How to Make Chocolate Roses
Valentines Day… Chocolate. Roses. What a perfect time to merge the two and make Chocolate Roses! Actually, it isn’t just a Valentines treat, it’s timeless decor for any table or dessert year-round.
I’ve been wanting to try these for awhile. But they always looked so complicated. But they still intrigued me. So, I finally made some…
This is all you do:
Take about 2/3 cup of chocolate chips and melt them. Add about 3 Tbsp. light corn syrup.
Stir until mixture starts pulling away from the sides of the bowl and starts balling up. It’ll be kinda like taffy. Dump it out onto a piece of plastic wrap and flatten. Cover with more plasic wrap and refrigerate for a half hour or so.
Get it out and pull a chunk off, about a tsp., and roll it around with your fingers till it’s a smooth ball, then flatten it into a petal. Make 6 -10 petals, depending on how big you want your rose.
Take one of the petals and roll it up loosely. Use your finger to bend the top back just slightly.
Take the next petal and start it just behind where the first petal ended.
Continue like that until all the petals are used up, bending the tops back slightly as you go. When your rose is done, cut off the stem (which will have gotten quite chunky) so the rose can sit flat. Or, go ahead and try making it thin and having a long-stemmed rose! I might try that next time.
I tried a rosebud by using only 2 petals. After making 2 roses and 1 rosebud and the leaves, I had some chocolate left yet, so I just made a heart with it. So, what you see on this plate is how much 2/3 cup chocolate chips makes.
Now what I need is a nice dessert to put them on. 
But, I don’t have one, so I’m just gonna keep them in the freezer and whip ‘em out sometime when I need some quick dessert decor!
So, what do you think? You gonna try them? 
Some Valentines Day ideas…
Ok, enough of the chili soup and fry bread! And it IS warming up outside too! Yesterday felt like Spring! Yay!
We’ll have a Valentines ‘Cooks in Training’ post later this week with a couple Valentine ideas that Lexi and Tiffany are working on (and that I’m being the damage control person on) and another Valentines post or two, but for now, I’ll just pull up some ideas from previous posts from other years.
Conversation hearts (featured here) out of angel food cake and glaze and frosting…
My family has an annual Valentines supper… Mom started making heart-shaped food for Valentines supper fun when we were little kids and she faithfully did it every year, then when we got older, we got more involved and now it’s become a tradition. Over the last few years, the menu has changed every year, but this year is planning to be the Valentines meal menu we grew up with, complete with little heart shapes of bologna in the lettuce salad. :)
Here are samples of the last couple years:
… and the links to the posts (2007) (2008)
Simple easy decor… a little basket, a napkin, and candy.
Lasagna
Cheesecakes to share. They’re about 4″ wide. We put them on the table right away and used them as place markers.
Decorate the kids.
Heart-shaped pizzas staying warm by the fire till serving time.
Fruit pizza. Yum, this picture makes me hungry for some. This recipe is actually featured here.
Any Valentine decor or food ideas from you? We’d love to hear them! ;)
Our Christmas in pictures (and words)
So, what happened then is that Kitchen Scrapbook ended up totally missing Christmas! I was living the moment, er, moments, surrounded by family and making food and snacks without blogging about it.
You know how when you get a whole bunch of Christmas cards in a row, 4 one day and 5 the next, and then it tapers off towards the end of December and then no more cards and then the 2nd week of January, you get another Christmas card? Well, that’s how this post is… the other blogs you read have posted Christmas now and are switching from red & green colors to January blue and New Year’s resolutions, but here, we’re pulling you back to Christmas…
First, we have Pretzel Turtles
I got this idea from Judy on a message board that I frequent. Take small pretzels and put a Rolo candy on top of each one. Then, put them in the oven for a couple minutes at 350. When you get them out, immediately press a pecan half on top of each Rolo. Yum! They went over very well here!
We also had monster cookies, party mix, and gingerbreadmen:
Lexi said, “Mom, look! I made twins!”…
Hmmm, someone samples cookies as she decorates…
And then onto our Christmas meal…
Here was our menu:
–Mashed potatoes and gravy
–Ham, rotisserie on the grill
–Noodles
–Baked corn
–Candied sweet potatoes
–Corn chip salad
–Rolls
–Jellied cranberry sauce
–Pies (pumpkin, lemon meringue, and peanut butter)
This is my husband, making some awesome ham…
Missed the pies before they were eaten…
Pictured in the picture right under the ham collage is the candied sweet potatoes. I was trying to make a knock-off of Texas Roadhouse’s loaded sweet potato. I baked 3 sweet potatoes, peeled them and put them in an 8×8 pan and mashed them with a fork. Then, melted a stick of butter and stirred in some cinnamon and about 1/2 cup of brown sugar, poured it over the potatoes, put a layer of marshmallows on top, then baked it at 350 until the marshmallows were browned. It was GOOD!!!
In addition to food, our Christmas consisted of gift opening, football throwing, baby holding, and much more…
Chex Party Mix
I love party mix! For me, it is another ‘must’ for the holiday season! As much as I like it, I oughta make it year-round. It freezes well, so I could make a big batch and get a small bag out of the freezer as needed. Do any of you do that? Or is it more of just a holiday snack for you, too?
One thing about party mix is that is so variation-friendly. You can replace some of the Chex for other unsweetened cereal, you can use mixed nuts or peanuts, you can use different shapes of pretzels, and then the cracker part can be any kind of small cracker, cheesy crackers, bagel chips, or whatever. I don’t think I’ve ever made it the same twice.
I do use a recipe to get the total amount of cups about right for the amount of sauce, then follow the sauce recipe exactly. And where this recipe comes from is… the back of the Chex cereal box, but I bake it instead of microwave it.
The Original Chex Party Mix
3 cups Corn Chex cereal
3 cups Rice Chex cereal
3 cups Wheat Chex cereal
1 cup mixed nuts
1 cup bite-sized pretzels
1 cup garlic-flavor bite-sized bagel chips or regular-size bagel chips, broken into 1″ pieces (I used Cheezits)
Or about 12 cups of any combo of the type of things listed above
6 Tbsp. butter or margarine
2 Tbsp. Worcestershire sauce
1 1/2 tsp. seasoned salt
3/4 tsp. garlic powder
1/2 tsp. onion powder
In a large bowl, mix cereals, nuts, pretzels, and bagel chips; set aside. In small microwavable bowl, microwave butter uncovered on High about 40 seconds or until melted. Stir in seasonings.
Pour over cereal mixture; stir until evenly coated.
Microwave uncovered on High 5 - 6 min, thoroughly stirring every 2 minutes OR spread mixture out onto baking sheets and bake at 250 for 1 hour, stirring every 10-15 minutes.
Spread on paper towels to cool.
Store in airtight container.
So… what all do you put in your party mix? My sister, Jan, is looking for new ideas too. We just talked about it a couple days ago. And neither of us gave each other any good inspirations.
‘Tis the Season… bake some festive Meringue Candy Canes!
Mostly when we talk about food, we think of taste. Well, not this time… the strong point of these candy canes is the looks, not the taste. Aren’t they pretty? I think they’d technically be called a candy… they have no substances like a cookie does. Speaking of substance, they might even be calorie-free because when you take a bite of one, within seconds, that bite dissolves into nothing inside your mouth, so the calories must dissolve into nothing too, right? Lexi says they taste like dried out frosting.
They were fun to make… you get to make swirls with a decorating bag. I actually did something I’ve never done before in featuring cooking and took a video. It’s a very poor video, but my standards have gone from no videos to poor videos, so gradually, I’ll up my standards to good videos. Part of the problem may be that my lighting was bad or that I saved it in low resolution or that I was piping the meringue with one hand while holding the camera and videoing with the other hand. Not a good idea. Live and learn.
By the way, if someone would just out of the blue ask you, “How do you spell meringue?”, could you spell it? It has gotta be one of the weirdest-spelled words in the English language!
Meringue Candy Canes …from the Taste of Home Christmas Cookies and Candies cookbook
3 egg whites
1/2 tsp. cream of tartar
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 tsp. peppermint extract
Red paste food coloring
In a mixing bowl, beat egg whites until foamy. Add cream of tartar; beat on medium speed until soft peaks form. Gradually add sugar, 1 Tablespoon at a time, beating on High until stiff peaks form and sugar is dissolved, about 6 minutes. Beat in peppermint extract.
Cut a small hole in the corner of a pastry bag; insert star tip #21. On the inside of the bag, brush 3 evenly spaced 1/4″ strips of red food coloring from the tip to 3/4 of the way to the top of the bag. Carefully fill bag with meringue. Pipe 3″ candy canes onto parchment-lined baking sheets. I didn’t have parchment paper, so I used tin foil. Worked great and they didn’t stick to it.
And now for the video:
See the difference in redness here in these 2 panfuls? The top ones on the left were made first. I guess the food coloring got less concentrated as the meringue slid past.
Bake at 225 for 25 min; rotate baking sheets to a different oven rack. Bake 25 min longer or until firm to the touch. Turn oven off; leave canes in oven with door ajar for at least 1 hour or until cool. Yield: 4 dozen. I must’ve made them bigger because I got only about 2 1/2 dozen, but I did use the #21 tip.
Put these festive candy canes on an assorted cookie plate for your mailman this Christmas! Or take a plate to your local fire dept. Or to your neighbors. Or eat all your Christmas cookies yourself.
About Me
Hi! Welcome to my kitchen! My name is Kay. I'm from central Ohio. I love cooking and baking. Especially baking. It's therapeutic for me. I'm not a professional or gourmet cook by any means. I'm a Christian homemaker who happens to take pictures of some of the food I make. I have 2 little 'helpers'... Lexi (9) and Tiffany (5), who are young cooks in training. And I should mention Megan (born in June 2010), altho' she's not in training yet. She's more in charge of inside-the-cupboards demolition when she's in the kitchen. I don't do anything on the grill... that's where my husband Shannon comes in! He grills quite a bit, especially in the summer. So, sit back and enjoy browsing thro' the recipes. If you try some of them, I'd love to hear feedback on how you liked them! If you want to contact me, my email address is kay@kitchenscrapbook.com