I am sure you have seen these delightful chocolate shapes on cakes and cupcakes at your favorite bakery. They are super easy to make! Anyone can do them and they take very little skill and time.
Often, the ones you see in bakeries are made of tempered chocolate. While this is a “genuine” way to make them, I find tempering chocolate to be more time consuming and it does actually require some skill as well as more time to harden.
To substitute tempered chocolate, you will use milk chocolate flavored almond bark. It is close to the texture and taste of genuine milk chocolate and most people cannot tell the difference. The big difference between almond bark and chocolate is almond bark has vegetable fats in it instead of cocoa butter. This allows it to be easily microwaved for a smooth texture.
These accents can be made in under 10 minutes and harden in just 5. They add a great dimension to your holiday baking. Since almond bark also comes in a variety of colors, you can use it for virtually anything!
Let’s get started.
To Make Chocolate Accents You will need:
Almond bark in the flavor/color you desire
A sandwich bag
A cookie sheet
Wax paper
Start by cutting the almond bark with a very sharp knife. Place it in a microwave for 30 second intervals, stirring.
Pour it into a sandwich bag with a small portion of the corner cut off.
On wax paper spread out on a cookie sheet, start making shapes. When you are done, place the cookie sheet in the freezer.
When you pull them out, they should easily peel off the wax paper.
Stand them up on cakes, cupcakes and on top of cookies. Yumm!
This was always a fun part of decorating cakes when I was in school. I loved the freedom I had to make my own shapes and decorate how I wanted and I hope you will too with these easy and delicious chocolate accents! They add a great 3-D effect to any baked dessert!