Chocolate Roses

Chocolate is everyone’s favorite garnish. A chocolate icing, a chocolate ganache, a sprinkling of cocoa or even just chocolate shavings—chocolate is quite a popular ingredients for decorations as well.

Another popular form of using chocolate is by making chocolate roses. Edible flowers on cake and other confectionary make excellent decorations. While making chocolate roses takes some practice, it becomes a breeze once you learn how to make chocolate roses.

The recipe to make the chocolate roses is easy.

You need to make chocolate pliant to shape it into a form. This pliable form is called fondant and a chocolate fondant is used to make chocolate roses and other forms of chocolate decoration. You can also use another pliable form called chocolate plastic.

In the recipe for chocolate plastic you will need 1 pound of chocolate, white, dark or milk chocolate depending on what kind of chocolate roses you want to make. You can also just use milk chocolate and add food coloring depending on what color you want decoration roses to be.

1 pound of chocolate
½ cup corn syrup

Melt the chocolate, either in the microwave or on a double boiler.

Once the chocolate has completely melted, add the corn syrup and mix till the two are completely combined.

Spread this mixture on a flat surface and cover it to allow it cool.

To work with this plastic, knead it till it becomes pliable and shiny.

Once it is shiny, you can roll it out and shape it however you like. Use powdered sugar to avoid the fondant from sticking to your hands when you roll it out.

To make chocolate roses, you need different sized circles, rolled out in chocolate plastic. For one full sized rose, you need about 9 such circles. Start with the center of the rose and slowly attach each circle on the outside, thinning the edges, to resemble petals. The heat in the kneading will help attach each layer of the rose. Once you have completed the rose, let it sit at room temperature for it needs to harden before you can use it.

Now that you know how to make a rose, you can make roses for different occasions, in different sizes and different colors. You can make chocolate rose bouquets, white chocolate roses and even just chocolate colored roses.

You need not restrict yourself to only using chocolates in these forms. Only your imagination limits you.

Submitted on January 16, 2014