Chocolate icing looks crap

[noblegiraffe]

I'm attempting a cake shaped like a pirate ship where you cut a round cake up and assemble it. I've done a practice version. The recipe says to melt cooking chocolate and cover the cake in it. I have silver spoon cooking chocolate flavoured cake covering which says it should be exactly what I want, but when I melt it, it's really runny and so instead of a nice thick layer on the sides of the cake, it runs off into a crappy thin layer and you can see chocolatey sponge instead of a nice shiny chocolate layer.

Has anyone got any suggestions? Would dairy milk be better?

Layer it up, put on one layer and let it set, then add the next layer etc. until it is all thick and smooth. Or if you don't want to use it then chocolate ganache is simple to make and will give you a nice shiny surface.

chill the cake really well before putting the icing on

Brilliant, thanks. Will try layering - I thought I was doing something wrong as I watched it all drip into a sad puddle on the plate.

Ooh, and chilling too, very helpful :)

I always use dairy milk - far less faff and imo tastes nicer too!

Use dairy milk rather than nasty chocolate flavour cake covering (disclaimer not eaten it for years but it always used to taste like crap!)

Oh good, if you think dairy milk would work I'll go with that, it tastes much nicer.

Real chocolate would be better like people have said, not the chocolate flavour cake covering, but if you are watching the pennies Aldis chocolate is fine.