I have come to real enjoy working with different colored chocolate to create fun themed foods for my parties, examples on the cupcakes here, on the retirement cake here, and on a cheesecake here. I almost always have some of the white and dark chocolate candy coating in my pantry. I have also used the multi-color chocolate melt chips and really like them, but I tend to work like an art person and want tons of colors. That gets expensive and takes up a lot of storage space buying the pre-colored melts in all the colors I want...plus they don't really MAKE all the colors I want so even when I buy them, i end up trying to mix new colors! I have experimented with tinting white chocolate coating using Wilton cake decorating colors (just what I had on hand). But adding any water based liquid to the chocolate makes it get chunky and had to work after mixing for a VERY short time.
So a friend who gave me some really great sea themed chocolate molds for Christmas. (How wonderful was she to know I chose an Under the Sea theme for Lydia's birthday bash AND to anticipate ....and understand my interest in chocolate candy!) I had resigned myself to making only white chocolate sea creatures, but then I did a little experiment...and it WORKED! I stumbled on a way to make small batch candy shapes in any number of tints and shades.... Using just white chocolate coating and food coloring (stuff I already owned)!!!
Here is the process.
1. Start with white candy coating. Spoon melted coating into a plastic baggie. Cut the corner off the bag, so it functions like a pastry bag. Squeeze chocolate into the mold to fill about half of one mold ....don't fill it all the way
2. Use a tooth pick to place some food coloring into the melted chocolate inside the mold (I used the Wilton brand thick gel kind that is usually for tinting frosting).
3. Quickly mix with your tooth pick to change the chocolate color. The chocolate will get thick really quickly as the water reacts the chocolate coating. You want to stop mixing before it starts getting chunky. I tried to spread it where I wanted it in my mold. Because I had clear molds, I could look at them from the back to test if I liked the mixed result while I was working with it. Once you are happy, or when it starts gettomg thick, fill the rest of the mold with chocolate coating from your piping bag. Don't mix this in, just let it fill up the mold and sit on the surface.
Using this technique, I made orange gold fish and pink and yellow shells. I used the same, "fill hafway and mix with a tooth pick" technique to make some white with dark chocolate swirl shells. Mixing two chocolates did not produce the thick chunky issue, so I had more working tome. I even did a few where I filled halfway, swirled in sprinkles, spread that mixture in the mold, and then filled with plain chocolate to create speckled start fish. You can also see one plain boring all whit sea horse.. or maybe you can't... he is a LOT harder to notice without any colors swirled in! I am SO glad I did NOT make them all plain!
Using this method, I liked that I could work them one at a time, so I could stop at any time, instead of having to finish all that needed that color. The weird thick drying also was less of an issue because of working one at a time. Finally, the artist in me got to shade each sea shell, adjusting the color to the look I wanted instead of being limited to what came in the candy coating package.... all using materials (white candy coating and food coloring) that I keep on hand in my pantry!
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