DIY chocolate letters

A creative & personalized dessert topper

A few years ago on A Beautiful Mess (a blog I follow), the girls made freehand chocolate trees to decorate a Christmas cake. For the past couple Christmases, I've used their trick to make trees of my own. When my brother graduated college last weekend, I jumped at the chance to bake him a "Congrats! You did it!" cake. To get my message across, I used the chocolate tree method - this time for writing.

The method couldn't be easier. Start by lining a cookie sheet with parchment or wax paper. Pour a bunch of semi-sweet chocolate chips into a microwave-safe bowl and heat until the chips start to melt - about one minute. Then stir the chips until smooth and fully melted. Pour the melted chocolate into a plastic baggie, and trim off one of the bottom corners (just the very tip) - this is your makeshift piping bag!

Write out your message on the parchment/wax paper. If you're doing individual letters, it doesn't hurt to make multiples of the ones you'll be using in case any don't turn out. I played around with cursive and individual letters, but do what you like. When first starting out, I found that shorter words are definitely easier - festive words like "yay!" or, for the holidays, try "joy" or "noel." Feel free to fill up the parchment/wax paper with letters, words, scribbles, drawings (I've made snowflakes in the past) - you don't have to use everything you make, but it's fun to have the options.

Place the cookie sheet in the garage or in the fridge overnight. After you've frosted your cake/brownies/etc., pull the chocolate letters - they'll pop right off of the paper - and work quickly to gently place them into the frosting. Here's why you always use semi-sweet chocolate: As you handle the chocolate, it will melt a bit and get fingerprint-y, but semi-sweet will melt a bit slower than milk chocolate, giving you more time to work with it. If the  letters get too melt-y as you go, just be patient. Stick them back in the fridge/garage for a few minutes, then get back to work.

And no, the chocolate letters will never melt fully - they only melt a bit under the warmth of your body heat. Once you've placed the letters and are happy with them, leave them alone and they'll stay looking pretty until go-time. Though, if you can, I would store your dessert in a cool place just to keep the frosting and letters as firm as possible until serving time.

*Note: For this cake, I used the Beatty's chocolate cake recipe, but for the frosting I mixed 2 cups powdered sugar with 1 cup softened butter and 1 TBS milk. This is enough to frost the entire outside of the cake. For the middle layer, I melted a heaping TBS of Nutella with some chocolate chips in the microwave and spread it evenly across what would be the middle of the cake. Yay!