chess cake with handmade chocolate chess pieces

My friends Helen and Irene have a friend named Kristina, who asked me to make a birthday cake for her little boy several months ago. He really loves pineapple, and he loves to play chess. So we decided on a vanilla cake filled with pineapple and freshly whipped cream, topped with chocolate chess pieces!

I made the chocolate chess pieces in advance, and used this chess mold to shape my pieces with. First I melted my dark chocolate in a double boiler, and filled the cavities of the mold. After letting it harden in the fridge, I was able to easily pop the pieces out.

Then I once again filled the cavities of the mold, and while the chocolate was still warm I pressed in the corresponding other half of each piece. Then I let it harden in the fridge again, popped them out, and used a paring knife to trim any excess chocolate from the pieces.

And then I repeated the process with white chocolate.

For the cake, I used my favorite vanilla cake recipe (you can find it in m book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book!) Since I was making a 10-inch cake, I make 1.5 batches of batter, and baked it in two 10-inch round cake pans. After the cake had baked and cooled, I sliced each cake in half horizontally, giving me four cake layers.

Next, I filled each layer with freshly whipped cream and chopped pineapple chunks that had been well drained.

Once all of the layers were assembled, I covered the top and sides of the cake with whipped buttercream, smoothed it out with an offset spatula, let it chill in the fridge, and then repeated the process with a second coat of frosting.

With the last coat of frosting, I smoothed it out as best as I could, before piping alternating beads of white and brown frosting along the bottom border of the cake.

Finally, it was time to top the cake with my handmade chocolate chess pieces! I alternated with the dark chocolate and white chocolate pieces, and used a little bit of buttercream on the bottom of each piece to hold them in place.



I loved the final look of the cake! The chocolate chess pieces created quite a dramatic effect!

The final touch was adding a little fondant plaque with a birthday message for the birthday boy! For this I rolled out white fondant, and then used a plaque cookie cutter from Cookie Cutter Kingdom to cut out my shape, before using an edible food marker to write the birthday message.

Happy Birthday Noah! Hope you loved your cake!