Homemade modelling chocolate is a great material for cake decoration.
Modelling chocolate is a great invention of confectionery – you can cover cakes with it, create edible decoration and unlike fondant it doesn’t have that plain sugary taste. It tastes like chocolate. Making the modelling chocolate is fairly easy and you can make beautiful cakes with it at home without any special tools or equipment. Here’s the recipe and a few useful tips.
What to make with the Homemade Modelling Chocolate
Modelling Chocolate is great for cake decoration and it tastes so much better than fondant! It’s not ideal for covering cakes (but it can be used), however, it’s my number one choice for any other cake decor.
Here are some of the things I made with modelling chocolate: Giant Rose Cake which was very challenging but worked out perfectly, Totoro Cake where every piece of decor was made from chocolate, Penguin Cake with delicious chocolate penguins, the realistic Human Heart Cake and Brain Cake or the sweet Bloody Valentine Cake.
Supplies
To make approximately 1400 g of modelling chocolate you need:
- 1200 g of white chocolate
- 250 ml of syrup (corn, rice, agave…)
- food colorant if you want to dye the chocolate
How to make Homemade Modelling Chocolate
First you have to temper the chocolate in a water bath. Let some water boil in a saucepan. Place chocolate chips in a bigger metal or glass bowl and place this bowl over the boiling water. The chocolate should start melting over low heat but it should not mix with the water. Regularly stir the chocolate with a rubber spatula. Don’t melt it completely. The chocolate is supposed to be tempered which means you’ll take the chocolate off the heat when there are still chunks of chocolate in the bowl.
Another way to temper the chocolate is to put only half of it in the bowl and melt it then take the bowl off the heat, add the rest of the chocolate and stir until melted.
Use the second method if you’re new to tempering.
This is what the tempered chocolate taken off the stove should look like. The chunks will melt as you stir the chocolate.
Heat the syrup to the same temperature as the chocolate. Approx. 20 seconds at a high temperature in the microwave oven should be ok but it’s very individual so go rather slowly. I recommend you to buy a digital thermometer
, it’s a great investment which will save you lots of work. Mix the food colorant in the syrup. The syrup will mix with the chocolate and the resulting color will be lighter so make the syrup several shades darker than the desired color.
Pour the colored syrup in the middle of the chocolate and mix fast with a silicone spatula. The chocolate will start to thicken fast so try to do it in under 1 minute. The correct chocolate should be a homogenous mass of a united color and it shouldn’t stick to the walls of the bowl.
Pour the chocolate on a sheet of baking paper and you can either use it or let it rest. It will harden so if you want to use it later, you’ll have to knead it again or heat it very slowly in the microwave.
And here come the tips for the homemade Modelling Chocolate:
- If you want chocolate of different color and you don’t want to make several batches, do the following: skip adding the colorant in step 3. In step 6, before kneading the chocolate split it in pieces and add the desired color to each piece. Here you’ll have to knead every piece very properly so the color is united.
- I strongly recommend you to use a silicone rolling mat and a silicone roll, the chocolate won’t stick to it, won’t break so easily and won’t catch any undesired print.
- If you have time, let the chocolate sit in the fridge over night, it will be easier to work with.
- If the chocolate is too tough to roll out, soften it for a few seconds in the microwave on a low temperature.
- When the chocolate is rolled out, stroke it gently with your palm. Some of the grease will come out and the surface will be smooth and shiny.
- If bubbles form on the rolled out surface, do the same as in tip 5. If the bubbles crumble, roll it gently with the roll again and stroke the newly formed bubbles in another direction.
