How to Make Chocolate Art
If you love chocolate and you love art, you can easily combine the two passions to make chocolate art. The process is a tad challenging, as it does involve some patience and precision as well as some really good timing. Chocolate art can spruce up a party, add glitz to the holidays, wow dinner guests or be just plain fun for yourself and your family. You can make chocolate art with several steps—and a lot of chocolate.
Things You'll Need
- Double boiler
- Chocolate
- Thick knife to cut chocolate chunks
- Plastic molds
- Small brushes
Instructions
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1
Choose the chocolate. Taking regular candy bars off the shelf and melting them down is not only going to be very expensive but it’s not going to work out well. Unless you want to use whole candy bars as parts of the art, opt for a smooth-melting baking chocolate or chocolate sold in bulk chunks at baking and candy supply stores.
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2
Pick your colors. You can go all dark chocolate, milk chocolate, white chocolate, a combination or melt white chocolate and add food coloring to tint it to your heart’s content.
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3
Get some molds. The baking or candy supply store will also usually have a selection of plastic molds you can use to shape your melted chocolate. Figure out what kind of figures you want to work with and pick molds accordingly. You can also make your own molds out of plastic bottles or other plastic items that have recesses in them where you can pour melted chocolate.
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4
Decide on layering. If you want to include different colors in your molded creations, you are going to put the front most color in the mold first, following by those behind it and topped off with a backing.
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5
Melt the chocolate. Hook up a double boiler on low and add the chocolate pieces into the top. The smaller you cut the pieces, the faster it is going to melt. Stir often. Do not boil. Once the chocolate is a smooth, silky consistency, pour it into the mold.
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6
Freeze it. Place the molds in the freezer for several hours until the chocolate is hardened. Remove and add the next layer of color or carefully pop the chocolate out of the mold, not unlike removing ice cubes, if the mold contains the finished product.
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7
Melt more chocolate to use as glue. Once you have all the pieces, arrange them how you want them and “glue” them together with dabs of melted chocolate applied with a small brush.
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Tips & Warnings
You may want to use props to hold up the chocolate creations while they are drying. Anything clean will do.
You can use a thin knife to carve away parts of the chocolate, just like carving a soft wood, to create ornate patterns, faces and other adornments.
Melted chocolate and a brush can produce chocolate art paintings. Use a single slab as your canvas and paint away, with the background colors first, topped with colors in the forefront.
Chocolate art does not like to be left out in the sun. It will melt.
Kids–and even some adults–will want to eat your creation, so make sure you keep it up high and in a place where greedy fingers cannot touch it.
Resources
- Photo Credit Illustration by Ryn Gargulinski
