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Friday, January 20, 2012

{How to Make} Chocolate Curls

If you want to feel fancy, here is a one way to do so......make chocolate curls! These chocolate curls really add a lot to a dessert or they are just plain fun to eat. I love the way they melt in your mouth! So yummy! The best part about these curls it that they are so simple to make, you really can't mess up. Below I have a pretty thorough step-by-step (with pictures) instructions on how to make them. I hope you'll have fun fancying up your dessert dishes!




Chocolate Curls
Printable Version

I actually don't really follow a recipe for this, but in case you want one here it is:

3 ounces chocolate, (one baking square) or chocolate chips
2 teaspoons coconut oil (for better taste use coconut oil, if you don't have any you can use Crisco)

***I usually just throw some chocolate and coconut oil and melt it....I haven't messed it up without following a recipe.

First place a dinner sized plate in the fridge, you'll see why later on. Place chocolate and coconut oil/Crisco in a microwave-safe bowl and microwave in 30 second increments until chocolate and coconut oil/Crisco are melted smooth.

Pour chocolate on a back-side of a metal cookie sheet (or a non-rimmed metal baking sheet) and smooth it out with a spatula or scraper, or knife, etc until it's very thin. Place the sheet in the freezer for a few minutes. To test for done-ness, use the finger print test, if you touch the chocolate with your finger and it leaves an indent of your fingerprint, wait a few more minutes.

With a metal or hard plastic spatula (I use a plastic Pampered Chef pan scraper - because I've got metal shavings in with my chocolate scraping a metal pan with a metal spatula.) start scraping the chocolate from the cookie sheet. If it's too frozen/hard then it will just crack and crumble, so wait a minute and try again, when it starts curling you have a few minutes before it will be too soft again, when it stops curling cause it's too soft then put in the freezer for a minute or so and go at it again.

When you have all your curls scraped from the cookie sheet, place them on a cold plate and refrigerate until hardened. Place curls in the fridge until use or you can freeze them in a freezer bag and use them whenever you'd like.

Garnish cakes, pies, and other desserts with these delectable and fancy curls!

Recipe Source: slightly adapted from The Pioneer Woman

Spread the chocolate thin, I like using a Papered Chef pan scraper
Test it with your finger to see if it's done, if you have a wet chocolatey finger print stick in back in the freezer for a minute or two. You should only have the slightest indication of a fingerprint when you touch it.
If it's too hard, it will crack when you try to scrap the curls away....like so
Still just barely too cold and hard
Ahhh, perfect, now they are curling just right.
Work quickly and if it stops curling nice,
just put it back in the freezer for a minute or two and try again.
Place all the curls on a cold plate and then refrigerate them until they are hard and you are ready to use them. If you want to save them for later stick them in a freezer bad after you've refrigerated them and they are nice and hard and then pull them out of the freezer to fancy up whatever dessert you are making.
Here is my evidence of the metal shavings on my chocolate curls. To avoid this use a metal pan and plastic scraper or the bottom of a plastic tray and a metal spatula. The metal on metal seems to always result in metal shavings on my curls, and I'm thinking that really is not healthy to ingest. :)
Featured Desserts:

Chocolate Fudge Cake with Chocolate Curls
Sadies' Dessert....will be posting this soon, it was featured today on Mel's Kitchen Cafe, one of my food blog heros, if you'd like to check it out.

Link

3 comments:

  1. You made it onto Mel's Kitchen Cafe! You are famous in my eyes! That is great. I love the chocolate curls. Yum yum.

    ReplyDelete