This post is part of my 10 week Christmas Preparation Plan for 2011.
I have had a super busy last couple of days. Last night we held our first Community Blogging event which was so inspiring! I will talk more about it tomorrow. Then today I had my daughter’s 8th birthday party, so I have been having to get creative with my time in the kitchen.
I wanted to take along a sweet treat to the Community Blogging event to go with coffee and tea (I have a slight sweet tooth!), but I didn’t have time to get fancy. So I took the Chocolate Freckle recipe and gave it a twist to make a Christmas Freckle! I made about 60 in less than 15 minutes then just let them set.
Chocolate Treats Recipe
Ingredients:
- 350 grams of chocolate. (I just used Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate.)
- 8 candy canes
- 20 large patty pans
Method:
I have had many battles with the plastic wrapping on candy canes, but I tried something new to crush the candy canes this time, that worked superbly. Place the candy canes still in their wrapping into a couple of plastic bags.
Then using a rolling pin, smash the candy canes to pieces.
The candy canes look like above after the smashing.
The plastic wrapping comes just falls away! (There were smaller pieces that I picked out of the candy canes – this is just some wrapping for photographic purposes!)
I like to melt chocolate in the microwave, so the instructions relate to how to do that. You could melt the chocolate any way you like. Once the chocolate is melted you need to work relatively quickly before it begins to reset, so it is best to have everything else organised first.
On a tray set out the patty pans.
Pour a decent amount of sprinkles into a small container and have a teaspoon ready.
Break chocolate into small pieces in a microwave safe bowl.
Heat on high for 1 1/2 minutes. Stir chocolate.
Heat on high again for another 30 seconds. At this point the chocolate may be ready depending on the power of your microwave. If it isn’t, heat again for 15 second intervals until the chocolate is completely melted.
Spoon out melted chocolate into patty pans. Use enough mixture so the bottom is covered and the freckle will be about 3mm thick (you could go thicker if you like).
Once you have used up all the mixture, sprinkle the crushed candy canes on top of the chocolate in each pan. Any excess falls off when you take them out of the pans.
This made 20 freckles. Place the tray in refrigerator for the freckles to set.
Once they have set (about 2 hours) take them out of the fridge. Peel back the patty pans and remove the freckle. I recommend doing this over the kitchen sink because if you have excess candy cane pieces, they go everywhere!
Arrange on plate, then enjoy!
- 350 grams of chocolate. (I just used Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate.)
- 8 candy canes
- 20 large patty pans
- I have had many battles with the plastic wrapping on candy canes, but I tried something new to crush the candy canes this time, that worked superbly. Place the candy canes still in their wrapping into a couple of plastic bags.
- Then using a rolling pin, smash the candy canes to pieces.
- The plastic wrapping just falls away!
- I like to melt chocolate in the microwave, so the instructions relate to how to do that. You could melt the chocolate any way you like. Once the chocolate is melted you need to work relatively quickly before it begins to reset, so it is best to have everything else organised first.
- On a tray set out the patty pans.
- Pour a decent amount of sprinkles into a small container and have a teaspoon ready.
- Break chocolate into small pieces in a microwave safe bowl.
- Heat on high for 1½ minutes. Stir chocolate.
- Heat on high again for another 30 seconds. At this point the chocolate may be ready depending on the power of your microwave. If it isn't, heat again for 15 second intervals until the chocolate is completely melted.
- Spoon out melted chocolate into patty pans. Use enough mixture so the bottom is covered and the freckle will be about 3mm thick (you could go thicker if you like).
- Once you have used up all the mixture, sprinkle the crushed candy canes on top of the chocolate in each pan. Any excess falls off when you take them out of the pans.
- This made 20 freckles. Place the tray in refrigerator for the freckles to set.
- Once they have set (about 2 hours) take them out of the fridge. Peel back the patty pans and remove the freckle. I recommend doing this over the kitchen sink because if you have excess candy cane pieces, they go everywhere!
- Arrange on plate, then enjoy!