THE BLING. THE ROCK. The Bridal Shower Favors!

  

I'm a bridesmaid for a dear friend, who had her bridal shower earlier this month. I took charge of the bridal shower favors. There wasn't a theme, so I started racking my brain for an idea...and then I recalled a Fred Flare ice tray I told myself would be really awesome to have, but would never find a use. ALAS! I DID!

I went on this concept of the proposal, THE RING...Diamonds (or jewels, I prefer pearls) are a girl's best friend...And so is CHOCOLATE! So I was a bit of a chocolatier for a week or so before the bridal shower with over 90 pieces of jewels, in three varieties of chocolate, and each in a separate box for each lady.

  

1. Brushing pearl dust into each jewel mold. 

I had three colors of pearl dust: gold (for milk chocolate), silver (for dark chocolate), and white (for white chocolate. It was a bit of trial and error on this one. The gold pearl dust on white chocolate makes it look more like marble. The silver tin you see on the left was for the orphan chocolate that didn't have a jewel to fill and was not brushed with pearl dust.

You can see some of the pearl dust.

2. Pop them out...easier said than done.

So I found a groove between melting, filling, and cooling. Cooling was about 30 minutes to ensure the whole jewel was rock hard. Once they were cool it was time to take them out of the molds. Since it was a silicone ice tray it was really flexible, but you definitely needed to put some muscle into it to push them out. And voila! Chocolate Jewels!

3. Silver wrapping.

I thought I was getting silver candy foil for cheap as a roll. Only to find out it was cake foil. But it still worked. I took time to wrap each jewel to really show the detail in their shape to show each off and to prevent a chocolate mess (not that that would be terrible, but still). Each jewel was refrigerated in the silver cake foil until it was time to be in the box.

4. The box. Packaging!

I found a box of 100 favor boxes at a craft store and stamped each one with a diamond ring. There were three metallic stamp inks used, a copper (milk chocolate), a platinum (white chocolate), and a blue steel (dark chocolate). Each box was stamped, assembled, filled with shredded purple paper (the bride's wedding color) and finished off with a chocolate gem nestled on top.

5. Decor and Set-up.

When I was first making these treats I was expecting to have a little over 70 guests. A day or two before I found out it was just a little over 50. After figuring out my strategy earlier in the week, there was no stopping my production line. So besides a favor in front of each guest, at the table, I started using them for decoration...and I believe in presentation!