Has anyone made any realistic looking butterflies out of chocolate before? I saw an AWESOME sunflower once...I cant remember where I saw it...but the lady traced the pattern in chocolate first, then once it was dry she went over it with different colors of orange and yellow chocolate. When you peeled the choc. off the parchment paper it just looked amazing. Anyone ever do this for butterflies?

If not chocolate, does anyone have any tips for making realistic, edible butterflies? I saw a tutorial using rice paper or something like that, but that doesnt really interest me. It looked too complicated.

Ideas?

Check out The Whimsical Bakehousecookbook. It gives a great how to on this with colored chocolate.

This is the technique, but not the one I remember. The one I saw originally was awesome.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sugarmooncakeco/2132821816/

Thank you! I just looked at their website and I see a lot of stuff is done with chocolate. A lot of the cakes on the website are quite gaudy and mis-matched, though. There arent any instructions on the website for their butterflies, but they are quite pretty. If I cant find any info online Ill see if I can find their book somewhere.

Do check out the book. I believe the sunflower you saw was probably from the first book. They have an amazing sunflower cake in there.
Whimsical Bakehouse does like many of their color mixes and combos to be.....well......whimsical.
But they show several ideas that are toned down too and really, once you get the technique down, you can go with whatever color schemes you like.

These aren't particularly realistic, but they are chocolate and look do-able. http://winged-pigs.blogspot.com/2009/03/how-to-make-3-d-chocolate-butterfly.html

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jrai/623810528/

I love these! Anyone have any tips for how to get it looking so nice on both sides of the wings? Do you just outline the dark color and carefully fill it in with the lighter color? Would they set up ok if you thined the chocolate with oil or shortening? If anyone has done this I would love some tips. EDIT: Would you paint the color in or use a small parchment bag?

My grandma loves butterflies. Id love to be able to pull this off for her birthday.

They make chocolate monarchs in the book, Hello cupcake and they look pretty good from both sides. Only one side is perfectly smooth though. The other side will end up having a tiny bit of a 3-D look to it.
Heather

I would recomend using candy melts rather than straight chocolate. you will not need to thin it down with anything, for coloring the white chocolate, either buy the precolored candy melts or use candy color. Regular gel color makes the chocolate seize for me. You start with your outline first, grab any clip art you can find of a nice butterfly, outline with dark chocolate and then let it set up for a little bit, then fill it all in with the colored chocolate. I usually set my picture down on a cookie sheet, put parchment paper over it and then trace the picture in chocolate. when you're done, give the pan just a slight tap on the side of the counter to even out the chocolate and then let it set up for a bit and peel off, you're done! super easy. For the stand up butterfly like the picture you attached, you can pipe the wings seperately, let them set up, then pipe a chocolate body and stick the wings in at an angle, you'll have to hold them til the set up though. The candy melts don't take too long though. You could even prop them up with something and stick them in the fridge.

forgot to mention too... for piping the chocolate, I just use a regular wilton disposable bag, no tip, just cut a super tiny hole in the end and I mean super tiny and it just sort of pours out, its hard to stop the melted chocolate so you want a very tiny opening so you can control it.

Gel color makes chocolate seize? Oh great. You know...I think Ive used the liquid colors in white chocolate before and it worked......I think. That was like a year ago. lol. I hope Im remembering correctly. Anyway thanks so much for the tips. If Im using regular chocolate it will be thicker and maybe I wont have to worry so much about it running all over the place? Ive never used candy melts before. I never really understood why I should buy those over regular chocolate so I always just used regular chocolate.

My idea for this cake was to attempt one of those beautiful chocolate wrapped cakes, fill in the tops with flowers and have the butterflies as accents. Do chocolate accented cakes like this need to be refridgerated? If so how do you avoid spots on the chocolate from condensation?

I have that Whimsical Bakehouse cookbook with all of the chocolate techniques in it. I agree it is very busy and lots of wild mix of colors, and some stuff overdone. I never used it for anything. I never even realized that's what people would talk about some times!

The butterflies, sunflower, and the sun are beautiful. I may have to drag that back out of the closet.

Good luck making the butterflies for your cake!

Just an added thought....JCE62108, have you looked into trying the gelatin butterflies? I haven't had a chance to try them out myself, but they say they're very easy to make and they are quite beautiful. There's a thread discussing how to make gelatin bows, butterflies and flowers. Here's a link to the thread:

http://www.cakecentral.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=630413&postdays=0&postorder=asc&&start=0

You can see pics of the butterflies at a website called Cake Connection.

HTH!

Nevermind JCE, I just noticed that you've already posted on that thread, lol! I'm so excited about that technique that I want to tell everyone about it

I'm with Stephanie on this one...you should go with candy melts...they set up pretty good and chocolate can be a b**** to work with sometimes...yes gel colors will make the chocolate seize. I just took chocolates and boy oh boy. I checked out the site that someone posted...the pigs flying site...and I don't exactly know about "bark" chocolate is, but it may be easier to work with ( more stable). Maybe not that good of a quality chocolate but for butterflies would be totally alright.

Hope this helps. I'm going to try that technique for making butterflies now ( the flying pig site) it seems very doable and will have a huge WOW factor!!

with candy melts, they're so much easier to work with, they do no contain cocoa butter and therefore do not seize as easily... I just pulled out my WBH book... here's what it says:
I use confectioners chocolate, which differs from "real" chocolate in that it contains vegetable oil rather than cocoa oil. It doesn't require tempering and can be melted and remelted as needed, making it much easier to work with. Confectioners chocolate is also known as candy coating or wafer chocolate.
some tips:
--Do not get any water in the chocolate, as this will cause it to seize, to counteract seizing, try whishking in a few drops of vegetable oil
--Because water makes chocolate seize, don't use liquid gel colors to tint chocolate, instead, use oil based candy colors


As for your question on the chocolate wrapped cake, I think it all depends on what the temperature/humidity is when you make the cake. If it's no hotter than mid 70's you should be fine at room temp, any higher, I think it will start to melt or lose its shape

Bark chocolates are almond bark, sold in the baking sections at the grocery store. I think they are very comparable to the candy melts as far as ease of use. My boyfriend even finds that they taste better than the Wilton's candy melts.

Same thing though with the coloring--only colors made for candy. They melt perfectly in the microwave at 50% power.

Candy colors work fine with bark, coatings or wafers. Save the gels for frostings and fondants. If your chocolate is too liquid, allow it to cool slightly.

Check out Kavingate here on Cake Central!

Here's her butterfly cake done with chocolate transfers:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kavingate/240807796/in/set-72157594173053389/