Pink Chocolate House

Supporting breast cancer fundraising during October I exhibited at a Girls Night In fundraising event here at Traralgon on Friday night and decided that my raffle donation would be a Pink Chocolate House, made using our Gingerbread House mould.

Great idea but in the lead up to the event I committed myself to helping a friend out in her Fancy Dress Hire shop as it was also Muck Up week and Halloween, busiest time of the year for her. Had lots of fun, gotta love Year 12 students, but my legs, ankles and feet were killing me after running non stop for two days.

So there I was Friday morning and still no prize had been made. I was tired and sore, and dismayed to discover that a bout of depression was hitting hard, grrrr not what I needed in the least! I fluffed around wasting time and then at noon realised it was now or never – get the damn chocolate house made stat!

So armed with The Chefs Toolbox Gingerbread Mould (one panel shown above)

4 x 375g packets of Nestle White Chocolate Melts

1 packet Darrell Lea Strawberry Liquorice Bites

1 packet Sshmallows

1 vial of Pink Colouring Powder

1 vial of Green Colouring Powder

I set to work melting the white chocolate melts in a stainless steel bowl set over boiled water in a suacepan, to which I add some pink coulouring powder. I did one batch in a darker pink colour for the roof panels and door.

I decided to use some Shredded Coconut as snow for the roof, not sure if it would work but at least it would add some texture when eaten.

I then poured the melted chocolate into the Gingerbread House mould and tapped the mould out against the bench to remove air bubbles.

Placing the mould on to an oven tray they then went into the fridge to solidify. Returning a couple of hours later I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to peel back the silicone mould.

Using some melted chocolate I proceeded to anchor the wall panels to my cake board, and then the roof panels to the walls. To fill in the gap at the top of the roof panels I used the white Sshmallows on melted chocolate, laying a ridge of alternating pink and white Sshmallows at the wall bases. Stood up my tree and little girl and boy in their front fence (using the liquorice on top of some melted chocolate as the border).

I painted a pink dress on to my girl, but ran out of time to dress the boy, and also to lay some lawn (green chocolate) and dirt (brown chocolate) for the flower beds.

The finished product looked amazing and I had lots of people coming up to me at the fundraiser ohhing and ahhing over the job I had done, and better yet scored some sales of the mould. The lucky winner of the raffle was the event organiser, who was beside herself with excitement at having bagged the house!

Next on the agenda is a Gingerbread House for the Caterpillar Kids Market – Warragul on Novermber 26th.