Wine Bottle Cake

As Rita Mae Brown once said, "The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four Americans are suffering from some form of mental illness. Think of your three best friends. If they're okay, then it's you."

Last week was Boss's Day and there were plans to take the boss out to lunch - so I offered to make a chocolate cake.  Simple enough, right?  Well somewhere along the line, the classic chocolate cake I had in mind mutated into a cake that looked like a wine bottle...

Clearly, I am insane and not only am I insane - I am so far gone that I believe that my behavior is normal.

 The cake board for the 'wine crate'.

 The base cake board covered in fondant and glazed with gel color thinned with vodka.

 The cake board, and the pieces of cut out cake crumb coated with chocolate ganache. 

 The cake as 'wine crate'.

  The 'bottle', covered in green fondant before the overglaze of dark green and navy blue.

 The wine crate and bottle... 

 The finished cake with edible label and white chocolate shaved 'straw'. 

In any case, it all worked out in the end and the cake turned out pretty good overall.

For those of you who asked me "how" I made the cake and "how to make" your own wine bottle cake, it really isn't too difficult if you get your mise en place set up ahead of time..

I am assuming that if you are going to attempt this type of cake, that you don't need to be told that you need baked cake, fondant, ganache or buttercream and all of the tools and food colors to play with food.

A great resource for making novelty cakes is the book and blog by Confetti Cakes:

Blog:  http://confetticakes.blogspot.com/

Confetti Cakes Book on Amazon.com