Molded Chocolates: A Simple Cooking Project to Do With Kids

For the first year in a very long time, both of my girls decided they didn’t want to go to camp all summer.  We live in a rural area with very few kids around.  With the gas prices so high, I decided I wasn’t going to drive them somewhere everyday.  I’ve had to get very creative trying to find some things for them to do at home.

I had bought some candy molds a few years ago at an estate sale.  I was thinking of using them with clay and make magnets or something.  When I spotted the apeels in the cake-decorating store, I decided to buy some.  I figured I would keep them around for one of those times when the kids asked me to do a project with them.

I bought 3 different kinds of apeels, vanilla, chocolate and yellow mints.  The apeels come in a huge variety of flavors and colors.  They even make sugar-free wafers.

 The little wafers are easily melted.  I tried two methods that worked equally well.  I melted the yellow mints in a double broiler and I melted the chocoloate wafers in a bowl placed inside a larger bowl filled with hot water.

You can either place the melted chocolate into a icing bag with a large decorating tip or you can spoon in the melted candy.   We tried both methods.  The spoon method requires less cleanup and works fine.  The filled molds need to be tapped on the counter to get rid of air bubbles.

 We popped the molds into the freezer for five minutes.  The hardened chocolates slid out of the molds with no problems at all.  I used a warm knife to trim the edges.  Of course I had to make mine pretty.  My girls could care less if the chocolates they made had bubbles, rough edges or rounded bottoms.  They tasted great despite their imperfections.

This was such an easy project!