For the Love of Chocolate

My chocolate tool was adjustable so you can make different widths of chocolate wraps. This tool was made with food safe stainless steel.

You use a piece of acetate on the bottom, then put your stencil on top of the acetate, adjust your tool and just glide it down the stencil. It needs to set up before applying the second layer of chocolae over it. After both chocolates are added it needs to set up for a bit but it still needs to be pliable enough to be wrapped around your cake. Once the wrap is on I would put in the refrig to get it fully set up before removing the acetate. For this demo I actually used Chocolate Bark from the grocery store instead of real tempered chocolate. Tempered chocolate will come out look beautiful and shiney.

I love chocolate. I love cake. When I lived in Calif. there was this amazing bakery that used to do these chocolate wraps around there cakes. Well smoothing chocolate with a spatula might be easy for some but not for me. So one day I saw a chocolate pastry chef use this really great tool and I decided I could make my own only a smaller, better and much cheaper. So I played with the concept, drew up some plans of what I wanted and took the plans to a manufacturer and had 50 made. Yeah a lot of work just because I wanted one of these tools for myself. But it made smoothing chocolate for these wraps pretty darn quick. I then started playing around with the tool and found out I could stencil with white chocolate and go over it with dark chocolate. I took the tool to some cake shows and demoed and ended up selling them out. I was pretty darn happy about that. All for the love of playing with chocolate.

Passion Flowers & More

These flowers are so amazing. I am not sure what variety of Passion Flower Vine this is but the color is a bit different then the Passion Vines I have had in the past. I probably have over 200 buds on this plant right now. It seems to have liked the miracle grow and rain. At the moment it is taking over my kitchen window and porch floor.

I bought this plant while on vacation in Florida and planted it. I think it likes it's new spot. It is slowly taking over everything. It is considered an annual so it will die back this winter. In the past the passion flower vines have some how reseeded so I am hoping it will come back next year.

This is a new clematis I planted. It has hundreds on tiny little yellow lantern type flowers. Once the flowers are done I get the little fluffy after piece.

Autumn Sunset Roses are once again blooming. I love the messiness of this rose. Although I love the perfect Tea Roses I also just love the garden type rose as well.