Balloon Chocolate Bowls

What fun we had in the kitchen last night! My 3 year old and I made edible chocolate bowls for our ice cream! It was quite an experiment (and mess in my kitchen) with many giggles along the way!

Semi-sweet chocolate bowl with cherry ice cream inside.


Balloon Chocolate Bowls
Source: Gourmet Mom on-the-Go

Ingredients:
White and Dark chocolate candy melts or chocolate bark (DO NOT USE chocolate chips.)
Balloons, any size (Water balloons are the perfect size for individual-serving bowls)
Wax Paper

Directions:
Blow up desired amount of balloons. Fill a microwave-safe bowl with a bag of white candy melts (about 2 cups). Microwave for 60 seconds, stir. Continue to microwave at 20-second intervals and stirring until melted.

In a seperate small bowl, place about 1 cup dark chocolate and melt as above.
Drizzle a small amount of the dark chocolate over the white chocolate. DO NOT STIR. This is the key to great-looking bowls. The less you stir, the more they will be striped. People tend to use dark chocolate as the base or they mix it too much and it all mixes together into a light brown. So, just drizzle and get ready to dip!

Dip a balloon into your chocolate (as deep as you want), pull out and let extras drip back into the bowl, then place on a cookie sheet lined with wax paper to dry. Continue with all the balloons. Drizzle more dark chocolate on top as you need/want it. You can pop them in the fridge if you want and they'll set up in just a couple minutes.

When set, gently push against the sides of the balloon to release from the chocolate. Using a pin or scissors, make a small hole in the top of the balloon so the air can leak out. As the air leaks, out, peel balloon off of chocolate bowl. You're ready to fill and serve! Or, you can place in a single layer and store in a cool place up to 3 weeks.

For a complete tutorial with lots of pictures visit Gourmet Mom on-the-Go.


Marbled with white chocolate and Dulce de leche ice cream inside.


*****

Kathie's Lessons Learned:

* I have no idea how they got the water balloons to work. Each time I dipped one into the chocolate the balloon would pop (causing me to jump and my 3 year old to crack up laughing!)

So instead, I used thicker, 12-inch size balloons and only blew them up a little bit. (I guess you could make a 12 inch ice cream bowl if you want, but I sure wasn't up for the challenge! :)

I thought maybe my water balloons were popping because the melted chocolate was too hot. So at the very end, after I had already dipped many of the 12-inch balloons, I decided to try one more water balloon. I thought it was a success and put it on the cookie sheet to set up. About 2 minutes later, it popped causing a chocolate explosion in my kitchen. My 3 year old was in the line of fire and got a face full of chocolate from the mishap. There was chocolate all over our floor and cabinets. My newborn even managed to get some on her clothes and pacifier and she was sitting in her bouncy chair pretty far away from us. My son and I couldn't stop laughing!

* Also note that I used a dark chocolate base and drizzled it with white chocolate. (I'm not a big fan of white chocolate.) Supposedly you'll get more of a striped look if you use a white chocolate base.