So you want to make chocolate mice, hm?

I don't blame you.  They're adorable!  Let's get started! 

First things first.  Here's what you need:

From left to right: Chocolate Chips (I'm using white for white mice; you can use dark or milk, too), maraschino cherries (with stems!), almond slices, red candy melts (this is optional), milk chocolate, and white chocolate. 

The day I made these was rainy; tempering chocolate was not an option.  So I am cheating here and using vanilla candy melts (also known as almond bark, sometimes).  The red is for the eyes, the milk chocolate is for noses.  If you use milk chocolate for brown mice, I recommend dark chocolate for noses, and white chocolate for noses on dark chocolate mice.  It's all about the contrast.  Eyes should be dark chocolate, unless they're albinos like mine.  Hee hee.

Ok.  first things first: Drain the cherries. 

Drain them well, or you'll contaminate the chocolate when it's dipping time.  I'll usually set the cherries draining while I get everything else ready.  Next, they go for  a plunge in the chocolate!

Make sure you coat them very well, and get the stems, too. 

The next stage I couldn't show you in pieces, cause you have to work a little fast. Set the cherry down on its side - with the stem laying flat (ish).  Now it's a tail!  Place a chocolate chip on what was the bottom of the cherry - now it's a nose!  Place two sorta matching almond slices for the ears.  The trick to this is sticking these on before the chocolate sets.  I usually make milk chocolate mice, which is why the almond slices I have are unblanched.  If you want to get extra fance with your white mice, then get blanched almond slices.  Finding ones that sorta match is a bit of a pain, but hey!  in the end, it's ADORABLE.

Side view!  If you want to go all Farmer's Wife, you can snip the exposed cherry stem off at this point.  It makes for a more convincing mousie, but I like to leave the little bit of stem on so that people have something to hold onto as they lower the hapless candy critter into their mouths.  Melts in your mouth, not on your...yeah.  You get the idea.

With a little melted chocolate, dot on a nose!  I made some of mine albino, some of them just white.  I used a toothpick for this part, i didn't feel the need to waste a pastry bag on a chocolate chip's worth of melted chocolate.

Noses on and ready for eyeballs!

Same deal for the eyes; I just used a toothpick.  It was about halfway through this part, when I swapped over to the red candy melts, that I realized I'd totally spaced out and given them all dark noses.  Fie.  Oh well.

Look at them!  FEAR THE CUTE ARMY!

These mice are always a terrific hit.  I usually do a couple dozen at a time, and I'm thoroughly sick of looking at them by the time I dot my final eye (get it?  hurr.)  The usual response is, "They're too cute to eat!"  And I tell them, "You are GOING TO EAT THE MOUSE."  It brings me joy. 

You can use the cherries that lose their stems, too - they're useful!  Every jar always has a couple loose cherries and some rogue stems at the bottom.  Save those!  Dip them, string a couple together in a line, and use the loose stems as antennae.  Voila!  caterpillar!  Or use two loose cherries and a bunch of stems for spiders. 

I made these for a birthday cake.  I'll have pictures of the cake in this spot soon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
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