White marquise wedding cake

Method

This exciting shiny white chocolate topping adds a glamorous touch to light sponges and rich fruit cakes. It's great for modeling into flowers and fancy shapes too. Here's how to make it:

For the Chocolate Plastique
1. Make the sugar syrup by placing the water and sugar together in a pan and heating until the sugar has dissolved. Increase the heat and bring to a boil for one minute, until the mixture is syrupy. Leave to cool.

2. Melt the white chocolate in a bowl over a saucepan of simmering water.

3. Mix the glucose syrup and sugar syrup together before adding the melted chocolate and cocoa butter. Mix well together and then leave to cool. After about 12 hours the mixture will be malleable and ready to use for special occasion cakes and decorations.

For the White Marquise Wedding Cake
1. Have three cakes in various sizes. Eric uses different flavours for each layer, lemon, chocolate and a traditional fruit cake.

2. Dust your work surface with icing sugar and roll out the plastique to about 3-5mm thick. You could try using a textured rolling pin, which would give an unusual patterned finish to the cakes. Cut out shapes to fit the exact size of the cake.

3. Brush the sponge cakes with a little jam, so that the icing sticks to its surface and sides. There's no need to do this with the fruit cake though. 

4.Cover each of the three cakes with the plastique. You can use creamy ganache as a smooth coating for the top of the cakes, which is made by melting the chocolate and cream together.

For the decorations
Use a selection of tasteful add-ons made from moulding the plastique into flowers, leaves or fancy shapes. Use a little melted chocolate to stick them in place.

 Fresh fruit also looks impressive as a decoration. Take care when using fruit because sometimes it has a tendency to streak the white chocolate with their juices. Stand back and admire your achievement!