I was paging through the Sunday Sweets on Cakewrecks, looking at many cakes which are technically gorgeous but rarely raise my creative pulse. I can’t draw, so hand painting a cake to look like a Wedgwood canister is right out. I get a little twee-d out at too much pink (especially at this time of year). There are creations so enormous and ambitious that I think the initial idea (cake!) has been forgotten. And so many of these cakes employ fondant, which usually tastes like sugary cardboard (home-made fondant is better… but making fondant is usually a step farther than I feel like going on a normal day).

And then I saw this:

It’s a cake. And I immediately wanted to make it. 

I mean, look at this:

And the miracle of it is… with sufficient practice, I think I could. Here’s the video tutorial, from Cake Style.

The beauty part? There’s no fondant, just buttercream frosting and colored molding chocolate. I’ve never tried making, let alone working with, molding chocolate. And I am suddenly overwhelmed with a desire (not yet a burning desire, but a fairly distracting one) to make molding chocolate, make this four-layered cake, frost it with buttercream (not pink), and make this rose happen.

It’s the process. I have said before that I get captivated by process; I don’t necessarily want to do something more than once, once I get it down. Of course I felt that way about sugar-molding too, when I saw some of that on display. Thank God I lacked a culinary blowtorch, or they’d likely be unsticking me from the kitchen ceiling even now.

If I succumb to the allure of this cake I will document it, and return with notes. I’m kind of hoping I don’t, because once a cake is made it must be eaten, and I’m trying to not eat cake for a little while. But if anyone out there needs a rose cake and is willing to take this one off my hands…