Chocolate sacks

With plenty of pies and cookies being baked by my family members for Christmas day, I decided to try something a little different this year. I ended up making an army of chocolate sacks, both dark and white chocolate that are exquisite. A true labor of love as I had never worked with molding chocolate but in the end, I am very pleased with the outcome.  I have been working on forming the sacks over the past couple of days and found the white chocolate much easier to work with than the dark chocolate, where I had several casualties when removing the form.

You can fill a chocolate sack with any number of ingredients but I chose to stick to a simple angel food cake, whipped cream and fresh berries. Once you have your base sack created, they are fun to decorate and can be made into an elegant or a fun and whimsical desert.  For my white chocolate sacks, I added a dark chocolate accent leaf that is brushed with edible gold and silver leaf. These turned out just beautiful.  With the dark chocolate sacks, I went for a more casual feel that will appeal to the kiddos and piped on little holiday pictures. 

To make chocolate sacks, you don't need much.  Just some melting chocolate and a sack form.  I used a small popcorn box that has a wax interior that made it easier to pull off the chocolate once it had hardened. 

With your melted chocolate, pour an ample amount to the inside of your sack form and roll/shake to fully coat the interior. Make sure you have plenty of chocolate in the creases of the sack as this was my biggest problem area.  Once the interior is fully coated, turn it upside down and let the excess chocolate drain out, back into the bowl.  On a parchment paper covered counter, set the sack to dry flipped upside down. 

After you have repeated for all your sacks and they have hardened a bit on the counter top, move them to the refrigerator (not freezer) and let them chill for several hours, or overnight.  To remove the paper sack form, gently peel from the top and tear away a little bit at a time. Be careful not to squeeze your chocolate sack too hard or it will crack and crumble. One other little tip, I turned my air conditioner on to keep the chocolate cool while I was working with it as while the heater was on it was getting a little melty on the counter.

Decorate, fill with your favorite dessert and serve to your very impressed guests.  Enjoy!