You will need:
A packet of Giant Chocolate Buttons
Icing sugar to make water icing or about 8 squares of white chocolate
A piping bag with a fine nozzle
Something to decorate the top, cranberries, silver balls, red/green sprinkles
I made some with icing and some with melted white chocolate, the piping bit is the same whichever you choose.
If you choose to use icing just make up a bit of water icing: half fill a little bowl with icing sugar and add water just a drop at a time, mixing really well with a teaspoon until it forms thick icing. It needs to be thick enough to not spread everywhere but not so think that you can't pipe it.
Put it in the piping bag and pipe a icing outline on the chocolate button.
Then fill it in with a rough wiggle of icing
Then just prod at it with the tip of the icing nozzle till it spreads to fill in the gaps.
Piping chocolate and me are not BFF's however, it just solidifies in the nozzle for me! You have to be really quick so I recommend a helper to add the decoration for you if you use chocolate. I did try popping just the metal nozzle into a shallow bowl of hot water between piping's which helped a bit, I wiped it with a paper towel to dry each time but if anyone has any great tips for this I for one would be really grateful!
Now just pop whatever you fancy on the top to decorate, I experimented with a few ideas:
Mini Smarties
Silver Pearls (they are soft nowadays not rock hard like they were when we were kids)
Little round cake sprinkles (not so happy with these, the colours aren't very bright)
Little chopped bits of cranberry (looked ok but they did keep dropping off so I was forced to eat this one!)
Then I found these lovely Christmassy sprinkles in TK Max:
These are my favourites, I know the green bits are supposed to be trees but close enough for holly I think!
|
|
|
|
What a fabulous idea Julia - you must be so patient....and if I tried it there would be much more sampling and therefore less to give away!!
ReplyDeleteAli x
One or two may have been sampled along the way - just for quality control purposes of course! Luckily we have a little corner shop just across the road so more supplies are not far away.
DeleteWhat a clever quick idea. They look very professional.
ReplyDeleteThanks, they were fun to make and not very difficult (my piping skills are quite limited)
Delete