Chocolate High Heeled Shoes and Making Chocolate Boxes

This is one (of many) of our new product releases this often. Our 8 cell Chocolate High Heeled Shoes silicone bakeware mould from SiliconeMoulds.com is a perfect size for two-bite novelty chocolates - which look adorable in these easily made little gift boxes.

The chocolates made in this mould are approx 50mm wide and are therefore also perfect size for using as cupcake toppers.

If you need some guidance in how to temper chocolate, please see our previous blog post on Tempering

Our moulds are made from 100% food grade silicone and are also suitable for many craft purposes such as making wax melts, resin and soap.

Adorable - aren't they ? Lovely high heeled stilettos you can munch on ! What woman doesn't love chocolate and shoes.....

Anyway - this blog post is a quick guide on how to make the charming little gift boxes.

It's quick, easy and only costs a few pennies. Use some pretty patterned A4 stock card. Generally, this starts around 20p per sheet. We have a selection in our ebay store.

I like to use plain card on the bottom and a patterned card for the lid - but you can use two pieces the same if you wish.

You will need a Crafter's Companion "The Boxer" scoring board. The Boxer makes it a dawdle to make gift boxes in just about any shape and size you fancy. There is a Youtube video I did last year on how to make more complicated sectional gift boxes that suit novelty chocolates made in our 4+1 and 6+1 range.

HOW TO MAKE / CONSTRUCT THE GIFT BOX SHOWN ABOVE

Start with two pieces of your chosen stock card. Both pieces must be exactly the same size.

I cut my TWO pieces of card to 23cm x 9.5cm.

One sheet of A4 stock card (if making same colour top and base), is sufficient to make a full box. If you take care when cutting the card, you can also cut a piece 180mm x 40mm from the left over piece - which may be used as a divider between layers of chocolates.

Before you start, look closely at your Crafters Companion The Boxer Scoring Board.

On one side, there are imperial / inch measurements and it's metric / cm and 0.5cm increments on the other side of the board. For this box, I'm using the metric side.

You will also see on the left hand side there is a marker for BOX LID on one end and BOX BASE on the other.

It is important that you take note of this ! By scoring one card using the BOX LID lines and the other using BOX BASE lines, the two pieces will fit beautifully together. Get it wrong and make two lids or bases and they simply won't work .....

We use the exact same process to make the base and the lid, but just turn the scoring board round after making the lid to create the base. Don't worry - your board also comes with an instruction sheet. I promise though - it's VERY easy !

Ok - so turn your card so the coloured side or pattern is facing down. Line your card up with the edge of the board and using the scoring tool, score a 2.5cm fold in the card all the way round.

Once you have done this, turn the board round 180degrees and use the opposite end to score 2.5cm lines right round on your base card.

Take a pair of scissors, and cut little v's out to create the folding tabs for your box. This needs done on each piece of card on two (opposite) ends only. I prefer to do this on the shortest sides.

Ok ? See - it's easy.....

Fold the card along the score lines to crease. You may wish to use the side of the scoring tool to get a nice crease.

Apply a little all purpose glue to the front of the tab ends. We're going to fold these in behind to form our box lid.

Hold for a few seconds until the glue grips. If your glue does not dry quickly, you may wish to use a paperclip rather than hold it.

Repeat for the base of the box. As long as you made a base and a lid, both parts with slot together beautifully.

If you cut your card nicely, you will have had enough card for a divider too. Pop 4 chocolates into the base of the box, put the card strip on top and then insert another 4 chocolates.

Hope you find this simple guide to making gift boxes useful !

Sarah-Jane Nash - www.siliconemoulds.com

Soft and Chewy Caramels

Well - last night was a late one. My dishwasher was away camping (lol). Oliver was asleep ....and I was skiddling around in the kitchen. This was one of two projects - but I've yet to do the photos of the other, so that will need to wait.

I've been meaning to try making caramels for a while and it's one of those things I've just never got round to doing.

The recipe for this came from Allrecipes.com and was posted by Barbara. There were lots of positive and quite a number of negative views - a good number of people seemed to struggle to get the set they required. I boiled mine to 245 deg - it was perhaps a little too soft. I'll go a couple of deg more next time. I also reduced the butter content - so my tweaked version is below.

Ingredients

2 cups white sugar

1 cup packed brown sugar

1 cup golden syrup / corn syrup

1 cup evaporated milk

1 pint double cream

200g butter (salted)

3 teaspoons of vanilla extract.

Add all ingredients to a very large, deep pot and bring to a steady boil. You will need a sugar thermometer to keep an eye on the temperature

Boil for approx 45 mins until the temperature reached 250deg (firm ball). I took mine off at 245 deg. My caramel set to soft and chewy - but was perhaps a smidging too soft.

I stupidly forgot to position the pan clip on my thermometer - so it's in the caramel ! I therefore used a silicone food rope / tie instead to rope it to the pot handle to keep it in place. Such handly little things. I use them for resealing various bags of nuts and dried fruit, bouquet garni as well as to hold together stuffed meat and fish.

Once ready, I poured my caramel into a silicone lasagne tray and a silicone 8" square brownie / fudge pan . Neither were greased. The original recipe calls for a 12 x 15" tray, well greased.

The next morning (or should we say 5 hours later...) I went to take my caramel from the moulds. I needed to run a blunt table knife round the top edge to free the caramel from the mould. I then inverted the mould and literally peeled out the caramel.

WARNING - this recipe makes a serious amount of caramel. If you cut it into large 1" square chunks, you will get approx 150 pieces. A 1" chunk is a substantial sized serving of this stuff.

I had enough to make 3 x gift boxes full, plus 4 gift bags (each bag had approx 15 bits) and more left over. This is ideal to do a good big batch for little home made Christmas gifts or hampers.

I made my gift box and bag above using some Kanban Butterfly card, Papermania Felt butterflies, silver flower brads, stick on jewels and some pink ribbon. I cut the heart out of the front and put some acetate behind

. For the boxes, I have a Crafters Companion Top Score Board which marks the lines and creates the box tops and bases to slot together. It's an invaluable bit of plastic !

Here is another of the gift boxes (click the image to enlarge) with more Kanban card, a stenciled butterfly, some flower embelishments and an enamelled brad.

Sarah-Jane Nash - http://www.siliconemoulds.com/ / http://www.naturalheating.co.uk/