I am making a cake Saturday for a bridal shower. The theme is fall and colors are cream, brown and orange. The friend of the bride asked if I could do leaves on the cake. I have gone through the galleries and noticed some use fondant with the cutters and some paint chocolate on silk leaves. I made leaves with tootsie rolls for an all chocolate wedding. Never have done the chocolate painting. Is it easy and what would you suggest?? I am just nervous and want this cake to turn out well, could be other potential orders. Also if anyone has any ideas on what to do, I believe I am going to do a 12 inch round.

Thanks in advance I appreciate any feedback!

Angela

The first thing I notice in your post is the statement that the 'friend of the bride' asked if you could do leaves. So, does the bride want leaves or does the friend want leaves? Make sure you get this from the bride herself, before you go to all the work to make leaves.

I like to use fondant for leaves. The painted chocolate leaves are gorgeous, but too delicate and labor-intensive for me. I'm just not good enough to do those yet.

I agree with the fondant idea. You can do them in brown orange and gold. It would look very pretty and they have some great cutters and presses out there.

Enjoy your day!
Karen

i took a demo at ices convention this year on painting chocolate on leaves.... it was wonderful.... she melted her chocolate disk in the wilton little bowls.... kept them on heating pad.... washed her leaves and dried them good... the used her brush and painted at least 3 different fall colors on the leaves... had it sorta thick.. let them set up... then peeled the leaf away from the chocolate.. you blend the colors as you paint... she made chocolate acorns, also... so pretty ... her name is mary jo dowling... her web site. www.cakesbymj.com

I don't normally deal with brides for bridal shower cakes, the friend was the one that ordered the cake, and is having the shower for her. The theme is fall with the colors cream, brown and orange so I think this is a great idea. I am still kind of torn on what to do. Thanks Icer101 I will check that website out!

Another question I would have (Icer101 I just checked the website beautiful cakes!) When using chocolate. Do you just use milk chocolate? Would you use white chocolate and then paint?? I am sorry I am clueless on this!!! HELP!!

Thank You!

I believe your best bet would be to use candy melts (Wilton or Merckens). If you use regular chocolate I'm pretty sure it has to be tempered and that's a whole other bag of worms if you've never done it before.

Tweedie, Sounds good. WOuld you use white chocolate and then paint? and then for a brown leaf milk chocolate? Then use luster dust?

You could definitely use the regular chocolate wafers to make the brown leaves. For the other colors you could tint the white wafers with candy colors and paint that way (they could be solid colors or you could use a couple of colors on each leaf which would be very pretty, like an orangey red towards the center and then blend out into yellow towards the edges). But I suppose you could also make them white and use the dust to color them after they've dried.

I just did cupcakes with a small 7 inch cake with a fall theme and leaves. I did fondant leaves. I looked at that website noted above with the chocolate leaves, now the leaves are beautiful and would be tasty but they are flat. With fondant you put them in your flower formers or something else and you can shape them so they look like they have some movement, they look more realistic. I airbrushed mine all different colors and they were gorgeous! My MIL said nobody is going to believe you can eat them. The bride had to tell everyone that the leaves were edible.
I'm sure whatever you choose to do, it will be beautiful! If you do choose fondant, I would use chocolate fondant if you have any!

JMOH

The chocolate ones are easy once you get your flow. For sure use candy melts. And I didn't look at the nice link. But just dont' let any choco get on the other side fo the leaf.

What I did was pipe the choco on then tap the leaf a tiddly bit to rearrange the choco y'know how it does. Then in the freezer for five minutes and the leaves peeled off like candy wrappers.

I mean with choco you gotta get into the 'mind' of the chocolate, or the 'science' of the chocolate. Like y'know how they say a broken clock has the right time twice a day. That's like chocolate--it's only gonna cooperate at the exact time it wants to, not before not after--but once you get there it's so easy and fun.

It's a fat--all you're doing is manipulating it to become liquid then back to solid.

This cake was copied from one in a magazine --lousy quality photo but my leaves came out good.