Hey buzy beez it's Dzung and today
I wanted to share with you some Valentine's Day gifts that you can make for your friends. Everybody loves chocolate right and
Recently I found this chocolate shop in LA called Compartes oh my gosh
They have like the best chocolate. They have dark chocolate that they mix with circus animals
fruits
whiskey just really fun things but
They're kind of pricey one bar like this is like ten dollars
So I was really inspired by all of their flavors then I thought hey
Let's do a DIY version and have some fun with it so today. I'm gonna show you how to make chocolate bars with
pretzels circus animals and fruits with roses
Yep, fruit with roses rose petals are edible anyways if you guys are excited to make your own Valentine's Day gifts
be sure to hit that subscribe button if you want to see more fun ideas and
Don't forget to give this video a big thumbs up. I'll go ahead and get started with melting my chocolate
So for this recipe you can use your favorite chocolate bar
I'm using Ghirardelli, and I tend to like my chocolate kind of dark
So this is 72% cacao the one from Compartes is
70% cacao you can find chocolates
Good quality chocolates pretty much anywhere nowadays. I recommend Ghirardelli
TCHO which is like a Bay Area company. Oh, what else is good vo is good and then
Lindt is also pretty good, too
You can find them pretty much anywhere, but I tend to shy away from milk chocolate because I find it to be too sweet
But if that's your thing then hey go for it
So to melt our chocolate I'm gonna start by doing a bain-marie here
I have just a medium saucepan with a little bit of water at the bottom
You don't want to fill it up too high, and I'm gonna bring it to a light boil once it reaches a light boil
I'll turn off the heat and then I'll put
This steel bowl directly on top you don't want the bowl to be touching the water because could scorch the chocolate
Now I'll just take my chocolate break him into small pieces
Drop them in the bowl
And I'll just let it sit until it's melted about two-thirds of the way through and then I'm gonna swirl it with my spatula
Alright our chocolate is looking good. I learned from a fellow co-worker at sunset who is also a pastry chef
And she taught me how to melt chocolate
correctly
Basically you just take a spatula
and you swirl in one direction so clockwise and scrape the bottom so that it's nice and smooth and
That's it it looks beautiful
Alright, so now. I'm ready to pour this into my molds, but first. I wanted to show you guys the silicone molds
I'll link is in the description box below. You can get like a 2-pack for $10, so it's pretty cheap so the first one
I'm gonna make is circus animals with sprinkles
Honestly, this is great for Valentine's Day for kids and their classmates
But I think I'm gonna make these for Erisy's first birthday favors
They're so cute, and I love how they turned out so while I was testing the recipes
There's a few tips that I want to give you before we get started the bottom of our chocolate Bowl
Is full of water the first time I did this I didn't think about the condensation at the bottom
And it spilled into my chocolate mold, and it kind of ruined it so before you start
Remove the bowl and just wipe the bottom
To get rid of any water, so it does not spill into your mold
What's nice and clean, so now we're just gonna pour in a little bit just to cover the bottom
This looks good so any leftover chocolate. Just go ahead and put it back on to the pot
Because you want to keep it melted still for the next few chocolates
Now with my small offset spatula. I'm gonna spread the chocolate to make it even
I'll just give it a quick shake so that it levels out look at that
So per day and now for the fun part. We start decorating
Here I got some
Classic circus animals, and I'm just gonna out randomly place them
switch off between
every other color and
Last one a camel. I think this is my favorite shape in the circus animal cookie farm
Now with the empty negative chocolate space we're gonna fill it in with tons of sprinkles here
I just have some rainbow sprinkles
And I'll just toss them in
And
That's it doesn't it look so festive and fun I'm gonna let it sit here for a few minutes
Just so it kind of solidifies enough so that I can move it into the fridge
So I've moved our circus animals sprinkle chocolate bar into the fridge, and I'm just gonna let it set for about 15 minutes
Just until it's nice and firm
Moving on we're gonna be making
Compartes' probably their best seller at least that's what they told me
chocolate and pretzels
So I've already broken up the pretzels into pieces
You watch as varying sizes if you guys want to use those classic twisty
Pretzels, that's totally fine, too if you are to use if you were to use those though. I would just leave them whole
Alright again with our chocolate wipe the bowl
Look how smooth that is
So pretty now
I don't want to fill the mold all the way through because as you add the pieces of pretzels or just our toppings in general
the
Chocolate could overflow, so I just want to leave a little bit of room and then using my offset spatula
I'll move it around again
and then
we'll just sprinkle in our pretzel pieces I
Like to add a little bit of the crumbs just so it adds a little bit of interesting
Patterns to this alright so once I'm done sprinkling the pretzels. I'm just gonna give the chocolate mold a shake to even everything out now
I'll just let it sit for a few minutes to firm up at the bottom, and then I'm gonna put it in the fridge
Too so last but not least this one's probably the most fancy bougie one out of all of them
Guys take notes because it includes everything that a lady would want gold roses
berries
chocolates
You'll win some good points on this one alright so here
I have my mold laid out and then I'm just gonna add my chocolate I
Forgot to wipe the bowl and this is what happens there's a drop of water, but luckily it did not get into my mold
Spread our chocolate out
Give it a shake
If it goes on to the mold like this don't worry about it cuz later when you break the chocolate it'll separate so first
I'm gonna sprinkle some gold dust if you guys have like edible gold you can totally place it on too
But I like the gold dust and that's all I have so
I'll add a little bit to my strainer
The goal just gives it a very pretty shimmer
I got this at Michael's, but you can get at pretty much any craft stores now. I'm gonna layer on
some freeze-dried strawberries I
Like finding round ones with an eye like this
cuz it looks really interesting just place it randomly and
Then I have little pieces of freeze-dried raspberries that I've broken up into smaller pieces, and I'm just gonna sprinkle it around
Finally I'm gonna sprinkle a little bit of rose petals
Aren't they so pretty I actually got I?
Actually got this in the spice aisle at world market it comes in this pretty
Purplish color that I think goes so well with our bar our chocolate bar
Smells so good - it's like potpourri
You guys know the drill let it sit for a couple minutes, and then we'll pop it into the fridge so
Here are our finished products the chocolate has set
and
The sprinkles some of them might be loose, but that's okay just shake it off
But pretty much everything has stuck to the chocolate. It's so pretty this one is my
Favorite look how interesting it looks it looks like a piece of art
But I love how the speckles of gold just kind of shows through and then the Roses
I actually
Really appreciate that the roses weren't pink or red and that they were purple
Just because it gives a little more interest to our design all right now
I'm just gonna carefully peel our chocolate off. I really like these silicone molds because it makes it a lot easier to do this
It's flexible
And look at the back
It's nice and shiny
Gorgeous
Okay now I'm going to show you guys how I would package them up to give as gifts
here, I got some gold foil I got them off of Amazon make sure you're buying food-grade foil because there were some that weren't just
Measure it to be the width of the chocolate bar
Getting crafty today
I'll place my chocolate bar in the middle of the foil
Actually, I think I will flip this around
Cover it
Wrap it like a neat little package
You can probably make the length a little longer just so it folds down here, but I miscalculated. That's okay. I
Just realized this is my first time doing
Arts and crafts or crafty things on the channel and as you can see I am NOT very crafty. That's my sister's Department growing up
Okay
and then now to
What I think I'm gonna do here is I'm gonna cut the paper just so that it barely covers
The size of the chocolate bar so I think right here is good
And what would be really neat is that this can double as your
Valentine's Day card so I can write a little message in here. See who should I give this to I?
Guess Nate or Erisy no she can't eat it yet. Let's write to Nate. Dear
Husband I love
you
Happy
Valentine's Day
Okay, so the note will go inside so using our pretty side, and we'll face it down
And then we'll just wrap our chocolate
And
Then if you guys wanted to add fun design I have hearts here that I've already cut that you can just glue on
and
Our chocolate bar is done
What you guys think of my arts and crafts project?
I definitely know that the chocolate is awesome, but I could use some work in the craft department I know
This is not my area of expertise
Anyways, I hope you guys enjoyed our
chocolate bar inspirations today
So I'll have the step-by-step tutorial listed on my blog at honeysucklecatering.com which is powered by?
Squarespace if you guys are interested in creating your own online store
website or even blog head over to Squarespace.com where you can get a
14-day trial if you guys are ready to start your blog I have a coupon code for you in the link in the description box
below
Thank you to Compartes for giving me the inspiration. I don't want to rip you off because your chocolate really is amazing
Anyways, I would love to hear what you guys are doing for Valentine's Day
And if you guys have any DIY Valentine's Day project I would love to hear about it cuz I am all about
DIY Valentine's Day gifts, thank you so much for watching and I will see you guys real soon for mom days. Bye