoothish.

 But I think it all worked quite well:

 For the actual cake I made a maderia sponge or 2! I used a total of 12 eggs for this reciepe!!!! Then when they were done I cut them and fitted them together so that they were large enough to contain my chess pieces.

 I got some ready to roll icing from Tesco, just their own brand as this was recommended by a cake maker friend!

 I also brought some chocolate flavoured icing which I rolled out and cut into 1 1/2" squares (roughly...I am very mush a do it by eye type of girl!)

 Generally it worked quite well again! I stuck the chocolate icing to the cake with water! Then I had to outline the board with more icing!

Writing on the cake is always quite nerve- wracking.... and I am not particularly good at it!

And then putting all the pieces on the board.

I actually managed to keep this a secret from my son the whole time and even on his birthday he did not notice the cake until his brother pointed it out to him.....we have far too many chess boards on all surfaces in our house!