Mushroom Birthday Log Cake (Patreon)

I made this mushroom cake for a birthday. It's a classic chocolate cake baked in a yule log pan, iced with buttercream frosting, sprinkled with matcha cookie moss, dried edible flowers and foliage, and adorned with meringue mushrooms from etsy. It was really dense so I might try making it with with a different, lighter recipe like sponge cake. My favorite cakes are Japanese christmas cakes. I love the combination of fruit, sponge cake, and light barely sweet whip cream. 

It was a bit stressful getting the moss right, but it worked out on the 2nd try. I used sweetened matcha powder, dissolved it in hot water, and made a thick syrup and added it to the cookies. I also mixed in powdered sugar to lighten up the color for a separate batch so I could have a dark green for the base color of the moss and a light green for a highlight color. If I bake this again, I would mix it in the cookie dough before baking it and process it in a blender afterward so it'll stay dry, but it still turned out good. I also bought a mushroom silicone mold so I may try making my own amanita muscaria cake someday. 

And yes I tasted the flowers and foliage. The daisy looking one tasted a bit tangy in the middle but the posies didn't taste like anything to me. The fern looking one was interesting because it smelled / tasted a bit like cinnamon. And the mushrooms tasted like marshmallows.

The kitchen was in shambles afterwards, but it was a nice way to take my mind off of all the chaos and technical difficulties lately.