The 12 happy kids twirled the afternoon away – but this was no dance.Welcome to a chocolate party – where party guests twisted, twirled and dipped chocolates to their hearts’ (and tummys’) content. And those hearts -chocolate, of course – were the totally tastiest way to celebrate.
Lucky Kristin A. of Buffalo Grove turned 10 recently with a chocolate bash at Morkes Chocolates in Palatine. When guests arrived, they had clean hands and faces. But it’s not much of a stretch to imagine what happened when the kids met 14 pounds of melted chocolate! Yep, they quickly turned into something like the chocolate monsters of the deep.
First, they rolled up their sleeves and washed their hands. Paula McGuire, Morkes’ activity director, passed out plastic aprons. Her simple directions? “Feel free to go crazy.” As if!
Michael, Kristin’s 5-year-old brother, said, “This is the best place in the whole, wide world.”
“Yeah, because there’s tons of chocolate!” said Katie S., 9, of Wheeling as she got serious about building a chocolate pizza.
The kids each got a metal tray, covered with a sheet of thin paper called parchment. Then, a melted, milk-chocolate blob was spooned onto each tray. The blob oozed itself into about a 5-inch circle. Within a few minutes, the circle – the chocolate pizza “crust” – was ready for topping.
And the kids piled it on! Red sprinkles for the tomato sauce, brown for the meat, yellow for the onion, green for the green pepper, Smartees for the spices, chocolate discs for the pepperoni, puffed cereal bits for sprinkled cheese.
“Eeww, you’re going to put Smartees on your pizza?” Kaitlin C., 10, of Wheeling asked other kids. But hey, when it’s your very own designer chocolate pizza, the choice of goodies is up to you!
In no time, the birthday girl’s pizza was rising like a volcano. Handfuls of sprinkles and crunchies peaked several inches tall. No doubt, to eat her pizza masterpiece, Kristin would need a knife and fork. Kristin explained, “When it comes to sweets, I love everything!”
It didn’t take long, in this chocolate frenzy, for Allie B., 10, of Wheeling to make a major decision. Allie announced, “I want to work here – you get to eat chocolate and make it, and it’s really fun.”
Pizzas done, the kids each got five plastic, heart-shaped molds. The candy molds left room for paper sticks, too, because this project would turn out to be chocolate heart suckers. Everyone got his or her own container of melted chocolate, both white and milk.
Decorations (the sprinkles and stuff) went in first, because that’s what would show on the sucker’s front side. Sarah P., 9, of Buffalo Grove went with hot pink sprinkles and then dribbled in the white and milk chocolate. The stick went in before the chocolate was chilled.
Allie went for it all with her sucker creations. “I call them `a little bit of everything,’ ” she said. “The more the merrier!”
Tiffany K., 10, of Arlington Heights stuck with the chocolate, making cool swirly designs by drizzling white chocolate into her milk chocolate hearts.
Paula packed the molds into a freezer to harden, then came around with chocolate refills for the nearly empty containers. Next she handed out pretzel twists, about eight for each partygoer.
There was plenty of finger licking going on before, but when the pretzel dipping began – well, let’s just say some fingers looked more chocolatey than the pretzels. Cheeks and chins started looking that way too.
“My fingers are like weird and hard,” said Caitlin L., 9, of Wheeling when the melted chocolate wasn’t so melted anymore. As it cooled, the melted chocolate turned firm, and fingers began to feel like they were wearing stiff, shiny brown gloves.
By now, the suckers were ready to be popped from their molds. “They look so neat,” said Briana O., 9, of Wheeling. “This is awesome.”
Packing up to go, each guest had a pound of chocolate: the chocolate pizza, five chocolate heart suckers, eight pretzels (or whatever hadn’t already been munched) and containers of leftover chocolate. What would they do with their haul?
“I’ll maybe share with my sister,” said Sarah P., 9, of Buffalo Grove.
But Briana knew where at least some of her candy was heading. “My dad’ll just find them anyway – he always finds our candy.”
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To throw your own chocolate birthday party, call Morkes Chocolates, 1775 Rand Rd., Palatine, at 847-359-3454. It’s $7.95 per child (minimum of 10, max of 23) for 45 minutes of chocolate fun and 45 minutes in the party room. Or, if it’s nobody’s birthday, a 45-minute class is $6.95 per child.
