A Birthday Idea: For A Friend

A POST AT LAST! You may be thinking "Aoife, where have you been for the past two weekends?" Well, I was kindly invited to go on holiday with Georgia and her family so that is why you have seen no sight of any content for the past two or three weekends, but I'm back and ready to go again after having a break.

Hello everyone, 

I did promise this post a while back but I've had other things to post before it. This is a present idea for a friend or family member. I made these for one of my friends birthday and she really liked them so I am going to share this idea with you.


Chocolate Lollipops
I used:

• 2  1/2 bars of chocolate
• 2 packets white chocolate buttons
• Icing Pens
• Pan
• Small Glass Bowl
• Wooden skewers 
• Small spatula
• Teaspoon
• Baking tray
• Grease proof paper

Please Note: I was able to make 6 decent sized lollipops as you can see in the pictures.

Usually, chocolate is already in squares in the packet when you buy it, break them all off into small squares and break the small squares in half again. By using smaller squares they melt quicker, however, it takes longer as you have more to melt.

Boil water and put a small amount at the bottom of the pan, if younger children are making these lollipops, please take safety precautions with boiling water and have an adults supervision. Next, put your glass bowl into the water ensuring the water does not go into the bowl, if it does, empty out some water from your pan. It is unnecessary to turn the gas on, however, if the water begins to cool down after a while, you may want to heat it some more.

Gradually add the small chunks of chocolate into the bowl, maybe 4 or 5 pieces at a time. Do not let the chocolate come into contact with any water as this will make the chocolate stiff and cannot be used. 

Cover your baking tray with grease proof paper and you may want to rub a small amount of butter on the grease proof paper to prevent the chocolate from sticking, however, I never found this to be a problem.

After your chocolate has melted, spoon it out onto your grease proof paper and use your spatula to shape it into a circle (or whatever shape you are going for).  

Take one of your wooden skewers, mine were quite long so I found it was better to snap them in half to make shorter sticks. Slide your stick into the bottom of the chocolate and use your spatula to spread the chocolate over and cover the skewer (above).

Once you have completed them steps for however many you are making, take your white chocolate buttons and place them around the edge for decoration.

Eventually, they should look something like this. Now you should put your baking tray/s into the fridge and leave them for a couple of hours for the chocolate to set and go hard.

Once they're ready, take them out of the fridge on the trays and use your icing pens to be as creative as you like, different colours, different patterns, names etc. My friend watches the show Pretty Little Liars so I used my icing pens to write 'Pretty Little Liars' and each of the 4 main characters names.

Unfortunately, I seem to have lost the picture I took of the finished lollipops, if I do find it, I'll update this post but for now you can all just imagine it. I came home this weekend from my holiday with Georgia and her family as I mentioned so I have a few pictures from that to share with you.

I hope you have enjoyed this and are still interested in these gift ideas, I have another friend's birthday coming up and I really don't know what I'm planning on doing, so you can wish me luck with that and I will speak to you all very soon. 

Aoife