Lovebirds

For my parents' anniversary. The birdhouse is made of stacked cake covered in frosting. The roof shingles are made from melted chocolate, as are the birds (both bluebirds, for the record.) The birds were the biggest challenge for this cake: basically, to make a smooth surface, you have to reverse-layer the chocolate onto wax paper (example, on the male bluebird: first light blue, then brown, then white,) making sure everything overlaps at some point so that it sticks together. To color the chocolate, I basically spent a lot of time with the doubleboiler.

The cake also tried to fall over repeatedly (Lesson of the day: if you cake is multiple layers, and taller than it is wide, You Will Have Problems), but that's another story.