Chocolate Dessert Shells

Fancy appetizers, desserts and cookies are the stars of many holiday tables. I love the holiday season because I get to experiment with ingredients I normally wouldn't. I like using ingredients that are fun, different or unique. Some of these ingredients include foods I have seen throughout the year on the Food Network or elsewhere. Some of them fall under the category of "wouldn't that be neat for...".

Ingredients

I saw chocolate dessert shells on the Food Network and immediately thought I had to have some to experiment with. Chocolate dessert shells are simply that, chocolate poured into a mold and allowed to thicken to about and eighth inch thick then emptied to form an empty shell just waiting to be filled. They are available in a variety of shapes and chocolate including white chocolate. When we were at the World Market I found pre-made chocolate dessert shells. They were rather on the expensive side at $4.99 per packages for 8 shells but they just looked like they would be a fun dessert offering for entertaining purposes. The shells were dark Belgian chocolate.

Chocolate dessert shells can be filled with anything you choose as long as the filling is not warm enough to melt the chocolate. The important thing to remember about using chocolate dessert shells is to protect them from temperature extremes that will cause either melting or bloom. Keep at a cooler temperature until ready to use but not necessarily refrigerated. There is no reason why you couldn't make your own chocolate dessert shells using the meltable chocolate wafers used for candy making. That will be one of my new year's projects to try.

Chocolate Dessert Shells

I bought two packages of the dessert shells to be used as part of the dessert tray for the party we hosted on the 19^th. The shells come packaged in plastic protective trays. Leave them in the trays to fill. Cover and place the filled trays in the refrigerator until ready to serve.

I used a standard no bake cream cheese filling:

• 1 c softened cream cheese
• ½ c granulated sugar
• 1 c CoolWhip®

Cream the cream cheese and sugar together using a KitchenAid® stand mixer or similar. Mix in the CoolWhip®. Mix until smooth.

I garnished one tray with chocolate cookie crumbs and the other with cinnamon sugar mix then topped each filled shell with a white mint chocolate chip. The filling itself worked fine but next time I would use a smoother, pourable filling that would set up for a gourmet look. I think a nice creamy mousse, fresh made lemon curd or a caramel based filling would be lovely. The possibilities are endless!