Oh my goodness. Check out some of these great chocolate decorations! These folks have a lot more talent than I do. Amazing work! What’s going to decorate your table?
1. It looks like a half football with fins on top. What’s not to love?
2. Chocolate Miniature Village or Chocolate Birdhouses or Chocolate Something Else. I am guessing that chocolate birds, like last year’s suggestion of chocolate turkey, don’t really live here, as they would have to peck their way through the chocolate yumminess that is blocking the windows.
3. I am not sure what this is but it’s beautiful and graceful and mouth-watering.
4. Chocolate Buddha. Mmm – sacrelicious!
5. And finally – the masterpiece. It looks like a hot mess but really it’s very intricately done. If I ever make something like this, the kitchen will be in such tatters that I will just move instead of cleaning up.
With Thanksgiving coming up any moment now and winter holidays close on its heels, it’s time to start planning now for your decorations, not to mention the menus. The menus are almost easy, for many people anchored in traditional food items. The decorations are the really tough part.
Imagine having these place settings for your holiday dinner. You know you need them because Great Aunt Maude won’t sit next to Uncle Howard since the incident nobody speaks of but is only known as The Incident and you have been curious about since you were nine. And then there’s your cousin Susie, who is bringing her ne’er-do-well boyfriend again, who is a nice enough chap but you know Susie’s father doesn’t approve of him because he has had seven jobs in the two years they have been together. And in the end, all you want is for everyone to get along and share a nice meal. Can’t we all just get along for one day out of the year?
Anyway, these place settings are attractive and amazingly simple to make. Get some nice, ripe bosc pears, dip them in melted dark chocolate and let them dry on waxed paper. Then put a hand-written name tag on each and place them on the plates where you have decided each guest should sit. The best part? It’s also a dessert.
To melt chocolate for dipping, use a double boiler. In the bottom part, heat water almost to boiling, then turn off the heat. Insert the top part and put chocolate in it. Stir until the chocolate is melted, then dip until your heart’s content.
Chocolate Place Setting by Marco Arment.
As a devoted reader of
Real Simple magazine, I subscribe to several e-newsletters they offer. I was interested in an article linked from today’s Real Simple Daily Finds newsletter called “
Fresh Ways to Dress Up a Table“. Idea number four really made me happy:
Instead of a regular candy dish on your buffet or drinks table, use a large footed vase for a display that’s hard to miss and even harder to resist. Shiny, foil-wrapped treats add a sweet sparkle.
<Editor’s Note – click on the link in the title above to see how Real Simple used this technique.>
As Susan mentioned last week, we recently hosted an event in our office to tell media folks about some of the latest trends in chocolate and candy. We took Real Simple’s idea one step further with our floral and candy centerpiece:
This picture was taken by Carl. I caught him trying to sneak some of the jelly beans out of the vase moments later.
Here’s how to create your own.
- Get two glass containers, one must fit fully inside of the other
- Fill the smaller of the two containers with water, place a bouquet of flowers inside and loosely cover the top of the glass with plastic wrap (as best you can with the flowers already in the vase)
- Carefully place the smaller vase inside the larger vase
- Fill the space between the larger and smaller vases with candy of your choice (we used jelly beans). Be sure to completely cover the smaller vase (hence the plastic wrap – you don’t want stray candies in your water-filled vase).
There also is a variation I love that works well if you have multiple tables to decorate. Fill a vase with pink bubble gum and use only pink flowers in the display (like pink gerbera daisies), fill another vase with starlight mints and red carnations, a third with butterscotch candies and orange daylilies, and so forth.
Have you used candy to make your table more attractive? We’d love to see pictures of your best uses of candy on a tablescape. Upload them to our Flickr photo pool and maybe you’ll even see your pretty picture on our blog!
I don’t know where they came from or how they got here but we started out with one M&Ms critter in our old office and it got lonely so we got it a friend and now they are popping up all over the place in our new office. Honestly, I am not sure how to handle this. They are cute and friendly enough but every time you turn around in the office there’s another one. These are anthropomorphized candy characters, for crying out loud, not tribbles. How can this be happening?
What if they just keep multiplying? What if they develop a pack mentality and take over or, even worse, kick us out of our fancy Georgetown office? Okay, so maybe they are just friendly. And maybe, just maybe, they aren’t really alive. If they were, I am sure all would be fine, judging from their TV personalities. Docile, friendly creatures. They might even purr.
But look what I found in the file room. It appears that they are nesting and making more of themselves. This one is still in his coccoon. Could it be? In all seriousness, I keep finding new ones in the office and I seriously do not know where they are coming from, although I strongly suspect our friends at Mars.
Have you ever seen these things around? Where do you even go to buy them?
My coworker Connie had a Halloween party last weekend and did a great job making use of various types of Halloween candy as cake decorations. She used Peeps, marshmallow faces and M&Ms. She may have even baked something inside the cake. Since she did not save a piece for me (practically a mortal sin), I cannot vouch for this but it would fit the nature of her creativity to do that. Click the picture to get the full-size image so you can use her decorating prowess as an inspiration for your own cake.
Do you do any Halloween decorating with candy? Take a picture and link to it in the comments or email it to me and I will post it if I get enough submissions.
