The Cheese Wine Bottle

My boyfriend does not like cake much, but he really likes cheese!  It was his 30th birthday recently so I decided to make him a "cheesecake" but not the tiered cake variety, which are a little too weddingy for me.  He also loves wine, so the answer was simple; a wine bottle sculpted from rounds of cheese and a personalised, vintage birthday, label.

I bought 15 varieties of cheese, mainly flat pieces, but a few wedges too - the only specification was they they had to be more than 7cm wide, the size of the cutter.  I used a 7cm diameter smooth circular pastry cutter to cut the rounds.  The rounds were stacked on top of each other until they were the height of a wine bottle and the top round was carved into shape with a sharp knife.  The neck of the wine bottle was made with layers cut with a 2cm diameter cutter.  Once all the pieces were stacked up and we were happy with them we pushed a bamboo skewer gently down the length of the bottle to stablise it.  It's not perfect but we liked the character  of our wonky wine bottle :) not bad for a first attempt!

The label was designed with a picture of my boyfriend as a baby, with his age and date of birth used as the volume (104cl) and percentage (30%).  This was pinned in place onto the bottle.  A couple of spare cheeses and some grapes completed the cake.