Lord Of The Rings Book Cake

Last week both my older brothers celebrated their birthdays within three days of each-other. 

Last year I made my brother Chris who was at the time working as a mechanic a wrench cake and my other brother who just became a police officer a police shirt cake. I'm definitely not a professional cake decorator but this year I wanted to do something a little bit different and knew that Chris's favourite book is The lord of the Rings (we have that in common). So I thought I would make him what I envisioned the book to look like.

The cake underneath is just a chocolate mud cake and I used marzipan instead of white fondant to give the pages of the book a more aged and a less pure white look.

 I ended up melting some dark chocolate and adding it to the marzipan to create brown.
After I added the chocolate I rolled the marzipan in a lot of cocoa to make it less sticky. When you melt chocolate in anything you have to work quite quickly before it sets and will start to crack

The writing is buttercream icing which I coloured gold. I think the next time I make a cake with this much detail I will definitely use royal icing and paint it on with a paintbrush. I tried my hand at elvish on the bottom of the book, if you can read elvish then you probably won't be able to read that.
The ring is fondant which I shaped and painted with gold colouring. 

Hope you're having an excellent week!

Infinite x's and o's,

Elena