Chocolate Butterfly Tutorial

Guess what? I finally bought myself a camera after years of sponging off my housemate!

To celebrate the fact that it can record HD videos, I decided to make a chocolate butterfly tutorial. I have actually made a template for it in a previous post (Butterfly Chocolate Tart) but I figured this time I’d actually do a tutorial on it as well! You can probably tell I am quite the amateur (half the video was out of focus… oops!) but hopefully they get better as I go along.

The chocolate cakes were tasty – soft on the inside with a slightly crunchy texture on the outside. The addition ganache made everything taste even better – it always does!

Recipe as follows:

Mini Butterfly Chocolate Cakes

Chocolate Sponge Cake

Ingredients (makes 6 small cakes)

1 egg
1/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup self raising flour
1 tablespoon cocoa powder
1/4 cup butter, melted
Cooking spray

Method

1. Preheat oven to 160°C (fan-forced).
2. Grease baking tin with cooking spray.
3. Whisk egg and sugar together until light in colour and thickened in texture (3-5 minutes).
4. Fold in flour and cocoa powder.
5. Pour in butter and fold until incorporated.
6. Place mixture into a piping bag and pipe into cupcake pan or mini bundt tins.
7. Bake for 10-15 minutes or until cakes spring back when pressed.

Chocolate Ganache

Ingredients

30g dark chocolate
50ml cream

Method

1. Place chocolate and cream in a microwave safe bowl and microwave for 20 seconds.
2. Remove from microwave and stir. Repeat step 1 until mixture is smooth and shiny.

Chocolate Butterfly

For this project, you will need a Butterfly Template (click on link to acquire).

Tips on how to melt chocolate easily also available if required.

Video tutorial link at the top of this page.

Assembly

1. Pour ganache over chocolate cakes.
2. Place completed butterfly on cake.

Photography

Above is my photography set up for this project. It was a frantic race against the sunset and I have to say the good news about that is that I’m forced to take a photograph – any photograph – instead of wasting half an hour rearranging various things. The background is a very well worn baking sheet, which you will all be familiar with by now. The light is coming in from the right hand side of the photograph.

Settings

Lens: 60mm 2.8f
ISO: 100
f: 2.8
Photo editing: Lightroom 4

I’m actually getting very sick of my props but I just have not had the time to go and acquire more!

Am hoping to make more video tutorials from now on so if you are interested in that sort of a thing, subscribe to my YouTube channel. I’m pretty excited about it all.