Fun with Chocolate: Orange Bunnies

Easter is almost here, and that means bunnies are very popular....especially at the bakery.  I saw the neatest pin on Pinterest that showed how to take orange-colored chocolate and turn it into a really cute little bunny.  Here's the link to the pin so you can see the original idea...

Click here for the link to the original pin....






To start, I drew an outline by hand on a piece of parchment paper.  When I was satisfied with the shape and size, I outlined it in black Sharpie marker to make it stand out.  I then traced it multiple times on a larger sheet of parchment until I had 12 outlines on the paper and taped a blank piece of parchment over it.  You don't want the food touching the ink!  The black Sharpie stands out so well underneath the blank parchment.  You can see right through it!

My original artwork

Next I melted some white chocolate that I colored with special orange candy coloring.  You can't use icing colors to tint chocolate because they are water based.  It would cause the chocolate to seize up.  The candy colorings are oil based!  I placed the melted orange-colored chocolate into a piping bag (without a piping tip).  Just a quick little snip of the scissors at the tip of the bag gave me the perfect tiny opening to pipe out the chocolate.

I first traced the outline that I could see showing through the parchment paper.

Outline piped in first

Next, on a diagonal, I piped lines to roughly fill in the bunny shape.  I didn't worry about them being even or if they were spaced apart differently.  Just zigzag back and forth on a diagonal!

Zigzag piping!

Next, continue to fill on but in an OPPOSITE diagonal direction.  Again, don't worry about being even or spacing things out the same....it's supposed to look a little messy.  That's the whole idea.

Finished bunny!!!

Once you are done, pop these in the refrigerator for about 15 minutes so they will harden.  You can do it in the freezer if you are in a hurry....should only take about 5 minutes in the freezer!

Once finished, it's time to get the cupcake ready.  I chose to do both vanilla and chocolate cupcakes today.  After coring them out and filling them with vanilla buttercream, I piped chocolate buttercream in the classic cupcake icing swirl on top of each cupcake with a Wilton 1M icing tip.  Then, using the Wilton #233 multi-opening tip (for grass and fur...see pic below), I piped a round area of grass (piping about 7 or 8 little tufts of grass in a circle).

Wilton #233 tip

Tufts of grass in a circle

Once the grass was piped in, it was just a matter of placing a hardened chocolate bunny in the center of the tuft of icing grass.

I am anxious to try this same chocolate-making techniques with other holidays.  I have seen hearts with pretty filigree designs inside.  A Christmas tree would be cute, or perhaps a Halloween pumpkin.  So many possibilities!