Easy Chocolate Sculptures

I stumbled apon the art of paper crafting last year & have been hooked ever since . It is an amazingly fun hobby & there are thousands of free templates to choose from online. Seeing how food is my FAVORITE art medium, I decided to experiment to see if I could make the same adorable characters out of something edible.Who doesn't love making masterpieces that can also be eaten?The end result was this little guy. He is a delicious, chocolate, snack, to be eaten sometime after midnight! This instructable will show you how to make your own chocolate mogwai, or any creature, monster, or classic character your little heart desires, using just a paper craft template & a few basic supplies.

First choose a favorite character that you would like to bring to life. You can either create your own or find a free one online by searching "paper craft" plus your character's name & browsing the images. I chose to do Gizmo and found the template here. You want to find one that is realitively simple in design (lots of larger pieces & simple square shapes). Then print the template out to use as your chocolate building pattern. 

Next you will need to gather together only a few basic items:

*your printed template
*colored chocolates or food coloring for the colors needed on your template
*a cookie sheet to use as a work surface (one that can easily fit in the frig or freezer if needed)
*some wax paper
*a sharp knife
*some quart size ziplock bags
*toothpick 
Optional: candies for eyes or decorating

Prepare your work surface by placing your template onto the cookie sheet & covering it with a piece of wax paper. Now you are ready to begin!

Working with one color at a time, you will need to melt the chocolate. You can do this by placing them in a ziplock and heating them in the microwave for only 15 secs at a time, until they are warm to the touch and smooth. Then cut a small tip off of the bag so it can be piped onto the wax paper easily. 

Following your template, pipe an outline of the colored area first then go back and fill it in. While the chocolate is still warm you can use your knife to smooth it out. Continue in this fashion until you have outlined and filled each color. 

TIP: If the chocolate cools & hardens while you are working just pop it back in the microwave again for 15 sec. 

Once you have piped & filled the basic structures you can add more details to the top. Remove your template from under the wax paper and use it as a guide. For very small details (such as the dots on Gizmo's eyes) you can use a toothpick to apply the chocolate. In my example I used Reese's Pieces for the eyes & some coconut for hair. 

Now that you've created a chocolate template it's time to assemble your masterpiece. Make sure the chocolate has cooled & hardened. You can place it in the frig or freezer for a few seconds if you get impatient like me. Then using your sharp nice cut the chocolate template on the "fold" lines.

Once all the segments have been cut, you can easily lift them away from the wax paper & begin assembling the pieces. To assemble use the melted chocolate as your "glue". It is best to work with only a few segments at a time, holding the pieces in place for few seconds while the "glue" cools enough to support itself. 

If you see any gaps or cracks during or after assembling you can just use a matching chocolate color to fill it in as well.

TIP: It is much easier to build parts rather then try to construct it all at once. For example, the build the body & the head separately then stack & assemble them together once dried. 

You are finished! Wasn't that fun? Ok now it's up to you. Are you going to play with it, or display it? In the process of making this instructable I actually had to create two. The first fell victim to my children who decided to eat it, while my back was turned, before I was even finished assembling it! The second they allowed to live slightly longer as a display for pictures & for a little show & tell before devouring it. Either way it was a fun food experiment! 

HAPPY CREATING!