Realistic Chocolate Wood Log
Introduction: Realistic Chocolate Wood Log
Come the holiday season I often looked for a decent log mould that I could use to make cakes in. I couldn't find anything good looking enough so I made one. 4 actually.
There are two ways you can achieve this. You can either go the cheap one shot way by making a gelatin mould or invest a bit more on silicon for a long lasting reusable mold.
Gelatin molds tend to give a matte finish that looks really cool as wood alternative but since it's quite moist it will also make the fat of the chocolate crystallize in a way that leaves white grainy spots. It looks kinda cool but you won't see those in any decent chocolate workshop.
Here is how you can make a real wood looking chocolate shell to create your best cake in.
Supplies
For the Gelatin way :
* Gelatin (a lot of it)
* Or agar if you want vegetarian molds (yeah no, that's not a thing)
* Sugar
* A container barely bigger than your log
* Some nails and wooden beams or sticks (small ones, 1.5x1.5cm or 1/2in think)
For the silicon way :
* Food grade silicon (2 part silicon).
* some release agent (or mold release). I used petroleum
For both projects :
* Wood log - You can use different log styles, I tried whole log and quarter logs, they both give different but amazing results
* Varnish
Step 1: Log Selection
The first step is to chose the style you want go give to your cake. That would depend on the log you choose as a model. Try to chose a quite "even" log as branches or rough patches might prove more difficult to unmold.
Now you need to select the side of the wood you want to be showing. Since this is a cake it will have to rest on a side. This side will be where you create your cake from. It means that it needs to be wide enough to unmould the chocolate shell and the wood log once it's hard.
For the whole log, it means creating a flat surface that the cake will rest upon. For that I used a reciprocating saw but any saw would do. 515
The best would be to have access to a jointer to create a perfectly flat surface but I don't have any.
Please be careful, those fingers of yours might still prove useful.
Step 2: Log Preparation
You need to thoroughly wash the wood. Brush it and make sure that no loose bit might come off afterwards or that there are bugs or saw dust in the cracks.
With the quarter log I had to use a torch to burn some wood fibers that would stick out. Again, you want to have a rather smooth surface.Let it dry before applying a few coats of varnish. you can use shellac or oils, those would be food grade, but I went with classic Polyurethane varnish because it's faster and you won't bite into the (real) wood anyway.
The goal of this vanish coat is to seal the wood, preventing gelatin or silicon to bond with the wood.
Step 3: Gelatin Mold
When making a gelatin mold, you will use a container that will hold the gelatin while it sets with your log just beneath the surface. To be able to do so, you log will have to rest at the surface of your container and the gelatin will need to fill all your container space.
Once you have a flat surface on your log, you will nail some wood sticks to it and set it upside down in your container.
I'm sorry I don't have a picture of this step, so I created these award winning pictures instead. Photoshop king here, I know.
The first step is to determine how much gelatin you need to use.
For that you need to know the amount of water that will be used inside de container. The best way to do so is to put your nailed log into its container with the wooden beams resting across the top of the container.
* Fill the container with water, making sure that the log doesn't float on top. You can put some weight on it to keep it submerged. Be creative here ;)
* You can now remove the log and weigh the water. That would give you the volume of gelatin that you need to fill the container with.
* To know how much dry gelatin you need to use, we could go into details on what kind of gelatin and whatnot but you can count on a a small recipe to give you a strong gel.
* Divide the weight of water by 2 that will give you the weight of water that you need to boil.
* Once boiling remove from the stove and add the same amount of sugar. stir to dissolve
* Add half of this weight in gelatin. That's a lot. Bloom it beforehand in cold water and stir to dissolve. 254