Beautiful transfer sheets

I’m pleased to say that my latest batch of painted chocolate transfer sheets came out gorgeous!

For those who are wondering, chocolate transfer sheets are basically decals. A colored vegetable fat is screen printed onto sheets of acetate. The printed acetate sheet is then placed on a freshly dipped chocolate. The warmth of the melted chocolate melts the colored fat and bonds it to the chocolate. Once the chocolate is fully cooled, you peel off the acetate sheet, and presto! the image on the sheet is transferred to your chocolate.

I’ve typically used single-color transfer sheets, mainly because I get mine printed up custom, and two color designs are way more expensive than a single color design. Last year I got the idea of painting colored cocoa butter onto the backs of the the transfer sheets, producing a two-color sheet without needing custom prints. I dabbed green cocoa butter onto the back of the sheet with a sea sponge, producing something like this:

So I did that with the first batch of sheets this year, again with green.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t quite satisfied with the results. The green looked spotty, not mottled, and the white background I’d put on the green (to make it brighter when put on dark chocolate) was showing through in places. So I tried painting gold onto the back of some red transfer sheets, producing the beautiful sheets shown at the beginning of this post. I’m very pleased with them!

So pleased, in fact, that I’m seriously considering going back and redoing the previous set of sheets, painting instead of stamping. I’m debating whether to make the background red or green (the printed part is golden yellow, in either case). Red would be consistent with the red/gold ones, green would provide some more color variation. I am leaning towards red at the moment, though I prefer the green. This is for practical reasons: I have plenty of red colored cocoa butter, but only a small quantity of the green. It might be enough, and it might not. I can’t get more before Chocopalooza begins. Better to play it safe!

Meanwhile, other prosaic things have been happening: folding the paper dividers to go between layers of chocolates in the big storage containers, making (and re-making) lavender and jasmine caramels, cutting up and putting away fudge, English toffee, etc. Not glamorous, but necessary.

And, finally, Fritz is on vacation for this blog post, but here is Tigress the Mighty Huntress, claiming ownership of her rightful prey:

Yes, those are (or were) my shoes. Apparently they belong to a kitten now. 🙂