Cute Candy Buttons and Butterflies - and a giveaway!

I make an effort to make my food look nice, which most of the time just means being tidy so that batter doesn't make weird shapes, swirling icing on with a piping bag, or dusting the finished product with icing sugar. Sometimes it's necessary to go a bit further than that, though. For example, when baking for kids' parties it's nice if the decoration takes another step up, to, say, incorporate a theme - or just get the consumers to massage your ego a little by exclaiming how lovely they are!

There are a bunch of ways of doing this kind of thing - I quite often like to play with white icing (called fondant in the US), because it's easy to colour and you can shape it with your hands or roll it and use cutters - plus it tastes good, which is the most important part! Chocolate is another great medium - but kind of limiting in that it's brown, and doesn't easily take on other hues... Enter candy melts! These are similar to white chocolate, but with no cocoa butter so they're easy to melt without having to temper it or anything fussy - like the 'white chocolate' melts you get from the supermarket but they come in a bunch of vivid colours.

I was very keen to try these out - and I've had my eye on this button mould for a long time, since I spied it on Bake it Pretty a year or so back. When I saw Kirstin from Torte had ordered a bunch of these from the US I ordered a couple of packets to try - and she has generously sent me seven packets, one of each colour, to give to one of you lucky folk!

The melts are super easy to use - would be awesome for getting the kids in the kitchen, if you're willing to risk a bit of mess! ;-) You pop the melts in a microwave-proof container, then zap for 40-50 seconds, stir, then zap in 10-20 second bursts until the candy melts. It's a bit thicker than melted chocolate - keep that in mind if you want to dip things, since they'll have a thicker coating than they might with chocolate - and sets pretty quickly once you put it in a mould or whatever you want to do.

As well as the button mould I got this cute butterfly mould, which I think will make perfect cupcake decorations. I used a paintbrush to put a thin layer of one colour on the inside of the mould, and then let it set before filling it with another colour. This makes them a bit more interesting, I think - and depending how artistic you're feeling you could paint details on too.

I made buttons with each of the three colours I got, to get a cute and colourful assortment of 'buttons'. This mould was a bit of a pain to get the shapes out of when they were set, I think because each button is so small and the plastic is quite firm. However, it wasn't enough of a pain to stop me from having my buttons!

The butterflies were easier to get out, though a couple broke - I was probably a bit impatient. If you're doing this with small and eager helpers bigger, less fragile shapes might be more successful. Or it could be a lesson in patience! (guess I could use that lesson...)

I love the butterflies - they will definitely make gorgeous summery cupcakes. :-)

I'm really please with how the multi-colour thing worked, too - it was really easy, too; just a little paintbrush (like you might use for watercolours, or, if you're like me, cakey stuff!) and just play around.

I'm also happy with the buttons - how adorable are they? And they look like, well, buttons. ;-)

If you'd like to win some of these to try for yourself - one packet of each of the seven flavours - all you have to do is comment on this post before 7pm next Monday (the 25th of October) telling me what you would make if you won. Be as inventive (or conservative!) as you please.

Competition open to NZ residents only, sorry - sending this lot out of the country would probably bankrupt me! Candy melts (as well as lots of other cool stuff) are available from Torte.