Making chocolates with small children

I've been intending to make chocolates for some time. After hunting everywhere over here for chocolate moulds I finally picked some up on our holiday to the US last November, then came back and found the same identical ones in Hobbycraft. That isn't the only time this has happened. Of course by 'making chocolates' I don't mean anything nearly as complicated as making chocolate from scratch (although we did try some more advanced chocolate making techniques at a chocolate making workshop), I mean melting down pre-purchased chocolate and pouring it into moulds.

If you are just having fun playing with the chocolate then you can get away with the very cheap supermarket value chocolate bars, which actually don't taste too bad. If you are making the chocolates as gifts then it's nicer to buy a slightly more expensive brand as they will taste better.

The moulds that I used are from the Wilton range and I can fully recommend them. I have the Wilton Stars Candy Mold and Wilton Seashells Confectionary Mould (affiliate links) as you can see now easily available and very reasonably priced. You can also buy silicone chocolate moulds in all sorts of different designs which are easier to remove the chocolates from once set.

These chocolates were made as gifts so I bought decent chocolate - packets of milk, white and dark chocolate for a variety of colours. I melted them down into separate bowls and gave each child a bowl and a spoon to put into the moulds. Mia couldn't quite believe her luck when she saw that I had given her a bowl of melted chocolate and proceeded to eat it as fast as she could, even coming out with a brand new phrase 'tastes nice!'

Harry took the whole affair much more seriously, carefully spooning in the different colours of chocolate and using a cocktail stick to stir together the layers together. Then we put them in the fridge for a couple of hours to set before popping them out and displaying them in various home crafted boxes.

They were so successful that we went on to make another batch for my Mum's birthday! Another time I might step it up a bit and make a chocolate plaque like this one over at Smiles and Trials. Watch out, sweet-toothed relatives!