"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

Let it snow!

The supplies:

- Silicone snowflake mold
- Isomalt stick from Cake Play
- Hot pot for melting isomalt
- Silicone cupcake liner - I use it to melt the isomalt
- Some fun cake sprinkles
- Snowflake quins
- Blow torch - not in pic

First I broke up the isomalt stick and placed it in the silicone cup. Microwave in 15-20 second increments until all melted.

Sprinkle some of the red sugar and snowflake quins into the mold.  Carefully pinch the silicone cup - be gentle and cautious so that you do not spill the hot isomalt on your fingers.  Pour a steady stream into the mold.

Set mold aside for a bit to cool and firm up.

Once set and barely warm to the touch begin to gently pull the silicone away from the isomalt.

On this particular mold I was worried about the centers pulling through the isomalt so I gave it some help.

When removed from the mold there were tiny surface imperfections.  To fix this I got out my trusty blow torch and very quickly ran it over the surface.

 Let the snowflake sit and cool for a bit before touching.

One way to display the snowflake - loop a string through and let it hang.  Doesn't it sparkle?

You can use the melting pot - with a broken isomalt stick melted to dip the bottom of the snowflake....

Set the snowflake where you want it and hold still while it cools.

ooohhhh  shiny!

Products used:
Snowflake #2
Snowflake #1