Chocolate, Chocolate Pudding Party

A few weeks ago, a fellow baker friend of mine sent me a link to one of the most creative baking sites I've ever seen. Bakerella is a site that features a enormous amount of fun recipes and creative sweet inspirations. It's written by a woman who took a cake decorating class and she "just haven’t stopped." Her most famous creations are what she calls "cake pops" which are mini cupcakes on a stick. she decorates them as many fun things like pigs, reindeer, Winnie Pooh and other very detailed cartoon characters.

But the reason my friend sent me the link had nothing to do with the cake pops. She sent me the recipe for what Bakerella calls "Pudding Cups." For the most part, the name is pretty much self explanatory, its chocolate pudding... but what really impressed me was that the cups that the pudding was served on were made of chocolate! This woman made bowls out of chocolate!

How did she do it? The answer is wildly entertaining: She took water balloons and filled them with air, melted some chocolate and dipped the balloons in the chocolate. To make them stand, the dabbed some of the chocolate on a parchment lined baking sheet and placed the balloons right on top. After the chocolate cooled and hardened, she popped the balloons and removed any rubber that was left. Genius right? I know!

Me and my friend attempted to make the cups this weekend...... Everything seemed perfect at first but when we were ready to pop the balloons we ran into some trouble. It turns out that your life will be easier if you use the tiny water balloons. we had no water balloons so we used regular sized balloons and filled them with just a little air. they wouldn't pop because the rubber was not tense so we had to deflate them and gently peel the rubber off the chocolate. Another problem we had was that the cups were made of thin chocolate..... and chocolate melts! As soon as we grabbed the cups to peel the balloons off, the cups woudl start melting because of the heat in out hands. We has to work soooo fast and put the cups back in the fridge mid process. We broke 2.

The pudding was fairly easy though. It just takes a while to thicken and you must be patient.

We'll serve the cup on Tuesday so I will most certainly tell you about the final product but for now, here are some pics of the fun balloons!