Decorate with Chocolate

Chocolate is a truly versatile food.

You can cook with it, make elegant gifts with it and decorate with it. Chocolate can be used in many forms to create dessert decorations ranging from simple to extravagant, whimsical to elegant. Because chocolate can be worked when it is solid or in a liquid state, you can use dozens of different techniques to make decorations with it.

Solid

You can use solid chocolate or modeling chocolate to create shapes. Using just your hands and a bamboo skewer for details, you can sculpt animals, faces, textures and decorative garnishes such as ribbons and leaves. Modeling chocolate can be made in dark, milk and white varieties, and the white chocolate can then be colored using powdered food coloring.

Chocolate ganache

Chocolate ganache is a smooth, creamy mixture of chocolate and cream that is easily made at home on the stovetop. It-can be used for piping and covering cakes and other baked goods in decorative ways. When the ganache is in its warm, liquid form, you can put it in a piping bag with a plastic tip to write or draw with it. Ganache can also be spread across baked items and then textured using pastry tools or even everyday kitchen objects, such as skewers, forks, cookie cutters and more. You can also pipe shapes and designs onto a chilled surface, like a marble block, or wax paper. Allow the designs to cool and harden completely, and then remove to use as decorations.

Mold

Chocolate can be used to cast molds as well. Pour chocolate into a plastic mold and allow it to harden, and then remove the mold. You can make solid chocolate items this way, or hollow ones. For hollow molds, just cover the inside of the mold with chocolate and let harden. If you have a two-piece mold, you can fill the chocolate with a flavored filling before attaching the two halves together with a little liquid chocolate as glue.

Ex: Easter egg