My First How-To Demonstration :-) DRIZZLES

Chemically speaking, chocolate really is the world's perfect food.

Michael Levine, nutrition researcher, as quoted in The Emperors of Chocolate: Inside the Secret World of Hershey and Mars

On the cake decorating message board I frequent, I've had several people ask me how I get my chocolate drizzles on the sides of my cakes so neat. So I thought it'd be fun to do a little video showing how I do it.

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First off, let me say that I do not use chocolate ganache (a common question), although I am pretty sure my method would work with ganache as well. I make my chocolate by melting in the microwave semi-sweet chocolate morsels in a cup with 2 TB of crisco (give or take)...the crisco not only thins the chocolate but gives a little added shine. (By the way, this is also what I use to dip my strawberries.)

When melting chocolate in the microwave, be very careful not to get the chocolate too hot. Nothing worse than burnt chocolate in the microwave. Pee-you-weee! I avoid this by heating at 25 second intervals, stirring in-between intervals. It usually takes 2-3 intervals before chocolate is melted completely.

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Once chocolate is melted I pour into a plastic disposable decorating bag. I get these at WalMart; made by Wilton. I've used parchment paper as well but find the parchment paper a bit harder to handle. Putting my bag in a tall glass frees my right hand for using a spatula to get all the chocolate out of the cup.

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As you will see, I snip the end of the bag off just before I begin drizzling and must pinch the end tight until I'm ready for the chocolate to ooze, otherwise, I've got a mess on my hands. Once I get to the end of one side of the cake; I again pinch the end of the bag to stop the flow of the chocolate until I turn the cake on the turntable.

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Drizzles are made by moving my bag in a cursive "m" motion.

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If drizzles are too runny and run down into a puddle on the board either too much crisco was added or chocolate needs to be cooler. (In my case, it's usually that the chocolate needs to be cooler.)

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If drizzles are not flowing very far down the sides and seem to clump at the end of each drizzle chocolate may need a bit more crisco or need to be warmed a bit more.