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Homemade Chocolate: 4 Easy Chocolate Candy Making Tips

Homemade Chocolate Truffles

Chocolate is divine. Whether it’s the cheap stuff from the candy aisle of the grocery store or the fancy goods from a professional chocolatier, the melt-in-your-mouth goodness is an essential part of the holiday season. But what about homemade chocolate? It’s pretty much law that everything homemade just tastes better, after all. So, how hard is it to make chocolate candy yourself?

homemade chocolate candy making

In truth, it just takes practice! Just imagine how much more special the holidays will be when you’re able to treat your loved ones to chocolate goodies you made yourself. Plus, homemade = so much more freedom in the realm of flavors and customizations. What decadence. 

With research, practice, and maybe a cooking class or two, you too can learn how to make your very own homemade chocolate. Here are some of our top chocolate candy making tips to make the learning curve easier for you and set you on the path to becoming the chocolatier of your family.

Do You Need To Use Raw Cacao Beans?

So, if you hear homemade chocolate, you might be worried that this means you’ll be working with raw cacao beans. Sounds complicated, doesn’t it?

You can breathe a sigh of relief here, because even professional chocolatiers rarely process raw cacao beans themselves. They leave this to processing plants and then stick to chocolate right from the bean. 

Invest In High-Quality Chocolate

Chocolate Blocks Thumbnail

Sure, you can use the same semi-sweet chocolate chips that you’d dump in your chocolate cookies for your chocolate candy making. However, these can be thick and difficult to work with. For an easier time with your chocolate candy making, don’t be afraid to invest in higher-quality chocolate. Not only will higher-end chocolates be easier to work with than the commercial chocolate you snack on, but the end result can be so much tastier.

However, if you don’t want to use high-end chocolate, you can still have success with your homemade chocolate! Just know that it will likely be a more difficult process.

Keep Coconut Oil Nearby

You know how we just mentioned how if you use a cheaper, commercial chocolate, it will likely be thicker and more challenging to work with? Coconut oil is your friend here. If your chocolate gets too thick, you can add a bit of coconut oil to it in order to thin it out. 

Don’t like coconut oil or have an allergy? No worries, there are other options you can use instead. Butter, olive oil, neutral oil, and cocoa butter can all take the place of coconut oil, and many people are more likely to have butter or an oil on hand anyway.

Why do you need to use coconut oil (or a substitute) when making chocolate? You need a binding agent when you make chocolate in order to keep it from melting. Unless you have chocolate ice cream or something like that, chocolate is usually room temperature. Having a binding agent keeps your chocolate solid at room temperature.

Melted Chocolate Kitchen Kneads Ogden, UT Kitchen Supply Store

Mind Your Climate

Where you live can very much impact the tempering process (aka, how you heat and cool the chocolate in order to harden it into a uniform structure). High temperatures and humidity levels can be difficult to work in while cooler climate or parts of the day can make your life easier. 

Tempering is important in order to ensure that your homemade chocolate has a nice smooth texture and shine to it. If your chocolate isn’t tempered properly, you could end up with sticky, soft, or cloudy chocolate. While sometimes people get creative with their chocolates and have fancy cloud-like swirls in them, that’s very different from the cloudiness that results from chocolate that hasn’t been tempered properly. 

Hold Your Molds Up To The Light

This will help you to find any holes in the chocolate that you can then fill in in order to ensure that there’s no fear of the filling oozing out. You can do so much when it comes to molding your chocolate, from fun horse shapes to traditional truffle balls. But in order to ensure that your homemade chocolate come out well, the chocolate needs to fill the mold well. 

Once you’ve ensured that there are no holes, let it set in the freezer, and added any desired filling with the chocolate over top, you pop them back in the freezer. Then, you can just tap them out. It’s important to ensure that you work quickly with molds for the best results. 

Do You Want To Learn More Chocolate Candy Making Tips?

We could go on and on and on about homemade chocolate, but there’s not enough room in this blog for that! If you’d like to give homemade chocolate a go, we have the supplies you need to get started. Keep an eye on our cooking classes page, as we often do cooking classes centered around fun things like this. 

To learn more about our products and cooking classes, please do not hesitate to contact us at Kitchen Kneads today!

Filed Under: Chocolate / Candy, Holidays

November 4, 2022 by Lexi Rogers Leave a Comment

Most everyone loves salt water taffy, a classic chewy, sweet treat that makes everybody smile. But where did the name come from? The most popular explanation of the name is that of a candy-store owner, David Bradley, whose shop was flooded during a major storm in 1883. His entire stock of taffy was soaked with salty Atlantic Ocean water. Shortly afterward, a young girl came into his shop and asked if he had any taffy for sale. Mr. Bradley jokingly offered her some “salt water taffy.” After sampling a piece, the girl purchased the candy and proudly walked down to the beach to show her friends. Bradley’s mother was in the back of the store and overheard the whole conversation. She loved the name “saltwater taffy”, and that’s what it was called from then on. (Bulk Candy Store)

Homemade Salt Water Taffy

Now you can have fun making your own either by yourself or you could get your kids or grandkids involved for a fun summertime activity! It really doesn’t take long to make. Maybe about an hour total and it uses ingredients that, if you’re a regular baker, you probably have on hand all the time.

Get creative with your flavors too. We have so many LorAnn flavoring oils for you to choose from. Choose just one flavor or combine them to make gourmet flavors, like cherry pound cake, by using a combination of cherry, almond, and vanilla. Remember that LorAnn flavoring oils are stronger than extracts. I used 1/4 teaspoon of flavoring per batch and found it perfect. Use more if you’re using an extract.

And here’s a tip for you. Like bread, candymaking is affected by altitude because water boils at a lower temperature at higher altitudes. Therefore, you’ll need to adjust the temperature your candy cooks to. A good rule of thumb is to reduce the temperature by 2 degrees for every 1,000 feet you are above sea level. This recipe calls for cooking the taffy to 254 degrees at sea level. Since I’m in Ogden, Utah at about 4,300 feet, I reduced my cook-to temperature by 8 degrees. So, I cooked it to 246 degrees F. Had I not made that adjustment, my taffy would have turned out too hard.

Homemade Salt Water Taffy

Go ahead and give this recipe a try! I think you’re gonna love it and have fun along the way.

Salt Water Taffy

  • 1 cup sugar
  • 2 tablespoons cornstarch
  • 2/3 cup light corn syrup
  • 1/3 cup water
  • 1 tablespoon butter
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1/4 – 1 teaspoon extract/flavoring
  • 3 drops food coloring (optional)

DIRECTIONS:

  1. Grease a marble slab or cookie sheet. Set aside
  2. In a medium saucepan, mix together the sugar and cornstarch. Stir in the corn syrup, water, butter, and salt.
  3. Mix well over medium heat. When the mixture comes to a boil, stop stirring and insert a candy thermometer.
  4. Brush the sides of the pot with a wet pastry brush if you see sugar crystals.
  5. Continue to cook until it reaches 254 degrees for sea level. Subtract 2 degrees for every 1,000 feet you are above sea level. Remove from heat and add flavoring and food coloring.
  6. Pour the hot taffy mixture on your greased slab or pan and wait until it is cool enough to touch, about 5 – 10 minutes.
  7. Once it is cool, lightly grease your hands and begin pulling, folding the candy over itself, and pulling more. You’ll need to pull the taffy for about 10 – 15 minutes.
  8. Pull the taffy into a long, thin rope and use your kitchen scissors or a knife to cut out your pieces. Wrap them individually in wax paper or parchment paper squares.
Recipe adapted from A Cookie Named Desire.

 

Homemade Salt Water Taffy

Filed Under: Chocolate / Candy, Recipe

July 20, 2020 by Dawn Mikesell 1 Comment

My favorite flavor combination has been chocolate and peanut butter since as long as I can remember. Reese’s peanut butter cups were a childhood favorite and honestly, they still are today. Although I love them and I’ll never turn one down, they do pack a bunch of calories and I have to admit that the peanut butter filling is a little on the dry side.

So, I decided it would be a great idea to use PBFit, which is a peanut butter powder with most of the oil removed. This reduces the calorie count by 100 per serving. That is absolutely amazing. You can read more about PBFit in this post.

Homemade Reduced Calorie Chocolate Peanut Butter Eggs

I started experimenting to get all the proportions just right and I came up with this recipe. You’re gonna love it. It’s smooth, creamy, not dry, and just tastes so perfect. And then I encased it in chocolate and all I can say is, “WOW!” They’re so, so, so good.

Now, I haven’t done any calculations to figure out how many calories one of these guys has, but I’m pretty sure it’s a lot less than a regular factory-made peanut butter egg.

Homemade Reduced Calorie Chocolate Peanut Butter Eggs

Above it a photo of the mold I used. Yes, it’s a chocolate sucker mold, but it works just fine for the non-sucker version too. You can find this and so many other molds in our store. There’s even a peanut butter cup shaped mold. Perfect for this recipe.

I love chocolate molds. They make it easy to make desserts and candies look fancy. They make it look like you spent more time making your candies than it really did. There are so many options for using them and we carry a very large variety. We have everything from Christmas to Halloween and birthdays to classic chocolate mold shapes. If you live in our area, go have a browse at our huge selection of chocolate molds.

And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for:

The recipe:

[yumprint-recipe id=’2′] 

Homemade Reduced Calorie Chocolate Peanut Butter Eggs

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Filed Under: Chocolate / Candy, Christmas, Halloween, Recipe Tagged With: Peanut, Peanut Butter Eggs

April 12, 2017 by Dawn Mikesell Leave a Comment

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Kitchen Kneads is your one-stop shop for quality grains, flour, kitchen appliances, and other ingredients.

We are Utah’s premier baking and cooking resource!

Questions?

888-881-9957
[email protected]

 

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Kitchen Kneads Ogden, UT Kitchen Supply Store
Kitchen Kneads is your one stop shop for quality grains, flour, kitchen appliances and other ingredients. We are Utah’s premiere baking and cooking resource! Questions? 888-881-9957 [email protected]
Kitchen Kneads Ogden, UT Kitchen Supply Store

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