Painting Chocolate

Sugar Work By macie2011 Updated 14 Oct 2011 , 10:52pm by Kathy99

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macie2011 Posted 13 May 2011 , 10:19pm
post #1 of 13

I am going to use a chocolate mold and I need to paint the chocolate. I was wondering if it was best to paint the inside of the mold before pouring the chocolate in, or to paint the chocolate after it comes out of the mold. Also, what is best to mix the pearl dust with to paint?

12 replies
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Spuddysmom Posted 13 May 2011 , 10:51pm
post #2 of 13

You brush the dust directly on the chocolate after it comes out of the mold, but that may not give you the results you are looking for. Because of the nature of chocolate you cannot just mix pearl dust with lemon juice/vodka and paint it on like you do with fondant, etc.
You can also use white chocolate colored with candy (oil based) coloring or candy melts; put that in the mold before you add your chocolate. I suppose you could also use that to "paint" the chocolate after it comes out of the mold, but the results would be different.

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macie2011 Posted 16 May 2011 , 3:26am
post #3 of 13

Thank you for your help.

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Spuddysmom Posted 16 May 2011 , 5:43pm
post #4 of 13

You're welcome, hope it helped. Chocolate is a lot of fun but there are some big differences from working with other (esp. water-based) edible art.

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oscarlet Posted 15 Jun 2011 , 3:49pm
post #5 of 13
Quote:
Originally Posted by Spuddysmom

you cannot just mix pearl dust with lemon juice/vodka and paint it on like you do with fondant, etc.




I did do it that way for these

Image

but it was a pain in the neck. They needed a couple of coats and it needed to be thicker than usual. I did the same thing for the medal cake in the same album. I used milk chocolate for gold and bronze and white chocolate for silver medal. It was harder painting the candy banana 'horns' than it was painting the chocolate though.

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Spuddysmom Posted 15 Jun 2011 , 5:22pm
post #6 of 13

How cool! They turned out great! Congratulations! I've seen some minor disasters when folks attempted to paint chocolate unless they were using cocoa butter or just the dust. Does this work because you used an alcohol base rather than water or juice?

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sugarxosugar143 Posted 15 Jun 2011 , 6:03pm
post #7 of 13
Quote:
Originally Posted by Spuddysmom

Because of the nature of chocolate you cannot just mix pearl dust with lemon juice/vodka and paint it on like you do with fondant, etc.




I use dust and vodka to paint onto my modeling chocolate and it worked out fine. That might be because it modeling chocolate though and not just melts... the star wars cupcakes i just did in my album show the paint on the chocolate icon_smile.gif

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oscarlet Posted 16 Jun 2011 , 5:20pm
post #8 of 13
Quote:
Originally Posted by Spuddysmom

How cool! They turned out great! Congratulations! I've seen some minor disasters when folks attempted to paint chocolate unless they were using cocoa butter or just the dust. Does this work because you used an alcohol base rather than water or juice?




thanks icon_smile.gif I used homemade lemon essence as the base. I make it with a mix of vodka and everclear so there is a lot of alcohol in it and I didn't use much of it -- the 'paint' was more like a thin craft acrylic sort of thickness, not a water colour sort of thickness.

I had the most problem getting the eyes to dot. I was using an americolor marker, no idea why it wouldn't work.

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lakeycakey Posted 1 Oct 2011 , 4:03pm
post #9 of 13

They are cute..I found recently that if i put a first layer on with vodka and let it dry and then dust it works better.. I found it is a lot less work to colour the chocolate and fill in the parts that way than to paint.

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DianeLM Posted 1 Oct 2011 , 7:02pm
post #10 of 13

Mix your dust with confectioners glaze and you'll get good coverage in one or two coats. It's what I used to paint this chocolate motorcycle:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/42607550@N00/6117988085/in/set-72157627479211265

You can buy confectioners glaze here: http://www.globalsugarart.com/search.php?search=confectioners+gl

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Spuddysmom Posted 1 Oct 2011 , 9:50pm
post #11 of 13

DianeLM,
the results on the motorcycle look great, but after reading the description of the confectioner's glaze, wouldn't you only use that on items not to be eaten? More for display items/decorations, like your motorcycle, but not for regular chocolates, right? It is non-toxic but I think you aren't supposed to eat it.

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DianeLM Posted 1 Oct 2011 , 10:01pm
post #12 of 13

Spuddysmom, confectioners glaze is absolutely edible. I use it quite a bit for many different applications. It smells horrible from the bottle, but dries completely odorless and tasteless. It's a food grade lac made from - yes, it's true - beetles! It's commonly used in the pharmaceutical field to coat tablets and capsules.

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Kathy99 Posted 14 Oct 2011 , 10:52pm
post #13 of 13
Quote:
Originally Posted by oscarlet

Quote:
Originally Posted by Spuddysmom

you cannot just mix pearl dust with lemon juice/vodka and paint it on like you do with fondant, etc.



I did do it that way for these

Image

but it was a pain in the neck. They needed a couple of coats and it needed to be thicker than usual. I did the same thing for the medal cake in the same album. I used milk chocolate for gold and bronze and white chocolate for silver medal. It was harder painting the candy banana 'horns' than it was painting the chocolate though.




thanks oscarlet for sharing. Great photo icon_smile.gif

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