Walking Dead.

It was actually Rick's hat but he pulled the Sheriff badge off and gave it to his son.

Rick: "Since you're in the club now you get to wear the hat."

To make this cake you will need a double quantity of my rich chocolate cake, baked in 4 8" tins

and leveled.

If you just use something that is a good height and rest your knife on it and cut across it

makes it easy to do that.

I'll link you to the video of how to make that cake and I'll put all the details of

everything you need for this cake on the howtocookthat.net website, there is a link just below.

You will also find the template for carving the cake there and the recipe for my buttercream.

For Carl's hat I am using a double batch of basic buttercream mixed with some melted dark

chocolate.

This gives it a beautiful flavour but it also helps make the frosting a little bit firmer

so it's easier to work with.

Tape four pieces of paper together then fold that in half along the join, and then in half

again the other way.

Now take one side and bring it across to line up with the other side and then fold that

down pushing it nice and flat.

Place your template piece on the top, lining it up with the point.

Then simply cut along the line using some sharp scissors.

Once you're done unfold it and this is the size of the rim of the hat.

So choose a cake board that allows for that size cake with a bit of spare room around

it.

Now put a little bit of frosting on the board to stop the cake slipping and add your first

cake.

Now you want to brush that with simple syrup, this helps keep the cake moist when we carve

it.

Smother the top of the cake in our delicious chocolate frosting.

And then repeat that stacking up the other three cakes on top.

Place the side of cake template in front of the cake and line up the straight edge with

one side of the stack.

Follow the line and cut off the top of the cake.

Turn the cake 90 degrees so you can see the front and place the front template next to

the cake.

Cut off a triangle off one side just following the line there.

Then cut a little wedge from the middle on the angle shown and then a triangle from the

other side.

That gives us a pretty nice basic shape across the top but the corners make the hat still

look a little bit box shaped.

Take your knife and shave off a little at a time to round out those corners of the hat.

That looks good.

Now if you look at the main template you'll see the rim isn't actually sitting flat, it

starts up a bit and comes down flat towards the edge.

Take your rim template and fold it up again and then just cut off a piece from the middle,

so that when you unfold it you can place it over the cake to see where that sits.

I suggest that you draw yourself a little guide line so you know where it is.

Take the cake that we cut off the top of the hat before when we were doing the side and

cut that in half.

And then use your knife to cut out a curve so that it fits snugly against the body of

the hat.

Now use a finely serrated knife to slope that down from the where it joins the hat to the

cake board.

For each side of the hat use the triangle piece that we cut off.

We don't want the sides to come as far out from the hat as the front and back do because

the sides of the hat curl up.

So trim it off to the same height as the others and down on a slightly sharper slope.

Then cover the whole thing in chocolate buttercream smoothing the slope down the the board and

neatening it up.

To make the leather, take some white fondant and cut it into cubes and some dark chocolate.

Warm the fondant in the microwave until it is soft like this.

Then melt the chocolate in the microwave.

And then put both of those into a mixer bowl and using a dough hook mix them together and

you'll need to add about one tablespoon of water as it mixes.

You can do this by hand but as you can see it is quite messy so it's easier to do in

a mixer.

Now because the chocolate in this will set, you have to work with this quite quickly while

it is still warm.

So if you are new to cake decorating I suggest you just use brown fondant - but this tastes

much better.

You can't really use modeling chocolate because it doesn't dry out so it's not going to hold

the shape of the rim of the hat

Roll it out your chocolate fondant on a silicone mat.

It needs to be quite a bit bigger than the rim template because the fondant has to go

up and over the middle part of the hat of course, it's not just flat.

Carefully lift it up and place it over the cake smoothing it down.

I like the look of this chocolate fondant that we've made because it looks a bit rough

like old leather.

If you want perfectly smooth fondant that's easier to work with then definitely just use

brown food colouring in your fondant but I'm quite happy with how this turned out.

It was just an experiment and I think it's worked quite well.

Place the rim template over the top, cut all the way around the edge of the template.

Then remove the excess fondant.

Now if you look at the guide, the hat curls up on the side and it has a chunk missing

on one side as well.

Cut out a little triangle for our missing bit.

Then loosen underneath the rim on the sides.

Slide some baking paper underneath and then bend it up at the side.

And then use something like paper towel to support it in place.

Then using the palms of your hands indent the sides of the hat in the centre just below

the peak.

And then shape it a bit more around where the rim joins the hat so it is clear where

that cord will sit.

For the hole where the sheriff badge used to be, roll a little ball of black and squash

it flat using your finger.

And then use a straw to cut the middle out of it.

Brush it with silver luster dust using a paint brush and then add it into place on the cake

and then use the paintbrush to gently push it off the straw.

Now take a cake pop stick and push it into the centre to make a hole.

For the cord I'm using a fondant extruder, you can roll a long snake by hand but you

can get these fondant extruders pretty cheaply now days and they save a lot of time.

Add one layer of cord around the hat, just joining at the back.

Then add another layer on top of that criss-crossing the left-over bit across at the front and

leaving some excess hanging down.

Now make an oval of black, cut it to flatten it on one side and push it over the join in

the centre.

roll ball of black, flatten it so it looks a bit like a bead and then indent it all the

way around with a knife.

Lift the cord off the hat using backing paper and add the bead to the end.

Repeat that process so you have two beads on each cord.

Take some gold luster dust mixed with lemon juice or alcohol and paint it over the black.

Now the reason we didn't just dust it on like we did with the silver is because we would

of ended up with gold on the leather part while we were putting the cord around the

hat.

To cover the cake board take some plain biscuits and process them to make sand.

After a few hours, the chocolate fondant will be completely cold and it will be firm so

you can remove the supports.

If you were using normal fondant for this you'd need to wait overnight.

Spread left over frosting on the board and then cover the whole thing in the biscuit

crumbs.

To make the sheriff's badge find a toy one, put blue tac on the back and push it down

firmly onto something flat.

Put a cookie cutter around it and fill that with reusable food grade molding gel.

This stuff is awesome, you can just re-melt it and re-use it and remelt it and make all

sorts of molds with it.

Once it is set you have your mold.

Pour the chocolate on top and tap it down to get rid of any air bubbles in the chocolate.

And then scrape it across the top so that you can see the edges of the badge, this is

so thin I think it's going to break as we take it out, but we can just fix it up later.

If you can find a chunkier toy badge then get one of those instead.

Once the chocolate is set, tip it out, and yes as I suspected it is breaking on the edges

as we get it out.

Just line up all those broken pieces and use a little bit of melted chocolate to add them

back on.

Brush the whole badge with gold luster dust and I know this is not exactly the same as

Rick's one but given that replicas were selling for $90 I didn't want to buy one just to make

a mold out of it.

Scoop up a little mound of 'sand' and place the badge over the top.

Cut the cake to reveal the beautiful rich moist chocolate cake.

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Make it a great week and I'll see you on Friday