Chocolate molds

The molds finished curing overnight, and I took a look at them this morning.  They’re so-so; there were places where the moldmaking compound seeped under the buttons or next to the acetate, and I had to trim with an X-acto knife.  Naturally that didn’t come off perfectly, so I suspect there will be knife-cuts visible in the finished product.  Chocolate, sadly, is extremely unforgiving when it comes to defects in the mold (I learned this early), so I doubt this batch is going to look professional.  Still, it’s been a good learning experience, and perhaps the next batch will come out better.  I think next time I will use polyclay and accept some irregularity and a matte finish.

I still intend to cast chocolates with it, to see how they turn out.  If they’re nice enough I may still use some of them in my finished product.  I just hate to contrast a poorly-molded chocolate with the professional molds I already own.  Otherwise, I’ll just chalk this one up to experience, and continue my experiments in chocolate mold-making.  I’m taking a jewelry-making class this weekend at the Crucible – it might be worth investigating making my own chocolate-mold forms from metal.  Metal can be polished, see, and thus get that nice glossy finish that makes chocolate proud.

Meanwhile I will continue to look for “found objects” that are approximately bonbon-sized.  I might also try casting other interesting objects, like tiny leaves, in wax.  The world is not too small for all sorts of chocolate casting fun.  🙂

I’ve enjoyed this process, even though I’ve spent probably about 20 hours on a chocolate mold that will probably never see the light of day.  I’m resolved to do better next time, too.  Learned a lot just from this one attempt.