Dessert is a great way to end the night when you have family and friends over, even after the holiday season, and I have a simple idea to ‘dress up’ your sweets.

Start with a zucchini cake with lemon cream cheese frosting. The tang of the lemon cream cheese frosting brings a wonderful brightness to the moist cake. Once you have your cake frosted, try making some simple chocolate decorations, in this case, chocolate trees. It’s an idea I found on Pinterest via the food blog, Chocolate and Carrots.

All you need to do is melt down some chocolate chips in a double boiler or in a microwave safe bowl, and let it cool so it is easy to work with. Line a baking tray with wax or parchment paper. Scoop the chocolate into a zip-top bag, and snip off a tiny corner of the bag. Then, carefully draw trees onto the wax paper in chocolate, as many as you need for your cake. Put the baking tray in the fridge or freezer to let the chocolate harden up, and then gently peel the trees off and line them up along the side of your cake for a wintry touch! You might try dusting them with a bit of powdered sugar to look like snow.

If you decided on a chocolate cake, try this same idea out to make chocolate snowflakes. This time, use white chocolate and draw snowflakes to top your cake.

Looking ahead to Valentine's Day, you could always go with a chocolate heart design. White chocolate would certainly work, and you can always add a few drops of red food coloring. Get creative!

Tip: If you’re worried about your freehand designs in chocolate, sketch your tree or other outlines on one side of your wax paper, and then flip it over, and pipe the chocolate onto the other side, following your outline.