A few weeks ago, I was contacted by Zoopa (the social club in our Zoology Department) committee about a cake. They were hosting a fundraising auction and, because I won both judges and people's choice award at this years and last years Bake Off, they wanted me to bake a cake for it.
Whenever I get an unrestrained chance to bake a cake for the masses, the thought of, "Yay! I can do something I've been wanting to for ages," quickly turns to, "Holy crap. What am I going to do?" The choice is overwhelming. Especially given that it needed to appeal to all genders and a range of demographics with a single thing in common: Zoology. I toyed with several novelty cake ideas that were either animal or science based. In the end, I went with something that was just going to taste nice.
The cake was an 8" mudcake, layered and coated with a dark chocolate ganache.
I had to send my sister on a cake board run for the cake, so while I was waiting I started making the "sides" of the box. It was not my original intention to make them separately, but it did help get them a bit neater.
The cake is designed to look like a box of truffles. I gave it brown/chocolate stripes to make it slightly more gender neutral, then swirled with black fondant piping.
I wanted the cake to have a monogram logo. Ordinarily I would have used the name of the recipient for the purpose, but as the cake wasn't for anyone in particular I gave it a "C" for Cakecrumbs.
The corners of the box are embellished with twisted white fondant piping.
I didn't have time to make a whole range of truffles myself, so I went with the next best thing: Ferrero.
I had to try super hard to resist nomming them myself.
The cake raised $35 at the auction. That's not even cost price, but it was the highest grossing item in the auction. Most items crawled in $1 increments towards a final price of little more. This cake started at $5 and quickly progressed in $5 increments from there, so that was really flattering.
In spite of the smaller-than-expected turn out, it was a fun night with hilarious auctioneers. Went spent the night laughing, eating pizza, and many score some really awesome things for a bargain price. The auction raised a total of $600 for the social committee.
Cakecrumbs 
This is beautiful!
Thank you. ♥
A very impressive and professional looking cake box. Was great to see it get the highest bid of the night too. I got a little worried when the guy first held up the box and it almost slipped out of his hands. 😐
Haha, I would have cracked up laughing if he dropped it. Probably would have been the only one…
I would have been in shock. And scared about what you were thinking. =P He almost dropped a few things now that I think about it.
Congrats on scoring highest 🙂 I might make something like this for my sister’s bday – she’s a chocolate sort of girl all the way. Do you think a mudcake cupcake thing might work?
Thanks. 😀
Not sure what you mean exactly. Like cupcakes instead of truffles, or…?
Ooh I meant, cupcakes/muffins instead of cake, and then truffles on top of those. Solike mini versions of this. Or so you think a mudcupcake is impossible?
Definitely! If you’re planning on having the fondant “box” around them, you could make a large cake and cut rounds out of that to get the straight sides.
(Sorry about the previous comment, was logged into the wrong account)
What’s a mud cake?
A mud cake is, as far as I know it, a moist chocolate cake. They’re usually dark chocolate.