Hi everyone!
Welcome back to my channel.
So, I’ve been feeling a little bit of crispness in the air outside this week and we all know
Starbucks has rolled out their pumpkin drinks.
I think it’s about time to get making some festive baked goods and decorations.
So, today I’m going to be teaching you how to make chocolate leaves using mint leaves.
And you can use the leaves to spice up any little desserts that you have, just as a cute
little festive decoration.
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And if you can’t guess, I make videos about baking and cake decorating.
To get started on your chocolate leaves you’re going to want a sheet tray with a piece of
parchment paper on it.
An extra piece of parchment paper.
A parchment piping bag.
A paint brush that you don’t mind dipping in chocolate and is clean…food grade.
Some chocolate.
Some tweezers.
Also preferably clean tweezers.
A paint brush that you can use to dust on some metallic powders, if that’s how you
want to finish your leaves.
I don’t really think they look finished until you dust them with the powder.
And then some mint leaves of course.
So, the first step is to melt your chocolate…
And then go ahead and put it in your piping bag.
And then next you’re just going to set up your work station.
You can set the powders and the tweezers aside for now.
You want to lay out your piece of parchment paper.
And you’ve got your pan here with parchment paper.
And this is to move your mint leaves on to dry and put in the fridge until they set.
Next you’re just going to pick out some good leaves.
So, pull some out here.
You want to grab some kind of big ones, those are easier to make.
And then, if you have any leaves that are wilted, they don’t work very well because
they just fall apart when you try to peel them off the chocolate.
So you want really fresh mint leaves.
Sometimes at the grocery store they’re kind of like, juicy and wilty, but these ones are
really good.
They look fresh.
K, we’ll start with this.
Now let me show you what you’re going to do!
So go ahead and take your first leaf.
You’re going to take your piping bag and pipe chocolate down the center where the stem
is.
And then I kind of trace the outside, not going all the way to the edge, and then fill
it in.
Then I do the same with the other side, like this.
Then I’m going to take my paintbrush and bring the chocolate out to the edge.
And this will give you like a nice realistic edge that’s a little bit thinner.
But you want plenty of chocolate in the middle or else the leaf, the chocolate leaf, will
just break when you try to take the mint leaf off.
And then one other note, is that when you pull the chocolate off the side try not to
get it up underneath the leaf or it’ll trap the mint leaf in like a sandwich.
It’ll be really hard to pull off.
So then you’re just going to carefully take your chocolate leaf and lay it on your sheet
tray.
And then you’re going to start your next leaf in a new spot on your parchment paper.
Because like I said, you don’t want chocolate getting underneath the mint leaf or it will,
like, glue it onto the chocolate if it’s coming from both sides.
And I used to make these by painting chocolate on the whole leaf, but I’ve found that they
broke a lot and I think it’s because the chocolate was too thin.
So now I’ve found that piping it works best and then just using the brush to thin out
the edge.
So now we have plenty of chocolate here so it won’t be so fragile, the chocolate leaf.
And basically that’s all I’m doing.
I’m just going to continue to repeat this until I have all the leaves that I want to
make, and then I’ll show you what we do after.
These turn out so nice because the details of the stem and all the little leaf veins
get imprinted into the chocolate.
They look super realistic.
And then when you dust them with the luster dust after they’re dry, it brings out all
the different textures.
If your paint brush is getting all clumpy, you can just run it under hot water, melt
the chocolate, and then dry it off and keep going with a fresh brush.
If your leaves are naturally pretty flat you might want to place them on top of like a
dowel or a paint brush and that will let them dry with a nice little curve.
I like some to be curled and some to be flat.
You just have a nice natural mixture.
And once you’ve covered all the leaves that you want in chocolate, just go ahead and place
your sheet tray in the fridge.
One your leaves are set up, pull them out from the fridge.
And I’m going to start peeling off the mint.
We’ll start with these ones.
I kind of start just using my fingers and seeing how much I can get off.
The little ones are always really easy.
That looks really good.
I’m going to set them on another sheet tray I have here.
And I’m just going to continue doing that.
Sometimes the edges get stuck, and that’s when the tweezers come in handy.
Like this one.
You can see there’s a few little spots and you just carefully grab, if I can get it.
Sometimes you can grab an edge and then finish peeling it like that.
That worked out really nice.
I think I might have forgot to mention that you want to pipe the chocolate on the backside
of the leaf.
Cause that’s the side of the leaf that is sticking out the most.
If you do the inside, you’re not going to get as much obvious detail.
So, just in case I forgot to mention that earlier.
So, there’s a little left on the edge.
I’m just going to grab it.
And if you break off a piece of the edge when you’re doing this it’s no big deal cause
it just looks more organic.
And then, if there’s some pieces of the leaf you can’t get off, I don’t think
it’s a big deal, I just put some extra luster dust on top of it.
So it still works out just fine.
So you just continue on like this, peeling off.
And this one, I broke.
It was a little fragile, but I’m still going to save it because I might have a use for
it.
But if you break a few that’s ok.
This is definitely the hardest part.
See how messy this one is?
Somehow I got chocolate on the bottom so it’s like trapped in there.
So I’m not going to try too hard to get that part off.
I’m just going to “leaf” it.
lol.
Whoever eats this one, well, it might taste a little minty.
Alright, here’s all our leaves with the mint pulled off.
And next we’re going to dust them with a little bit of metallic powders.
So for the metallic powders, for these leaves because they’re fall, I like to use a bronze
and a gold.
And I like to do a mixture of each, just for some variety.
And basically you’re just going to dip your brush into the powder and lightly dust the
leaf like this.
You can do more or less, depending on your preference of course.
And if you have a little bit of leftover mint, you can just put a little extra luster dust
there to kind of help cover it.
I just love how the metallics look against the leaf, it really brings out the texture
in the leaf and also adds a nice rustic fall feel to them.
I just think they look way more finished once they’re dusted.
But you know me, I love anything metallic basically.
And now here’s what the gold looks like in contrast.
Whoa!
Oopsie.
I had a little bit much on there, but hey, it’s still pretty!
And here are our leaves all finished with the metallic powders!
So i’m making a pumpkin pie later and I’m going to be using all these leaves to decorate
it.
And I’ll show you the finished product…now!
That’s just to give you an idea of what you can use these on.
Comment down below if you have any ideas of what these festive little leaves would look
really cute on.
And thank you so much for watching today.
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If you want to learn something else that’s sweet, click on this video or on this video.
And I will see you guys in a week, bye!