The Best Christmas Gift of all - Cake!

Since Christmas is the time of giving, and I got a few new cookery books and gadgets for Christmas, what better gift to give back than a Gift Cake!
This cake is a fusion between Lorraine Pascale's "Let them eat cake" Cake and the Great British Bake-Off's Jewel Box Cake. When Sam took to the look of this cake in the recent GBBO book, I was excited, as I'd seen chocolate ribbons in several places, and was itching to try out some modelling chocolate of my own. Since fresh raspberries are sadly out of season at the moment, I thought white chocolate Maltesers would make a fabulous alternative. They seem to be quite hard to come by in this country (I can't imagine why, since they're just as delicious as the milk chocolate version!). But I've seen them in bulk on Amazon and eBay, and as ever, Ocado is a great source for niche grocery requirements!
For the sponge part, we used the white chocolate sponge recipe from the Jewel Box Cake, and since Sam is now a seasoned sponge maker, he wanted to contribute to this recipe in the area where he's had the most experience - beating butter, stirring up the ingredients and then helping to lick the bowl at the end!

This sponge mixture differs from others in that it is flavoured with melted white chocolate. We had some white chocolate Toblerone lying around on account of it being Christmas, and I highly recommend this addition to the recipe if you can get your hands on it!
We used a 30 cm circular cake tin instead of a square one, and the measurements for the cake mix were just fine. I then took over from Sam at the point to do the decorating.
First step is to cover the cake with buttercream:


I'd previously made the chocolate decorations before we got started on the cake following the instructions on the Jewel Box Cake. Working with modelling chocolate was surprisingly easy. After adding the liquid glucose to the melted chocolate, it thickened up fairly quickly, but I left it for the three hours as it suggested. Afterwards, the chocolate seemed a little like it was going to crack, but it was soft and pliable and rolled out well. (Note in the background, I'm using one of my new Christmas presents - a silicone pastry mat with measurements at the side to help make my chocolate pieces a more accurate size!)

Then I left them in the fridge to firm up while the cake was cooking, so they would be ready to use by the time the cake came out.
On a side issue - concerning chocolate vs icing decorations, I would like to make a comment here that I think I totally favour chocolate. Firstly, as it contains fat, it was much less sticky and therefore easier to roll out than icing. It rolled out really easily between two sheets of greaseproof paper, and didn't require any dusting with icing sugar. Secondly, since chocolate isn't anywhere near as sickly sweet as the overly sugary fondant icing, and of course it retained all the tasty cocoa flavour, the taste was infinitely better when you come to pick the decorations off the cake to eat with your slice.
Back to the decorating, first the two largest "ribbons" were laid across the cake and trimmed:

Then we started adding the little balls of white chocolate-y malty goodness to cover the top:

                   Sam helped with this too! The balls stick quite well along the top, but I think you'd need a thicker layer of buttercream if you wanted to put them along the sides as well. Instead we just decorated the edge with chocolate stars.

Making the final arrangements of the ribbons:

 

The finished product looked and tasted great!

Any fellow bakers out there that want to try this or have questions, or those that have tried similar cakes and want to share their experiences, I welcome any comments, please send me your photos or links to your blogs too

Happy New Year!