Painted chocolate

Chocolate is one of those forever kinds of things for learning. The chemistry of it is complex, the tastes are abundant, and the looks of chocolate creations are ever changing. I love all of those things about chocolate! I probably enjoy the looks just as much as the taste. I think the prettier the chocolate, the better it tastes.

One of the current most popular chocolate truffles at Zest Chocolat is the Chai Spice. Yes chai is a great flavor and goes wonderfully with chocolate, but that particular truffle is also quite pretty. It has an intricate cocoa butter design on the top that seems to lure people to that particular flavor. You can see it on the website here: http://www.zestchocolat.com/Truffles.html. The chai truffle uses a design that is ordered from a special place that can print cocoa butter pictures with its high-tech printer. This got me thinking about creating my own designs though.

I set out to see how it would be possible to make my own cocoa butter designs. I decided the design would be for a basil-lemongrass truffle, so I wanted a green/yellow color. The color created ended up being more of a turquoise, but this was my first time after all which means there is plenty of room for improvement in the future. I painted very simple designs on an acetate sheet and was quite pleased at how they came out.

Once the acetate sheets were dried and cut to the right size I applied them to the wet chocolate. This was the part that I was unsure about because you just never know about something until you try it. When the chocolate cooled though, the acetate sheets practically fell off leaving my painted design behind. I was overjoyed, it had worked!!

So now that I know how to create my own designs for transferring onto the chocolate let the fun begin! There is still a lot of skill and technique to be learned and I'm sure not every batch will come out right, but now I have yet another way to beautify chocolate.