The Easy, How-To Guide on Making Chocolate Designs To Dress-Up Any Dessert

I can’t wait to show you this next project – The Easy Guide To Making Chocolate Designs. It is like a recipe and a DIY in one! You see, I am cheap (and why we have this site so we can share many things, including frugal hacks), so to pay for dressed up desserts is an extreme rarity. But I love CUTE things and I love making things fun and cute.

I have learned over the years that it is quite easy to make a lot of things yourself for a fraction of the cost and most of them are also super fun to do. I share a lot of fudge recipe variations because fudge is expensive to buy, incredibly easy and very frugal to make.

Well, let’s share a whole new take on expensive chocolate recipes – Chocolate Designs!

I’ve always marveled at seeing art made from chocolate. One day, I wanted to figure out how to do it. I’ve seen lots of videos on you tube showing amazing artists making amazing things. I am not an artist, but can manage to make some cute things. Granted, it’s not the intricate, lace-like designs, so if you are an artist, you will be able to make even more detailed, intricate designs.

So I am going to show you the recipe (not really a recipe) and the steps and then I suggest you head to your kitchen with the supplies and get practicing!

All you need is melting chocolate or chocolate chips. You also need cooking wax – like the Gulf brand. You can find this in the cooking aisle of any grocery store (or super store). The cooking wax is very important because chocolate is dull and your designs will be very dull looking. If you are going to put the effort in, you don’t want the designs to look faded and dull. The wax makes it shiny and pretty!

Start by “shaving” with a knife about a tablespoon of wax per 1 cup of chocolate.

Pop the wax in the microwave in a microwave safe bowl for about 1 minute. When the wax is mostly melted, add 1 cup of chocolate chips. Then microwave for 15-30 seconds at a time.

Please note, chocolate burns VERY easily. I would recommend microwaving for 30 seconds and stir it for several seconds to see how melted it is. The chocolate chips will often not look very melted after 30 seconds, but as you stir it, it will melt quite a bit more. If it’s just not quite there, microwave for 15-seconds more. But do not microwave for more than 60-seconds total! It will burn and harden in a crusty, weird manner.

After your chocolate is melted, you will scoop it into a ziploc in the corner of the bag. Then snip a tiny piece off the corner of the ziploc to make a faux pastry bag with writing tip.

On top of wax paper, begin “drawing” with your chocolate!

Experiment and have fun! Make shapes, words, letters, designs relevant to your theme.

If you want to add sprinkles, you need to do this before the chocolate hardens to “adhere” the sprinkles to the chocolate. The sprinkles are fun for even more of a fun design for your theme!

Once you have completed your designs, we would recommend cooling in the fridge (flat) for several hours or even speed up the cooling by placing in the freezer.

We made all kinds of shapes to show them off! Remember, this is coming from someone who is not an artist at all and they still look pretty decent and regardless, dresses up cupcakes like nobody’s business and only cost a few cents per design!

Here’s a sample of some of the designs we demonstrated for this post:

Birthday Balloon Bouquet

Birthday Balloon Bouquet with Sprinkles

Random design for any occassion

Simple Christmas Tree – This one would be fun with the big round sprinkles to look like ornaments! 

Candy Cane!

Sprinkles Star

Christmas Tree Ornament

Flower design

A couple of notes:

• You can draw sample designs on a piece of paper with a sharpie and then place it under the wax paper to “trace” your designs. This is a good way to practice, but we have often found that attempting to trace makes the design look a little choppy rather than just free-styling it!
• Work quickly. The chocolate will being hardening soon after melting and so you have about a 5 – 10 minute window of useable chocolate. You can rewarm it in the bag for about 15 seconds and massage it in the bag to make it smoother to use it until you are finished.
• Make sure that all lines are connected! Meaning that no matter what you are making, you don’t want dangling chocolate, thin lines, or any delicate/intricate designs, the risk of breakage is great. The more “secure” you make the lines and anchor onto the other parts, the more durable it will be.
• You can make words too, but again, you want them thick or the delicate lines will break.
• Make a thick chocolate stem on the bottom of the design as you need a way to anchor it into your dessert. This needs to be sturdy.
• Make sure to full cool or freeze before removing from the paper. Is there any soft/warm part remaining when you attempt to remove from the wax paper, the design will fall apart.
• Don’t add the designs to your dessert until moments before serving. They will not travel well. So if you’ve made the designs for a dessert not at the same location, keep the designs in a pan or flat storage container between wax paper for travel. Once you have reached your destination, place the designs in your dessert on the spot. If they heated at all (like in a warm car), you want to freeze it for a few minutes to re-harden. They will not sit outside in the sun or hot places for long! It is chocolate, so just consider these environmental issues.

Finally, have fun and most anything you make will be impressive whether you are an artist or not!

You can watch this video we made showing the actual live process:

Have you tried this? If you have or when you do…we’d love to hear how it went for you and if you have any tips to share! 

See more DIY Ideas and Recipes (since this is sorta both!)