Everything that could go wrong, went wrong. But I managed to save it

Everything that could go wrong went wrong on Friday. I had an exam which I thought I did alright but on hindsight, reflecting on what went wrong with all my attempts on Friday, maybe I just didn't get the 80% needed to pass the exam (will find out tomorrow). I thought class was going to finish on time, if not earlier so I can rush home to make the cake for P's birthday, but class wasn't finished until 1 1/2 hrs later. A series of events happened but it's too tedious to type out the sequence of events but let's just say that there was blackout at around midnight so hence more delays and ended up with me with a penlight torch between my teeth while washing the chocolate coated dishes. And this was JUST THE CAKE BASE. Lucky for me, I had the chocolate paste made in advance so the roses came through easily on Sunday morning (the day of the party). Recipe is per the chocolate cupcakes in my previous post but in the 160 degrees Celcius oven for 1 1/2 hours.

Chocolate paste

Ingredients:
400gm milk chocolate
50ml glucose syrup
25ml water

Method:

1. Melt chocolate in a non stick saucepan / milk saucepan. to 40 degrees Celcius.
2. Stir melted chocolate until all the chocolate is melted.
3. Slightly warm the glucose syrup.
4. Pour the glucose syrup into the chocolate and stir rapidly until all is combined. When the glucose syrup is added, the whole mixture will start to come together pretty fast.
5. Knead until it is just combined and put it into the fridge for a few hours.
6. Once harden, take out of fridge and put it through a pasta machine for smoother and faster results. Otherwise you can always take the hard way and use the rolling pin (I used the latter when my pasta machine broke down due to inadequate maintainance and oiling of my equipment - so I'm on a lookout to purchase new kitchenaid pasta rollers)
7. When needed to make the roses, knead a small portion of the paste and make a few cone shapes for the base of the roses.
8. From the paste, take out another small portion and knead until pliable. Roll out a sausage strip of chocolate paste to 1.5cm thick in diameter. Cut into 1 cm rounds.
9. Place rounds of paste between two plastic sheets and with the pads of your thumb, flatten the paste for the petals.
10. Layer the cone with the petals.
11. Allow it to set for a few hours before assembling the spray of flowers. Use ganash to stick and position the flowers onto the cake if necessary.