How to Make Molded Chocolate Candy

Beautiful molded chocolates are surprisingly easy to create at home. We'll walk you through what you'll need and the basic steps so you can treat family and friends to your own gorgeous creations.

Chocolate for Molding

There are two kinds of chocolate you can use for making molded chocolates:

1. Couverture

Couverture is high-quality chocolate. Dark chocolate couverture contains cocoa liquor, sugar, cocoa butter, and vanilla. This kind of chocolate tastes the best by far, but it is expensive and harder to work with because it requires tempering.

2. Confectionery Coating

Confectionery coating is not true chocolate, although it may contain cocoa liquor. Confectionery coating contains vegetable fat rather than cocoa butter, which makes it much more stable, but it does not have the same rich, complex flavor as high-quality chocolate. Confectionery coating is great to use when you're making candies with kids because it's very easy to work with. It also comes in a rainbow of colors and flavors besides chocolate.

Equipment

Candy molds: Most candy molds are made of plastic and are fairly inexpensive, so you can stock up on a variety of shapes and sizes for different occasions.

Small palette knife or offset metal spatula: You'll use this for smoothing and scraping off excess chocolate once you pour it into the mold.

Lollipop sticks: For making chocolate lollipops (optional).

Filling the Molds

• Fill each mold slowly with a squeeze bottle, spoon, or by pouring chocolate from a measuring cup.
• Using your palette knife or spatula, scrape off any excess chocolate into a clean bowl; it can be gently warmed and reused.
• When the back of the mold is smooth and even, gently tap the tray of chocolates on the countertop to pop any air bubbles.
• If you're making lollipops, insert the sticks, twisting gently so that they're completely coated with chocolate.
• To make the chocolate harden quickly, put it in the freezer for a few minutes.
• Once the chocolate is firm enough come out of the mold, invert the entire mold onto a clean towel and twist very gently to release the chocolates.

Watch how Fran's Chocolates make molded chocolates

Multicolored Molded Chocolates

• To make intricate multicolored candies, buy different colors of confectionery coating and some small food-safe paintbrushes. Paint one color at a time onto the surface of the mold and allow it to harden before moving on to the next color. Once each color has hardened, fill the mold with whatever color chocolate you like.
• For advanced chocolatiers: you can buy pure cocoa butter online or at specialty food stores. Gently melt cocoa butter as you would chocolate. Tint it with fat-soluble colors, and paint the mold. Colored cocoa butter can also be added to melted white chocolate and tempered. Cocoa butter is very expensive, so use it sparingly.

Explore our entire collection of chocolate candy recipes.