Chocolate Topiaries

Chocolate Topiaries

Mother’s Day just passed and as I mentioned in my previous post I kept thinking about non-traditional bouquets. Looking at all of these bouquets I kept coming back to pictures of Ferrero Rocher topiaries. I loved the idea of a topiary but didn’t want to use Ferrero Rocher chocolates. Most of the other sweet trees I saw were unwrapped candies designed to be decorative and not edible, and I was definitely looking for edible.

Supplies Needed

• Foam Ball
• Paper or Cloth to cover ball (optional)
• Candies to cover the ball
• Wooden Dowl (or stick of some variety)
• Vase
• Candies to fill the vase
• Floral foam block (should have used)

Choosing Chocolates

There was an option using Lindor Truffles but it was more Christmas Tree than topiary. Well, if they could be stuck on a foam cone, they could be stuck on a foam ball. Lindor Truffles it was.

I picked up a variety bag of truffles at Costco, and the 3″ diameter foam ball at Michaels. I knew I had a wooden dowel at home to use as the “trunk” of the tree, toothpicks, and a vase that would be a cute base. A bag of Hershey’s Hugs and one of Hershey’s Carmel Kisses (hugs and kisses) to be used as the filler and I was ready to start.

Underneath It All

I thought about leaving the foam ball plain, but I didn’t like the idea of the bright white showing through so I decided to cover it. I had some paper/cloth material that had come with a bouquet that I thought would work well. It is a nice spring green and has little white flowers on it.

Going off of a video I had watched on how to wrap a foam ball, I cut a square the size I thought I needed and cut some slits in it to help pull sections at a time over the ball. I gathered it around as best I could, trying to leave the opening for the base uncovered, and used straight pins to hold it in place.

Getting to the Point

At this point, I was going to start putting the truffles on but realized my toothpicks are only pointy on one end. Another trip to the store was in order where I had to choose between differently named toothpicks in opaque boxes that didn’t indicate if they were pointy on both ends or just one. Thankfully there was a round plastic container of colorful party toothpicks that I could clearly see were pointy on both ends. They cost a little more, and I hadn’t actually wanted colored toothpicks, but I didn’t want to buy multiple boxes or make another trip to the store either so party toothpicks it was.

Supplies at hand I set the foam ball on a cup, as recommended in a video I watched. The videos I saw used Ferrero Rocher chocolates, but the concept is the same. I started by making a row around the middle of the ball like a mohawk. The next row I did offset so that the candies weren’t next to each other. I continued like this, as best I could, filling in one half of the ball. At this point, I was out of truffles and needed to make another trip to the store.

Back to the Store – Again

The grocery store doesn’t carry the large bags like they have at Costco so while perusing the options in the candy aisle, I decided to call an audible. I picked up a bag of miniature, individually wrapped, Resee’s Peanut Butter Cups. I was thinking back to the candy bar flower I had made and thought I could do something similar with the PB cups.

Plan (P)B

I started on the still empty side of the ball. A Hershey’s Hug surrounded by 5 PB cups and voila, a flower. I tried to just remove some of the truffles from the done side to put a flower there too but quickly realized that wasn’t going to work. After removing most of the already placed truffles I was able to create the flowers and then filled in around them with the truffles.

Then it was simply a matter of placing the topiary top on the wooden dowl, holding it up in the middle of the vase and filling in the vase with the Hugs and Kisses. I was hoping the Hugs and Kisses would hold the topiary steady, but I underestimated the weight of the topiary so it was a bit precarious to move.

Keep It Steady

Some of the tutorials I had seen used quick set cement to hold their candy topiaries up. I don’t think I will ever go that route, but a bit of floral foam at the bottom of the base to hold the stick straight would have been a good idea. The candies did hold it up while it was sitting still, and I was out of time for another trip to the store, so I just went with the candies this time around.

Rather than painting the stick, because I don’t have any good colors on hand at the moment, I opted to wrap it with a gold ribbon and then tied it around the top of the topiary. I figured tying the bow on top made it seem more gift like than tying the bow at the base of the topiary.

Take-a-Ways

Although this seemed like it should be an easy project, I was a bit intimidated going in as the easy looking ones usually aren’t. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the hardest part ended up being the multiple trips to the store to get all of the supplies.

1. Had I thought about how far out the candies would extend I probably would have gone with a slightly smaller foam ball. This would also have helped with the heaviness of the whole thing.
2. Floral styrofoam, or possibly even floral tape, would have been helpful in keeping the dowl in place.
3. If you don’t like where it’s going, change it up. Even though I removed most of the truffles at least once, you couldn’t tell when it was finished.
4. Putting the toothpick in first, so you can get it as deep as you want, and then placing the candy leads to fewer through-and-through holes in the candies.