"O Tannenbaum" O Christmas Tree

Thank you Sandy Swart for the great blog post for today!

Christmas parties and what can I take? DTC has wonderful mini molds that are great for Christmas treats.  For this treat I used: Christmas- Mini #1 , Christmas- Mini #2,  Christmas- Reindeer Mini,  Christmas- Angels Mini,   Valentine- Heart set of 6, and a few of the buttons from Button- Large Set of 9


The first thing to make is the mini chocolates in the mini molds mentioned above.  After melting the almond bark in a disposable piping bag, I cut the tip off to make a small hole.

Fill each mold, piping the melted almond bark into the cavities. Be careful to not overfill.

Gently tap to even out the almond bark in the mold. Place in freezer for 5 minutes.

Carefully pop chocolate out of the molds after removing them from the freezer.  I dusted each chocolate with luster dust to highlight the details on each chocolate.   Below you can see the difference. The top snowflake is dusted and the bottom one was directly out of the mold.



Push chocolate back into bag away from the opening if you have the molds filled. This allows you to re-melt the chocolate in the microwave without it leaking out the cut end.  The chocolate molded minis can be made way ahead of time. 

As I went to bake my mini cupcakes, I noticed that my liners were too open.

Somewhere online, I remembered reading about someone "re-crimping" their cupcake liners. I picked out a round cutter from my Ateco round cutter set that was the size of the muffin cavities and the next size smaller.

Place a stack of liners in the larger cutter and place the smaller cutter on top. I used the palm of my hand to push the liners down into the larger cutter.  Allow to set for an hour or two.

Here is the same method used on regular sized cupcake liners.

Here shows the mini liner on the left and the resized mini liner on the right.  It fits just fine down into the cavity. That helps prevent the outside of the liner kinking when the batter is put into the liner.

Set out the mini cupcakes into the shape of a Christmas tree.  I found that my large heart shaped cardboard worked fine for the shape

I reheated the remainder of the chocolate in the piping bag and "glued" the individual cupcakes to the foil board with a small bit of melted chocolate to prevent the cupcakes from moving.

I piped a swirl of green buttercream on each cupcake and placed one of the minis on each one. Looking at the picture you can see where I just piped a wide zigzag for the bottom part of the tree.  To show off the star that I piped on the top cupcake, I first placed a white fondant disk on the cupcake first.  The center of the green piped star was a green star.

With some of the extra minis from this project, I molded some red minis.  I piped a large green buttercream star on the cupcake before adding the chocolate mini.  I didn't care for the pearl dust on the red minis so I did not dust the red ones. Experiment and you'll know what you like the looks of.

I love Ritz crackers with peanut butter dipped in white almond bark.  I dipped some for our family Christmas treats.  This time I just used the mini hearts to accent the tops.

Any questions?  You can contact me through Sandy Swart Cakes on Facebook or at sewsweet2@hotmail.com
Albums of my decorated cakes can be seen at:  http://flickr.com/photos/sewsweet2/sets

DTC Products Used:
Christmas- Mini #1
Christmas- Mini #2
Christmas- Reindeer Mini
Christmas- Angels Mini
Valentine- Heart set of 6
Button- Large Set of 9

Merry Christmas....in July!

A big Thank You to Rebecca and Roslynne for helping out with this blog post.  Definitely a group effort!

To make the jingle bells we use used our mini jingle bell mold, some little balls of fondant, an edible food marker (not shown) and silver luster dust of choice.  

We formed the fondant into almost tic-tac shapes which easily slipped into the mold cavity.

Firmly press the fondant into the cavity.

Use a palette knife to clean up the excess fondant.

At this point place the mold into the freezer for about 10 minutes -- or longer if you are forgetful like I am!

Flex the mold and pop out the jingle bells.

Finished jingle bells. 

 We used a black food marker to mark the lines then brushed the jingle bell with the silver luster dust.

On the left is the fondant bell, middle with just the black line drawn and right dusted with silver.

Close up of the finished jingle bells.

Close up of a snowflake we added.  This was lightly dusted with a silver pearl dust. 

DTC Products Used:
Small Jingle Bell
Small Snowflake

Optionally Larger Jingle Bell
Large Jingle Bell

Christmas in springtime

Hello! My name is Debby and I run a home based cake business here in Ohio called (appropriately enough) Home Run Cakes, LLC. I do everything from scratch, using real food for my ingredients - you know, those things that were considered food prior to 50 years ago, like butter, milk, eggs, and flour. What I *can't* do "from scratch" often, though, is make amazing little decorations to add to my homemade cakes. So I love experimenting with silicone moulds and other fun cake "toys". I use them to make chocolates, fondant, and gumpaste do-dads. (What I haven't tried as of yet, is poured sugar work, but that's on my wish list of things I've been wanting to try!) I'm excited to have joined the Decorate the Cake Product User's Group, and this was my first experience doing so. I apologize for the somewhat unclear photos -- my camera is just your typical point and shoot, not a DSLR...also on my drool/wish list. And most of these photos were taken with one shaky hand holding the camera and the other doing the work!

Here in Ohio, it has JUST begun to thaw out from winter -- in fact, we're still getting occasional snows -- and right now I'm thinking "come ON SPRING!" The last thing on my mind right now has been "Christmas". So I had to laugh when I opened up my package of items to demo for Decorate the Cake. It was a collection of four small silicone moulds featuring Christmas and winter holiday motifs, including a cute "Santa" star and ovals with candy canes, Christmas bells, and reindeer. But these will certainly come in handy next December when the holiday orders come around again!

I have lately been making lots of chocolate-dipped cake pops, and after I finish a batch of cake pops, I always have some extra melted chocolate still remaining, so I decided to make chocolate pops using the moulds. I thought that would be something that would be really fun for Christmas gifts next year -- a collection of chocolate pops using these moulds, particularly if I did them in a peppermint-flavored white chocolate (and only REAL white chocolate, none of that white coating yuck stuff), with maybe some crushed up candy canes stuck on the backs, to make peppermint bark on a stick. But for this time, since I had just finished making dark chocolate cake pops, I used some remaining dark chocolate. Which is the flavor my husband and I prefer anyway, so I knew they'd be eaten even if they didn't turn out great. This was my first time using smaller silicone moulds for chocolate. I'd recently tried using plastic moulds for chocolate, and it didn't turn out so great. (Once the chocolate had cooled, I couldn't get it out of the moulds without breaking all apart. I know I should have warmed the bottom a bit, but I didn't think about that at the time and just got frustrated.) So I was excited to try it with the silicone.

After arranging the moulds on a cold cookie sheet (I wanted to nice flat surface that I could put easily into the fridge), I melted and stirred some extra chocolate in the microwave for about 40 seconds. (The chocolate had already been tempered earlier; I just needed to re-melt it.)

Mmmm....melty, warm chocolate....

Next, I slowly poured the melted chocolate into each mould.
Then, I lightly shook and tapped each chocolate-filled mould so that they were evenly filled, and any air bubbles would come to the surface instead of marring my cute chocolate pop fronts. I then also tried to take an edge of a paper towel and clean up any stray chocolate smudges that had run past the edge of the mould. I could have also done this once the chocolates were cool and popped out of the mould, but I'd rather do it now and not have to do any clean-up of edges later. As you can see in the photo, I missed a few drops, but these were well within the "walls" of the mould, so I knew it wouldn't affect the chocolate creation itself.
So then I had my four cute little moulds, full of delicious Ghirardelli dark chocolate, ready to cool.
I put the cookie sheet in my fridge and let them sit for about 15 minutes, to harden up the chocolate. Then came the moment of truth. Would the chocolates pop out of the moulds without breaking? I certainly hadn't had any success with this using hard plastic moulds. And all the other times I'd used silicone moulds, it was for fondant or gumpaste, so this was a real test.
I peeled back the first mould carefully, thinking I'd have chocolate sticking to the silicone and an unrecognizable image on the front, but it popped RIGHT out. After that first one, I popped the rest out without much thought at all. Perfect!

After letting them rest for a few minutes to come to room temperature (and so that they wouldn't sweat and mess up the front image), I then turned them over, got a dab of melted chocolate on the tip of a lolipop stick, and stuck the stick to the back of the chocolate.

I carefully turned it back "right side up", and placed the chocolate on a cookie rack to harden up for a few more minutes...

And then it was finished! Delectable chocolate, convieniently provided on a stick for your...um, MY...eating happiness.

When the melted chocolate on the stick cools against the chocolate on the pop, it sticks securely, so you have a quick treat that you can package in a bouquet for gifts, or even put as "stick up" decorations on your cake. I think the oval shaped moulds would also be great for making individual toppers for cupcakes, or as a recurring motif around the base or top of a quick cake for your Christmas parties.

Have a merry Christmas in Spring! I look forward to sharing more discoveries with you in the future -- whatever the season! Happy decorating!

DTC Products Used:
Santa Star
Cameo Bells
Cameo Candy Cane
Cameo Christmas Tree