Roses......

I was asked to make some cupcakes for a birthday present and was left to come up with my own decoration. I thought it would be nice to make some roses to go on top of them. At first I was dabbling with the idea of using marzipan or sugar paste but then I came across the recipe for chocolate plastic. Basically chocolate and glucose syrup. It is quite easy to make and work with. It holds its shape, tastes better than sugarpaste ans looks pretty too.

To make the chocolate plastic you can use white, milk or dark chocolate. I simply melted mine in the microwave or you can do it over a bain marie. Then you add glucose syrup to the melted chocolate and stir it until it thickens and pulls away from the sides of the bowl.

You should then transfer the chocolate plastic mixture onto a piece of clingfilm and pat it into a disc about 6mm thick. Cover it with another piece of clingfilm and leave it in the fridge to harden. To use the chocolate plastic take it out of the fridge and leave it for about 10 minutes at room temperature.

To make the roses I cut out the bits I needed and rolled them in my hands to make them smooth and pliable. This was my first attempt at making the chocolate plastic and attempting the roses. I was quite pleased.

For more information there are plenty of tutorials on the net on how to make these roses.

For the recipe for the plastic chocolate I used 200g chocolate and 4 tablespoons of glucose syrup.

Here are the cakes I made.

Vanilla cupcakes topped with vanilla frosting and then a white chocolate rose.

Chocolate cupcakes topped with chocolate frosting and milk chocolate roses.