Chess Cake

This past week marked the end of the chess season for Paul as a coach of a local Catholic chess team.  Kids ranging in age (and level) from Kindergarten to high school were on the team and each weekly practice netted an average of 22 kids attending.  Tournaments were optional for the chess team members; a total of 6 tournaments during the season found Paul and some parent chaperones busy accompanying 4-7 kids per at the day-long Saturday events.

Now that chess is over, it is bittersweet.  Paul welcomes the additional time he has for work and family (work during those Tuesday practices they had and family during those Saturdays he missed with us) but he'll miss the kids, too.  I'll miss the stories he would bring home from the practices and tournaments - boy, were those kids funny!  Hearing about the little things they would say or do would remind me of the silly antics of our own children or, in some cases, would remind me of what could come as our kids grow older.

The past few years, we've wanted to hold a chess party at the end of the season, but this is the first year that it actually came to pass.  I was excited to do my part in the planning even though we were expecting Sophia's arrival and then, as the date of the party drew near, we were adjusting to Sophia's arrival.  Before Sophia was born, I had an idea in my head to create a chess cake for the potluck party.  With some late-night help from Paul in the layout (he organized the pieces on the cake to use as a problem-solving puzzle for the kids to analyze) and in the breaking up and/or putting together of the molded pieces, the chess cake turned out and I am happy to say that I am proud of it and want to share some pics (I wasn't sure if I was going to share any photos if it flopped!).

The cake is 2 9x13 cakes side-by-side.

Here Paul is meticulously scraping white chocolate shavings off of chocolate squares and chocolate shavings off of white chocolate squares.  :-)

Milk chocolate makes up the black pieces.  It was much meltier than the white chocolate and caused a bit of grief - I had to mold the King three times!

Here are the white pieces and some extra squares we had as I miscalculated the number of squares on the chessboard (and apparently Paul still trusts me to school our kids in math!).

Here's the final layout with the chess problem for the kids to analyze.  It's Greek to me.

Paul and some of the kids on the team.  This is their "don't mess with us" pose.

Here is the goofy shot.  I think Paul is thinking, "I'm going to miss this crazy bunch."