We recently had a small family reunion go on and I wanted to cook and I made a special desert for the occasion as well. I kind of forgot pictures of the dinner (Though it wasn't anything to fancy! They like simple enough fare) but I had great fun with the desert that took me a couple of days to prepare, mostly due to the setting and cooling phases of the cake making.

The cake itself is a chocolate cake with a home made whipped topping icing. The "Colors" of the cake are each a colored and flavored meringue disk that I baked for four hours at 200 degrees and made them the size of the cake itself and alternated the disks with slices of the cake.

I had an Orange, a Lime, and a Lemon flavored meringue.

I coated the outside of the cake with toasted almonds, cake crumbs, and a few little ornate chocolates...

and a little dragonfly on top just because.

I was very happy with how this turned out in texture, flavor, and looks too!

The Meringues got soft in the cake but from the toasting they held shape and created a cake like layer of very intense flavor.

They were flavored with the zest of the appropriate fruit, some juice from the fruit, and in the case of the orange I used orange extract instead of the juice.

Very happy with how this turned out and taste. Was a bit of time and some work, but it overall wasn't very difficult, though nice and striking on the plate with the colors.