How to make your own custom chocolate bars, to make your cakes really pop

 Making your own custom chocolate bars is quick, easy and fun! And they will really set your cakes apart from store bought chocolate bars.
The examples above use chocolate moulds from Kiwicakes . You can either use pre-coloured candy melts OR colour your own white chocolate using candy colour oil based colours or powder colour. (You cannot use gel paste or liquid food colouring, as this will cause your chocolate to seize and make it unsuable)

You can mould them with or without sprinkles. As a single colour or marbled. The choice is yours.

A finished bar weighs less than 100g, making them quite economic to make.

Bars like this are often referred to as "bark" this is the Wilton Happy Birthday Mould, you can find them in other seasonal designs (which are not always bar shaped - but do consider other shapes). Simply melt your coloured chocolate, spoon in to mould, tap on the bench for a good ten taps, to ensure any bubbles trapped are popped. Then lightly sprinkle over your sprinkle medley and allow to cool. They will release easily once set

To create the marble colour simply place your dominant colour in the mould first, then add small blobs of other colours, and stir gently (I use a lollipop stick to do this).Do NOT use your candy colour to do the marbling, as once removed from the mould, the swirls of colour can come off on your hands.

If you're after a traditional bar shape. And you want sprinkles on the side that would normally have the lines where you break the bar apart, take care to look at the example below.

You cannot add just a little sprinkles to the mould, if you do, you will get the result as shown in my photo. as the melted chocolate allows the sprinkles to move around.

You need to pack them right in there and fill it right up.

The bars can be bagged and given as a gift, just like thy are. When placing on a cake, I find they look best at differing heights. You can simply break off a piece of one bar, to make it shorter. It is important when placing on the cake, to cut a narrow aperture for the bar to be pushed in to. If oyu push down in to solid cake, you risk breaking the bar. 

These little bars make an affordable take home gift, from your party, and can be made to match the birthday cake.

Mini chocolate bars cupcake decorations

These cute little cupcakes were super easy to make. I'd been dying to get my hands on some of the limited edition Caramilk by Cadbury, as it had been a favourite of mine as a teen. I teemed it with a Millionaires caramel drizzle over vanilla buttercream

To create the drizzle, I popped a spoonful of Millionaires Caramel in to a disposable piping bag and zapped in the microwave for ten seconds, I then snipped off the end and drizzled over the cupcakes. The larger you cut the hole in the end of the bag, the heavier your drip will be, I did both fine and heavy drizzles, to test out which I liked better. Start small though, as you can't go backwards if you cut the hole too big.

These are super easy to make, each little bar weighs aprx 7 grams, so you get a heap from one block of chocolate. I used this mould -5-with-chocolate-printed-on-each-square I melted the caramilk gently int he microwave and spooned in to the mould, Tap underside of mould gently on bench to expel air bubbles

 Lots of cute little bars just waiting for their cupcakes.

Coloured Easter chocolate bark from Kiwicakes

I decided to make some chocolate bark using our Easter Sprinkle Medley. I couldn't decided between properly moulded bars of free form so I decided to try both. I melted some Wilton candy melts and half I spooned in to a bar slab mould and the other half I spread on parchment paper. Then I simply sprinkled over the medley mix and allowed to cool before removing from the mould or breaking in to pieces.

Any remaining candy melts can be simply spread on parchment paper, allowed too cool

Then broken in to pieces for remelting another day

I then packaged in to clear cello bags. These were super yummy to eat, the crunch from the sugar pearls and non pareils made it very enjoyable to eat.

By changing the style of sprinkle medley this would also be a fun idea for unicorn and butterfly parties, or even parties for adults. Which style do you like best?

Chocolate Buttons - quick & easy

These super cute chocolate buttons are quick to make as party favours. These use very little chocolate, so are quite economical too.

I used pre coloured Candy melts and this chocolate button mould. I printed a little "chocolate buttons" bag topper and sealed it using our Cake pop bags.

Moulding the candy melts or coloured chocolate is easy. Simply melt over a double boiler. Tap to remove air bubbles. Then chill for 1 min in freezer or 2 min in fridge then tap out. As they fall on the bench they sound like real buttons wobbling down. 

The mould has very thin cavities, so rather than filling each cavity, I simply poured some chocolate over the mould and spread it with a spatula.

They really look like real buttons - and I can't help but smile when I see them.

Poppy's marvellous creations

My daughter poppy recently created her own "Poppy's marvellous creations" chocolate bars in preparation for her Willy Wonka themed birthday party

Poppy started with a simple bar mould, that mimics the shape of a store bought chocolate bar. Along with a mixed pack of wrapping foil.

Poppy raided the Kiwicakes test kitchen for candy, pop rocks, chocolate & other tasty additions. In planning her chocolate bars, she somewhat themed them to her foil colours.  

Pink foil: Strawberry pop rocks, strawberry daquiri jelly beans, freeze dried strawberry slices in white chocolate

Green foil: Watermelon pop rocks, lime jelly beans in milk chocolate

Orange foil: Orange jelly beans, orange marshmallows, cornflakes, chopped peanuts in dark chocolate

Dark pink foil: Raspberry flavoured M&Ms, pink marshmallows, hundreds & thousands  in "Limited edition raspberry flavoured" candy melts by Wilton

Blue foil: "birthday cake" flavour jelly beans, white marshamllows, blue sugar pearls in white chocolate.

The jelly beans we used were all Jelly Belly brand, hence the more unusual flavours

The wrappers were printed on gold paper, left over from her  "Golden ticket" party invites.

Her finished bars were a huge success, they looked great on her party table, and have impressed family and friends after her party (we had quite a few left over, so have been feeding them to visiting family and friends over the last week)

Pretty shell cake - great for birthdays and weddings

Todays fun post comes from my American friend Autumn Carpenter. Autumn designs and manufacturers a broad range of cake decorating supplies, which I'm proud to stock at Kiwicakes.

This cake would be a sure favourite with Grandma Kiwicakes, she adores shells and corals.

Tools and Ingredients

6", 9" and 12" two layer cakes

14" cake board or drum

light blue rolled fondant

ivory rolled fondant

Hawaiian Texture Sheet Set

seashell chocolate chocolate moulds

white candy coating

milk chocolate

pearllustre dust

mop brush

8mm sugar pearls

pastry brush

piping gel

flexible poly blade

pastry roller

Method

Melt chocolates separately and place in towel lined electric skillet to keep warm and fluid. To add stripes to shells, dip finger in milk chocolate and wipe finger into cavity. 

Flood cavity with white candy coating and place in freezer to set. 

Once set, remove from mould and use mop brush to brush tops of shells with lustre. 

Roll light blue fondant to desired thickness, brush board and cakes with piping gel and cover. Using mop brush, dust cake and board with pearl dust. Prepare cakes for stacking and assemble. 

Roll ivory fondant to 1/8" thickness, roll shell texture sheet over fondant making a strip long enough to go around the cake. Make a straight cut along the bottom of the strip using a pastry roller then use the flexible poly blade to cut shells so that strip is 4" high. 

Brush sides of cake with piping gel then apply shell strip. 

Repeat with each cake layer. 

Attach shells and pearls to cake using piping gel.

Chocolate Moulds Make Decorating Easy - from Kiwicakes test kitchen

Working this past year at Kiwicakes I've been amazed at the selection of literally hundreds of chocolate moulds available in NZ. They really are such a simple way to mass-produce technically perfect mini decorations. Some moulds even create stunning 3D objects. 

Some of my earlier blogs using chocolate moulds include snowflakes, surprise boxes, hairdressing set, lollipops and chocolate bars. Read up for tips on melting and setting.

These racing cars were made from black and blue candy melts. Imagine the delight on the faces of little people given one of these to eat!

These cowboy boots look quite different depending on whether you make them light with white candy melts or in a darker shade. They would make neat themed party cupcake toppers or on a farming or western style cake.

I painted accents on the moulded chocolate shapes using various shades of Metallic Food Paint. There are over 20 colours available in bright hues, such as spring green and royal blue.

Next time consider using moulded chocolate in your cake decorating project!

3D Sparkling Snowflakes - from Kiwicakes test kitchen

Today I had a play with another new Wilton chocolate mold. They have released a freestanding snowflake design just in time for Christmas.

I had a go at both blue and white snowflakes and decided to jazz them up with matching edible glitter to highlight the ornate edges.

The mold takes 115g chocolate or candy melts and makes 3 complete snowflakes (6 discs). 

Simply melt the chocolate, pour into the mold, tap to release air bubbles, refrigerate for ten minutes, then pop the set discs out.

Use a tiny drop of edible glue on a fine paintbrush to moisten the edges, one by one. Then dip liberally in your coloured edible glitter and keep working your way around the disc until it is sparkling!

You will need to work quickly as the heat of your hands will want to melt the snowflake disc. I used a scrap of baking paper to avoid leaving fingerprints while handling the chocolate. 

This snowflake uses blue candy melts and turquoise edible glitter. The bag of melts yields 9 snowflakes.

You can play with any combination of colours and glitters to suit your theme.