Chocolate Pine Cones

Following on from our previous post, Sous Chef J and I have been thinking of 'different' edible decorations and came up with the idea of "trying to fashion" pine cones using chocolate buttons.  Knowing that pine cones show the Fibonacci spiral and thinking about 3- & 5-fold radial symmetry seen alot in nature,  we decided to give it a go...

As usual, we started by deciding on the ingredients (materials) to use to make our chocolate pine cones.  Sous Chef J decided the pine cone would need a 'centre' and thought a curly wurly would be good for this.

Cutting down a curly wurly into shorter pieces, we had the centre ready to be used.  (A note of caution, if the curly wurly is too cold, the internal toffee tends to shatter)
We used melted chocolate chips as the cement/glue to stick the buttons in place.

Using the same technique as we did for making our Rudolph Heads, we placed chocolate chips in a small plastic bag, which was then put in hot water to melt them, before cutting off one corner of the bag.  This was then squeezed out where needed to stick the buttons together to make the pine cone shape.

Next, the assembly of the pine cone could begin.  Three buttons were placed on a piece of card, a blob of chocolate was added and the curly wurly upright was held in place.  Then layers of buttons were added, around the upright, with more melted chocolate to make a cement.  This was repeated, building up the spirals of the pine cone.

Finally, the cone was ready!  We're quite pleased with the result.  We made a large cone using Giant Cadbury buttons and a few smaller cones using standard sized buttons.

The cones were bagged up in cellophane wrappers and will be given as gifts (if they last long enough!!)