After having given CheezWaster’s nursery school teachers Dunkin Donut gift cards for Christmas, I wanted to do something a little more crafty and from the heart for Teacher Appreciation Week. I also wanted it to be either consumable or something I knew the teachers would use. I poked around the internet and found some really cute teacher themed chocolate molds on candy.com that were well worth the investment considering I can use them for years to come.
Since the one mold I was working with had text as part of the design, I chose to paint that with colored chocolate to make it stand out. I filled my Chocolate Paint Palette (which I found in the food making section of AC Moore) with colored chocolate wafers, melted them at half power in the microwave and began the painting.
Painting the Design with Colored Chocolate
Finishing the Design Painting
As you can see in the picture above, when you are adding a fill to the design, you will need to tap the mold to make it even. If you don’t do this, you are liable to have bubbles in your chocolate after it sets. This picture shows and untapped mold.
Next, I melted regular chocolate wafers to fill in the main portion of the chocolate mold. I like this type of wafer better than the chocolate version of the colored wafers. It is smaller and melts faster. It is also designed to use with fondue pots and chocolate fountains and I find the taste to be more authentic. I melted these directly into a plastic bottle made for chocolate making (also found at AC Moore).
Filling in the full shape
I filled the molds almost to the top. These were very large in diameter and didn’t necessarily need to filled to the top. There was definitely plenty of chocolate in them even though they weren’t full. However, when making all other mold chocolates, make sure you fill the mold full.
This was the finished chocolate after I put it in the freezer for a few minutes to set. The text reads “The Best Teachers Get Chocolate”.
Other Colored Chocolate Designs
We also made some chocolate rulers, apples, crayons & books. I packed them all in white food boxes that I purchased around Christmas time at the Container Store. You could also just add these to a cellophane bag, a chocolate box (found at AC Moore) or any type of fancy food storage container.
This entire project cost me about $35, but I’ve got plenty of left over chocolate wafers that I’ll be able to use for other projects. And I’ll certainly be able to use the molds as the kids go through each grade of school. All in all, I found it to be a fun and reasonably priced gift. And if you didn’t want to lay out all of the cash for the various colors of chocolate, you could just purchase one bag of the normal chocolate wafers and make the molds with that. Let’s hope the teachers enjoy it!
