Just spent the first half of my morning casting molds for chocolates. You may recall that I bought a pair of calligraphy stamps in China, with my name (in Chinese) carved into them. Well, I wanted to use them to cast chocolates with my name in raised lettering, so I spent the first hour or so of my morning pouring paraffin wax into thin sheets. I stamped the still-soft sheets with the calligraphy stamp, then carefully cut the stamped areas out from the rest of the wax. Now I’ve mixed up some food-grade silicone moldmaking compound from Douglas and Sturgess, poured it into a glass baking pan, and carefully placed the stamped bits of wax into it. As a bonus (I had some leftover space), I’ve also tried casting a cheap jade thingamabob I bought in China, with a dragon carved into it.
I don’t know how it’ll come out. There were quite a few air bubbles in the moldmaking compound, and I didn’t manage to get them all out. In retrospect I should have banged the baking pan on the table to encourage air bubbles to surface and then popped them one by one, but I wasn’t sure how much time I had to work it (the last time I did anything like this was the chocolate feet incident, where I was working with stuff that cured in 15 minutes) so I was moving really quickly. If it doesn’t work (too many air bubbles) I’ll repeat the process, and this time work more slowly/get the bubbles out. At worst, I don’t have to do these – just thought it would be fun to try.
I can’t wait to see how the molds turn out!
