Surprise Minion D.I.Y Party & Decadent Nutella and Chocolate Drizzle Cake

Hi ho! Kermit the frog here, no, wait.
Oh right, blogging in the real world about minions and cake. Silly Rabbit Kiki...
Uhm, yeah, so I have had a very busy and eventful 4 days. That's why no blogging since last week. The picture above is part of the why, I had to plan a minion surprise party for my mom's 67th and I created this Decadent, rich, chocolate whipped Nutella filling, drizzle cake for the occasion. It was a lovely success, although a total girdle buster and I am happy to report was enjoyed by all. It is a four layer monstrosity of a cake with all these wonderful chocolatey layers of spoiling you goodness, only problem is that you gotta split a piece cuz it is way intense. A friend of the family scarfed the whole piece in one sitting, I really do not know how she managed it. I along with the rest of the fam broke it into three sittings because I have a notorious birds appetite but also, it was way more chocolate seriousness than I have ever eaten. I was going to make a cute minion cake to go along with the theme but upon sneaky recon, turns out mom once swooned for a chocolate German cake with serious drizzle. I decided to give it a whirl, it's been since pastry school that I played with ganache drip on desserts. It's messy, as chocolate always is but I was uber happy with the results and we have decided to add it to the roster of cakes that we will be selling when we open in the next few weeks. Yes, we are opening our small home-based business veeeeewry soon you rascowie wrabbits (Elmer Fudd voice on!).
Yeah, I am super psyched, feeling the time-crunch, financial pinch, and general business start-up venture stress/excitement. I will be posting more on that and loads of links so people can see what we will be offering. I have also been giving serious thought and researching Patreon to help out with start-up costs, which are always so overwhelming. I have been doing loads of praying, people,  constantly asking for God's guidance and best. It's full of wonder and joy despite all the reasons not to, sometimes, you just gotta take a well calculated leap. Gluten-free baking for a living is a dream come true and I love helping people who have serious allergies or illness and have not enjoyed something beautiful, delicious, and full of wonderful memories waiting to happen.

Back to the party and cake, as you can see in the badly taken picture below, the cake was a deep chocolate with sour cream chocolate buttercream outside, whipped Nutella ganache filling, and dark chocolate ganache drizzle. I toasted some hazelnuts, added sprinkles, and chocolate drips all over to decorate.


Here is how it all began, I had always wanted to try one of those mayonnaise cakes and I did it for this time but I really prefer the vegan chocolate cake recipe I developed for the business. It's much more moist and scrumptious in my opinion, the recipe made two 8" cakes which I cut into two so I could have a crazy 4 layer cake. I don't know why but I went a little hyper nutty, must have been the Nutella's fault, and decided a 4 layer cake was due. You can see in the pics below, the process of filling, layering, and frosting then decorated finale!

I am not posting this recipe right now as I plan on having a youtube channel at some point in the near future and I want to post the recipe along with the video linking back to the blog to make it easier, this is another reason I am thinking about Patreon, because cameras and lighting are not free or cheap-ouch, still not sure though.
Would any of you be interested in a gluten-free culinary channel? If anyone has experience with Patreon, I could sure use your comments, advice, and help. Please!

As I said it was a D.I.Y Minions party because my mother loves Bob the minion and the Dispicable Me movies. I was on a tight budget and I apologize but I could not take many pics as it was a bit of rushing because a few things got out of my control (there were some family emergencies and someone got sick-whew). These were the menu items I made and what I named them that went along with the movie characters, I put pics afterwards of the signs I made myself. (Everything food wise was gluten-free)

Minion Party Menu:

-Vegetarian Chili and all the fixin's with cornbread Madeleine's
-7 Layer dip that had beans, guac, salsa, etc. (I bought this because time was a factor)
-Open face sandwiches
-Shrimp dip with crackers
-Chips
-Vegetables and dip
-Elderflower drink
-Donuts
-Cake

This is what the shrimp dip looks like:
                                        
It's from an older post but it's so good. We have to make this at every big family get together now because people expect it to be there and are too disheartened when we don't bring it. Here is the link to the recipe:
http://thekinkycoconut.blogspot.ca/2013/02/my-mom-modified-shrimp-dip-awesome-with.html

I called the dip, Vector's Vicious Shrimp Dip, here is a pic of the chili which I called El Matcho's Chili with Mini Cornbread:

The cards were so cute and way simple. I just found pics on line, cut and pasted to word, then I fiddled around with shapes. I used a glue stick to paste them to Bristol board I bought at the dollar store, then folded them in half so they could stand as food label cards. My mom thought I had bought them, guess that means they looked good. See for yourself:

I made the Gru's Rules Sign by doing the same thing and playing around with movie quotes, I also bought a minion plastic poster and yellow balloons at the dollar store, to hang around the poster. My Mumsie is 67, not 5 years old so I didn't want it to be too young. Just whimsical and fun for her, she kept all the cards for her scrapbook because she liked them so much.

Gru's Moons were homemade gluten-free old fashioned donuts from my late Nanou's (Grandmother's) recipe which I rolled in icing sugar to make them look like round moons. These went very fast and were taken home, I did not take pics because I thought there would be loads left.
For the elderflower drink, I used a 2 Liter bottle of no-name brand club soda and added 250 ml of Ikea's Elderflower Syrup which looks like this:
                                      
                                                


                                                           
I put ice cubes in everyone's glass and poured it over, they went to town and finished that off with happy taste buds and faces. Elderflower is new to many people and my family and friend's were no exception. It's a great tart, tangy, mild, and refreshing taste that brightens up any party. You can add alcohol like gin to it with a twist of fresh lime, I cannot do any alcohol because of my eczema but have fun with it. I suggest Ikea for buying this because it's less then $5 at the time of writing. When I went to stores in town it started at $12 and up. I called it Dr. Neffario's PX-41 Antidote.

The cake was with this funny evil minion card which vanished before I could snap it but I called it, Evil Minion Dangerous Decadent Chocolate Cake Madness. It fit well with the chocolate overload of the cake, see it again because once is never enough when it comes to chocolate.

I hope you liked this post, leave me your comments or questions down below. I love to hear from you and all about your kitchen adventures! Don't forget to subscribe.