Saturday, April 25, 2009

How to Make a Perfect Chocolate Butterfly

I had to make cupcakes for a bake sale, so I created these little cuppies. In order to make the perfect butterflies, I did the following:

What you will need:
Cupcakes
Buttercream icing
Melting Chocolate Disks in your fav. colors (I used Wilton's)
Optional: Wilton Large Confetti (I got mine at Michaels)
A gallon-sized Ziplock freezer bag



Make your cupcakes as usual and pile your icing nice and high so that the butterflies have something to land on. I also added some sprinkles to mine.

Next, right click on this image and print it out. You can print it on low resolution if you'd like. It is just a pattern.Next, place the image under a large piece of waxed paper.
Put your chocolate melting disks into the freezer bag and zip. Place in your microwave for about 20 seconds. Check to see how melted they are. Keep doing this until you melt the disks completely. Once you know how long your microwave takes, you can do it all at once. Mine takes about 1 minute for about 40 disks but all microwaves differ. Also, I do mine on high, but you can do it on medium if you'd like.

Tip: Depending on the type of melting chocolate, you may have to add about 1/2 tsp-1 tsp. of shortening to the disks to get them to be runny enough to squeeze out of the bag.

After the chocolate melts, mush it into one of the corners and twist the bag so that you have a make-shift pastry bag. Of course, if you have a pastry bag and know how to use it, you can do it in with that, but you can't put the tips in the microwave so you have to put the tip on later. Also, the problem with pastry bags is that most of them are solid so you can't see through them to see if your chocolate is melted.

Now you can cut a hole in the tip of the bag and start tracing your butterflies. I did the wings first and let them dry a bit. Then I did the bodies so they would be more 3D.   While the chocolate is still wet, add the confetti for dots. If you forget, you can use the melted chocolate as glue and put them on with it.

Another fun thing to do is this. Put a pretzel rod in the melted butterfly and pipe some chocolate over it to hold it on. Makes a cute lollipop, don't you think?
You can refrigerate your butterflies if you'd like, or just let them get hard on the counter. Once they are dry, remove from the paper carefully and sit them on top of your cupcakes. How SPRINGY are those?
Please send me pictures if you make these. I'd love to see how they turned out.
BTW... you can use any graphic you have and make any topping you'd like!
Tami



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