Chocolate-Covered Cake with Fresh Fruit

How to Make Chocolate Leaves:

1. Choose small, firm leaves with well-defined veins from flowers, herbs, or other types of plants.
2. Use the leaves when they are still fresh and dry them thoroughly with paper towels.
3. Using a medium-sized paintbrush, thickly coat the underside of each leaf with melted chocolate. Do not paint over its edge, or the leaf will not peel away from the chocolate.
4. Place the leaves on parchment paper, chocolate side up, in a cool place to set
5. Just before using the chocolate leaves as decorations, peel the real leaves away from the chocolate and discard them.

Piping with Chocolate

• Melted chocolate is quite difficult to pipe through a metal tube because the coldness of the metal sets the chocolate before it can be piped.
• One way around this is to add a few drops of glycerin to the chocolate to thicken it (rather than allow the chocolate to cool and thicken) and then pipe it through a tube as quickly as possible. If the chocolate does start to set, warm the piping tube in your hands. If you only need to pipe simple decorative threads or chocolate outlines (for piped chocolate pieces and chocolate run-outs, for example), use a parchment paper piping bag with the end snipped off to a point. The simplest solution of all is to use chocolate hazelnut spread because it has the ideal consistency.
• Using Chocolate Spread Fit a parchment-paper piping bag with a small star tube, fill the bag with chocolate hazelnut spread, and use it to pipe attractive borders.
• Always choose simple shapes for offset piping: stylized flowers work well for piped pieces, and animals, hearts, flowers, bells, horseshoes, numbers, or letters are ideal choices for run-outs. Cookie cutters make excellent templates for these types of designs.

How to Pipe Chocolate Pieces:

1. Draw the chosen designs on a piece of paper.
2. Place parchment paper on top of your drawing paper and secure the corners in place with tape.
3. Fill a parchment-paper piping bag with melted chocolate, fold down the top, and snip off the end.
4. Pipe fine threads of chocolate, following the outlines of your designs, or pipe freehand designs.
5. Allow the chocolate to set and then carefully slide a thin icing spatula under each piece to loosen it from the paper and use for decorating.