pine cones, pomegranates, and wedding cake

I have been waiting to make a cake with this dark chocolate lacquer glaze since I first read about it on 
  Rose Levy Beranbaum's blog in early 2007, when she made a dark chocolate wedding cake for the celebrated chef Daniel Patterson (of Coi restaurant in San Francisco, a place I hope to go someday) with recipes she had been developing for Rose's Heavenly Cakes. Leave it to Rose to come up with a stunningly elegant and delicious glaze that needs no embellishment at all.

For friends getting married in the redwoods near Santa Cruz, I made two different flavors of cake both covered with the dark chocolate ganache undercoat and shiny dark chocolate lacquer glaze from the book.  The top and bottom tiers were my favorite dark chocolate cake recipe, (though I cannot wait to try Rose's new oil chocolate cake base that magically rises to the top in the last 10 minutes of baking).

The middle tiers were a moist yellow cake filled with the golden neoclassic buttercream mixed with raspberry puree and homemade satsuma plum jam.