Practice Cake, or, I Really Am That Good (part three: decorating the second cake)

SO, now we're in the home stretch! We've determined that I can in fact make chocolate curls, which excites the pants off me (not literally. That would be awkward), so now I wanted to see what else I could do.

I decided that glueing white chocolate slabs around the sides of the cake and filling it with M&Ms would look pretty good and kind of different and funky. And I was right.

First up I melted the white chocolate in a double boiler, then I spread two rows of it on gladwrap and left it to dry on the bench.

But, being impatient, I decided to pull a frozen baking tray out of the freezer (I had put two in there, unsure as to how many I would need for my chocolate curls) and slid the gladwrap onto it to speed things up. And then I put it in the freezer to speed it up more. How unlike me...
Next, I cut the chocolate into unevenly-sized slabs with my trusty metal paint scraper. This worked well because I took the chocolate out of the freezer while it was still ever so slightly pliable. Once cut, I peeled the slabs off the gladwrap, popped them back on the cold tray and put them back in the freezer to finish setting. When it came to applying them, I cut some of the bigger ones in half across the middle to get two shorter pieces that could be turned on their sides, and also trimmed the bottoms so they'd sit flat.
Then, I applied another layer of ganache to the cake (oh yeah. I did that for the previous cake too but I forgot to mention it, and now I CBF editing the post) and glued the white chocolate slabs onto the sides of the cake using more ganache.

The next step was to pour a bag of M&Ms over the cake and press them down gently to make them stick. I usedthe mixed ones, which I suspect improves the overall look because the randommness of M&M sizes goes with the randomness of the chocolate height around the edge. One normal bag is just enough. I only ate two of them. Are you proud? :)

Finally, I tied a ribbon around the cake, which was a little challenging, so I ended up sticking a pin through the knot to hold it taught whilst I tied the bow, and then pulled the pin back out.

So there you have it. I Really Am That Good. And I bet your fridge isn't filled with as much deliciousness as mine is, either.