Mulan and Mushu birthday cake

Not a quick one. But birthdays do come up, regularly, I’d like to add. And so there is need for cakes. And this time it had to be Mulan and Mushu. It’s a simple vanilla cake with a chocolate ganache and a vanilla butter cream on top. Yummy!

Ingredients:

• dark chocolate
• cream
• eggs
• butter
• milk
• flour
• sugar
• salt
• baking powder
• vanilla paste
• icing sugar
• food coloring
• fondant
• chocolate rocks
• candy melts

Method:

1. a couple of days in advance I prepared the decorations out of fondant; I tried to sculpt the head of the great dragon and the blossoms from the film; and I prepared the “flames” and the outline of Mushu with candy melts and dark chocolate;
2. the day before the party I prepared the chocolate ganache, so that it had time to cool down to room temperature; I made 1,5 batches, 900g of chocolate and 450g of cream, I melted the chocolate with the cream in the microwave, using 1 minute blasts and stirring for 30 secs in between;
3. I also prepared the cake (the usual cupcake recipe; double batch though);
4. the day of the party I stuffed the cake with the ganache, prepared the butter cream, beating first the butter, then adding the icing sugar in cups, and the color, the milk and the vanilla paste;
5. I finished the cake adding all the decorations and creating a path to the top of the cake with the chocolate rocks.