Cake Meets Cricut

A friend of mine asked me to make dessert for her Euchre party last weekend.  Since two of her guests have celiac disease, my standard cupcake fare was off the table (and I wasn't quite ready to experiment with gluten-free flours).  She told me she usually served fresh fruit, but really wanted to serve something chocolatey and sweet, and was thinking about flourless chocolate cake.

I first checked my Martha Stewart Baking Handbook, but couldn't find a recipe.  I then headed over to Smitten Kitchen (http://smittenkitchen.com/), where I found a link to a flourless chocolate cake on Epicurious (http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Flourless-Chocolate-Cake-with-Chocolate-Glaze-5872).  The original recipe called for a chocolate glaze, but I opted to skip it.

The caked turned out great, but it looked a little sad sitting there all alone on the cardboard circle.  It needed to be jazzed up a bit, but remain gluten free.  What to do, what to do?  My friend had suggested some sort of card-themed decorations, but I was a bit worried about sprinkles and gluten and cross contamination.  Hmmm... 

Then I remembered that my Old West Cricut cartridge had poker-related shapes.  I found this great hand of aces, that I thought would make a great pattern for the cake.  I cut out the largest possible card my machine would make (5 1/2 inches).  I used this as a stencil, and sprinkled powdered sugar on the cake.  It turned out great...at least I think it did.  If I make it again, I would first brush a very light sugar-water coating on the cake so the powdered sugar would stick a bit better.