Drawing with Chocolate--SO FUN!

We made this awesome cake:

Wanna know how we did it?

I got the idea from the Dad's Big Red Cookbook. I don't actually know what the real name of this book is--it's just one my dad used for a long time, and I managed to find a copy, so I use it all the time, too. It has a recipe for chocolate butterfly garnishes. We took the general idea and went with it, using (as usual) the ingredients and tools we had on hand instead of the ones listed.

Here's how we did that. We made a normal cake and buttercream frosting. And then we put 1/2 c (or so) of chocolate chips (we used milk chocolate, but you could use any) and 1 tsp of shortening in one of mom's old teacups (yes, that's what we really call them--they're the old corel teacups that hold exactly 8 oz and that I use in cooking ALL the time). We microwaved it for about 30 seconds, stirred, and, when it was smooth (we had to zap one batch a second time to get it thoroughly melted), we spooned it into a ziploc baggie.  We sealed the baggie and snipped a corner really really close to the end. Then Caleb drew a wolf design for his cub scouts project, and I used the leftovers to draw random whatever shapes I could onto wax paper. 

Then we popped them into the freezer to set up and about 5 minutes later, they peeled from the wax paper like stickers and the kids used them to decorate the cake.

I had a lot of left over chocolate still (we did 2 batches, but one made all of the designs you see there, plus the wolf design I cut out of the middle to put on Caleb's scout cake), so I freehand drew a bunny shape on more wax paper and then spooned the rest of the chocolate into it. Presto! We have chocolate bunnies for easter at a fraction of the cost.