Chocolate Cake with Feathers!

      One of my creepier attributes is that I have an uncanny memory for people and places.The main thing is their  face. If I have met you once, ten years ago for five minutes at a college party and you tell me you're studying Philosophy and dating a guy named Javier, I will see you ten years later at the place I work, wondering how that Philosophy degree worked out and if you're married to Javier... Another thing I always tend to remember is food allergies and preferences. Perhaps it comes from working with food for so long, but if someone has a slight allergy to beets and tells me they get itchy from them, I will always remember, and watch them carefully at a dinner party to see if they go for the beet chutney, silently worrying they'll get an unsightly rash. What would probably be more useful  is if I was able to remember everything on my Occupational Therapy  exams, or what I had for breakfast each morning. Alas, these handy real world attributes are not one of my strong suits, and I guess I just chock it up to the personality traits of an artsy fartsy type...

Anywho, I think about my strange talent for odd facts about people when I think about a cake I made for my adorable and delightful friend Rachel. In passing one day she  mentioned with great gusto that she loved, LOVED feathers, and when I was designing a surprise cake for her going away party, something elegant yet quirky and beautiful was what I thought summed up my little friend, and I instantly thought of putting  feathers on the cake. Now, like all half-thought ideas, I thought It'd be a cinch to get some items that would work for the picture I had in my head, and while of course I wasn't going to use real feathers, fake ones shed an awful lot, and no one wants synthetic feather in their cake.    I stuck them intermittently in the cake,  and made blue stars and yellow polka dots with Wilton brand sparkle pens. I got the faux feathers at a craft store, and brushed them with a fine brush to get the molting under control, and luckily I have a ton left for various art projects! The cake itself was a double layer chocolate cake with a chocolate ganache.

 I was going to top it off by wrapping the body of the cake with a lime-green fur mini-boa I found at the craft store, but that would make the cake taste more like a muppet than the delicious chocolate rich flavor I was shooting for, so I refrained. It turned out great,  and I am  looking forward to making many cakes in the future inspired by the fabulous people I know!