This chocolate Christmas tree touched me. One of those recipes you see and can’t take your mind out of it. I just had to give it a try.
Give a try? Yes, because it is simple, what isn’t the same thing as easy. But it’s worth trying.
It is not easy because you need patience, you need time, you need the best mood to be calm and wait for while small parts solidify. It’s not my usual recipes, easy, quick and done ;-).
But…with all these warnings, I just had to do it…and I didn’t regret.
First of all because it is beautiful to see. It’s delicate, it’s elegant. And second, it makes you feel good, just like when you build the gingerbread house.
I found this delicious idea on the fabulous Arabafeliceincucina blog, from Stefania. She is so hilarious when describing the best conditions to build this chocolate Christmas tree, as putting air conditioning high if you live in a warm place, not turning on oven or decide to boil anything, and so on.
Well, here in Italy is pretty cold now and I didn’t have to worry about the weather, but I prepared it in the morning, while nothing else was being prepared. I did it in phases, getting out for a coffee between a piece and another. I finalized it at lunch time and it was not difficult. You just have to be in a calm day, with no worries around…and it is really a cute thing to do.
Let’s say it begins to put you in the Christmas mood ;-).
You need only good quality dark chocolate and some icing sugar to decorate as snow.
You need to make a parchment paper cone (greatly explained here) where you’re going to put the chocolate in to create many crosses. Stefania suggests 3 of each length.
Use your fantasy and creativity. My tree is larger in the basis, hers is more regular in circumference. No worries. They are all beautiful.
Attention: even if you do not have warm weather, take care of your chocolate Christmas tree and do not expose it to warm lights (I did it and it melted and looked like a weeping willow!). I left it into a piece of my dining room furniture, where there’s a light on (it increased its beauty!) to show it to my husband – and what he found was…a chocolate weeping willow :-)!
You should temperate the chocolate. I admit I did not have yet the patience to learn it the perfect way. What I do is to melt the chocolate leaving about 30% aside. When it is all melted, I take it out of the bain marie (you can melt it into the microwave too) I add the 30% left aside and stir until melted – and it reaches (more or less) the right temperature to be used.
After making many crosses, wait them to solidify. Then keep aside some melted chocolate that will serve as glue. Begin putting the larger cross and add a pinch of melted chocolate in the middle, and add a second cross. Do not build the whole tree in one batch as it doesn’t work. It has to solidify before adding other crosses (I did mine in three times).
- 7 oz / 200 g good quality dark chocolate
- icing sugar
- Melt ⅔ of the whole chocolate and take it out of the bain marie or microwave.
- Add the remaining chocolate and stir until all is melted.
- Prepare some parchment sheets to create your crosses on.
- Create a paper cone, add chocolate and begin to create many crosses, trying to have three of each size.
- Remember the smaller ones (for the top) have to be small like 2 cm/0.8in.
- When they are solid, begin to build your tree using the biggest crosses. Place the first one and then add a drop of melted chocolate (it will work as glue) and add another one.
- Build about an inch and put it into the fridge to solidify.
- Go ahead with some other crosses and after another batch, put it in the fridge again.
- Repeat until the end.
- Add some icing sugar as snow.
- Buon appetito and Merry Christmas!
