Chocolate Mice Recipe
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Hershey kisses form the face of chocolate-dipped maraschino cherries with stems.
Chocolate Mice Recipe
My bee buddy David turned 70 years old this year. To celebrate, his sons joined him for a weekend of fine dining, theatre and catching up on family stories, including a chocolate birthday cake with white icing decorated with, what else – bees.
There’s another passion in David’s life, besides his lovely wife. Three cats have found refuge at David’s house, each with a story sadder than the next one until you see them today, coats shiny as they happily lounge on the grass outside David’s basement office.
There is Shirley, a one-eyed calico suspected of being at least 18 years old who is the self-designated house greeter. Chatty Shirley will let you know it’s time to pick her up when she rolls over after telling you all about her day.
Then there is black Henry with yellow eyes, who hides from most people but who talks to me, especially when he wants inside the house. One time he led me to all house doors to see if I could let him inside. Unfortunately I didn’t happen to have a key and he let me know what he thought of my shortcomings by dashing off.
Finally, there is black and white Smokey, who played hard to get for 3 years and now won’t let David, or Henry, out of his sight. I, on the other hand, Smokey can easily do without and tries to, every time he sees me.
When I heard about David’s landmark birthday, I knew the furry family had to contribute – actually Shirley asked me, she has a lot to say every time she sees me – so I made one of my favorite gift treats, chocolate mice.
Chocolate Mice Recipe
You need:
Unwrapped Hershey milk chocolate kisses
Maraschino cherries with stems
Dark almond bark
Almond slivers
Storage container
Tin gift can
Wax paper
Paper Towel
Chocolate mice close up include Almond slivers for ears.
To Make Chocolate Mice
Drain cherries and place on paper towel.
Unwrap Hershey kisses.
Melt dark almond bark in microwave for 1 ½ minutes until melted. Dip cherries in chocolate until covered; place on wax paper to dry.
Add dab of melted chocolate to flat Hershey kiss; add 2 Almond slivers. Press against cherry. Allow to dry.
Store in air tight container.
Photo 2: Package chocolate mice in a tin container to keep the almond ears from breaking and add toy mice on top instead of a ribbon for a feline treat. (Photos by Charlotte Ekker Wiggins)
How to Package Chocolate Mice
To make these even more special, I packaged them in a tin container. Make sure the tin is tall enough not to break the almond sliver ears. If you want to make sure they don’t move, you can use a tiny dab of chocolate to “glue” the mice to a cardboard bottom.
For fun, I added three catnip mice to the tin instead of a ribbon. The gift card was “signed” with the three cats footprints, a cat foot print stamp my cats have been known to use for their gift-giving. I added names just in case David couldn’t distinguish between one set of prints against another one but he seemed to know who had contributed to the birthday sentiments.
These also make wonderful Halloween and Christmas treats.
Charlotte
