Making Floral Dessert Ornaments

Edible plants possess their own unique flavors that mingle with your dessert recipes. For example, all varieties of the rose are edible and lavender is edible as well. These pretty, fragrant and tasty flowers can be altered with ease in your kitchen to lend to your next culinary dessert masterpiece. Knowing how to make floral dessert ornaments with some of these edible flowers gives you the ability to make use of your garden flora and foliage.

Materials & Setup
Gather the following materials and ingredients to create this creative and culinary craft: double boiler, white chocolate chips, milk chocolate chips, dusting sugars of various colors, fine-bristled paintbrush, assorted flower petals and waxed paper. Mint leaves and rose petals serve as timeless and flavorful choices for this craft project. Select leaves and petals that are free of any signs of wilting or bruising. You can also use squash or pumpkin blossoms as well as carnations and day lilies.

Fill the lower reservoir of the double boiler with water and insert the top chamber. Turn the stove to a medium-low setting so the boiler slowly heats. Add 1-cup of milk chocolate chips to the top reservoir and cover the pot. The chocolate chips will slowly melt into a gooey chocolate sauce. Spread a sheet of waxed paper out evenly on your counter-top.

Go through the flower petals and edible leaves that you are planning to use, making sure to rinse them and pat them dry gently with paper towels. This removes dirt and other impurities from the botanical materials, making them safe for consumption.

Preparation
Remove the lid from the double boiler once the chips have melted into a chocolate sauce. Grasp a single rose petal by the straight tabbed end. If you are using a squash or pumpkin blossom, grasp it by the hip. Dunk the tip of the petal or blossom into the melted milk chocolate halfway. This coats half of the petal or blossom with the dense melted chocolate. Do this only briefly, and lift the petal or blossom immediately out of the chocolate. As the air hits the melted chocolate it will harden instantly around the petals. Lay the coated flower petals, blossoms or edible leaves out carefully on the waxed paper sheet. Once you have used as much of the milk chocolate as you need, clean or replace the top chamber of the double boiler. Begin the melting process with about 1/2-cup of white chocolate chips.

Dunk each chocolate-coated flower petal, leaf or blossom 1/4 of the way into the melted white chocolate. This gives a tiered effect to the botanical material as half of it is layered in milk chocolate while the layer of white chocolate is lower. Place the double coated petals, leaves or blossoms in your freezer on the waxed paper sheet for about an hour.

Finishing Touches
Select a couple of different colors of dusting sugars. Dusting sugars are used in professional cake and dessert decorating. They are ground into a fine dust, much like confectioners sugar, and are colored vibrantly. Put about a tsp. of each color of choice of dusting sugar into a separate dish each.

Dip the tip of a fine-bristled paintbrush into a dish of clean, cool water. This moistens it. Drag the moistened paintbrush through the dusting sugar in the color of your choice. Dab the brush lightly at the white-chocolate layer of the coated floral piece. Repeat this task with each decorative flower, petal or leaf until you reach the desired color combinations and designs.