How to Make Modeling Chocolate (with Recipes)

hi I'm back in a recent video I showed you how to do ribbon work with a rolled fondant and chocolate dough and in this video I'm going to show you how to make that chocolate dough chocolate dough is my favourite modelling medium for making things that stand up off of cookies or cakes like Bowl oops and it's my favorite because of its taste when made with a high-grade chocolate it's absolutely yummy it is a little bit more heat sensitive than rolled fondant so there are some circumstances under which I can't use it but when I can I always will so I'm going to show you how I how I made the dough that made these ribbons I'd love to talk about dough also not only for the flavor but because it's also super easy to make it's largely a one Bowl process if you use your scale and it takes two minutes one to two minutes max to mix up once you melted the chocolate so my basic formulation is about 7 ounces of melted chocolate I do this in a double boiler but it's a makeshift double boiler I just use a bowl that I know is going to be big enough to receive the corn syrup that I'm going to add to this because it's two ingredients chocolate and corn syrup and I said it ideally so it's not touching the water underneath and melted gently if you overheat chocolate it can seize and thicken beginners who have not a lot of experience with chocolate sometimes think when it ceases in thickens that they just need to heat it more and in fact that makes the situation worse it makes it even more granular but this is perfectly melted I'm going to take it off the double boiler and I'm just wiping the bottom so water doesn't drip anywhere I'm going to set the water aside we don't need that we don't want that in the chocolate and what I am going to do at this point is as I said there were seven ounces of chocolate in here but I want to weigh my bowl with the chocolate in it because I'm going to be adding corn syrup to it and I tend to like to weigh everything for this recipe because then I can keep it all in One Bowl I don't have to put the corns Europe into a measuring cup and then try to scoop it out there's usually a lot of loss in that process plus it makes a really messy it's messy proposition and it's one more item to clean up so investing in a scale is great also not just for this recipe but if you're baking in general you look at much more precise results off of that so I hadn't weighed my bowl before I had seven ounces of chocolate my bowl must weigh about seven point eight ounces because I'm registering fourteen point eight ounces on my scale to this chocolate I add either a third a cup of corn syrup or about 3.5 ounces so I need to take this to about eighteen point five to get it where I want it one note this is a semi-sweet chocolate about sixty percent cacao ratio so depending on the type of chocolate you use you want to adjust that the amount of corn syrup you use we'll be doing a white chocolate variation in this dough as soon as I finish this and because it's got a higher cocoa butter content I need to use less corn syrup to bring the dough to the ultimate similar kind of molding consistency if I put in the same amount my white chocolate dough would be really really soft even after it's set up for a period of time okay so I'm looking to take this up three and a half ounces then stop adding corn syrup okay so I'm just about there and what I'm going to do at this stage is just stir it together and that the mixture starts out really fluid but as I stir it usually no longer than one to two minutes this addition of the corn syrup causes the chocolate to thicken and become very paste like to the point that it actually ultimately clears the sides of the bowl if the chocolates really warm to start it'll take a little bit longer for this to come together neatly and nicely but you'll see as I'm stirring how its thickening and getting a little pasty don't expect this to be of molding consistency right away it's going to be very very gloppy to start but this is close to what I would expect to see see at this stage I'm just going to stir it a touch more so it just turns shiny and cleans the side of the bowl like so and then that's all you need to do to make the chocolate dough except that you want to transfer it out of the bowl and store it so that it can sit for a period of time to firm up now to do that I like to store it in an airtight container wrapped in plastic just cuz I flattened it into a disc and then it's easier to start rolling the dough or shaping it typically from a disc it also tends to solidify more uniformly if it's padded into a shallow disc as opposed to masked up in a big ball at this point it's so it's still relatively fluid that it's not going to hold the ball shape anyway so I'm just simply scraping it out of the bowl and onto the plastic wrap the one thing to watch out for is you don't want to have too many folds in the plastic wrap because when the chocolate sets up it'll set up around the plastic and sometimes it's hard to get the plastic out so that's done I flattened it into a disc wrap the plastic around it like so I might do another layer of plastic around this mostly just to give this a little more stability so it's easier to move around while it's still soft and I wrap this at this point my chocolate had cooled down before I started it was it was lukewarm well this is a little bit warm to the touch but it's it's certainly cool enough to wrap up if I'd let it sit in that bowl for a couple minutes before I packaged it is be even easier to handle than it is now it's flopping around a little bit so with that done you can't use it immediately so if you're planning to use modeling chocolate you do need to do this in advance typically if it's a really cool day cool environment maybe 65 degrees in your and work environment and if you put this into a sealed container and let it sit overnight it will set up to a much more solid working consistency something that can be molded and shaped this is dough I actually made about a week ago but even after a day if you're on if it's not too hot it will set up to this kind of consistency believe it or not so that's the basics of making a chalk a dark chocolate dough semi-sweet chocolate dough there is a nuance as I said to making the white chocolate dough so I'm going to break now I'm going to melt that chocolate we're going to come back and put that together and I'll show you what I what I do differently when we get to that point I'll be back in a sec hi I'm back I've got the white chocolate melted again it's starting with seven ounces to make it easy I'm starting with seven ounces of melted white chocolate but as I mentioned before because of the added cocoa butter content or the relatively high proportion of cocoa butter content in white chocolate versus dark chocolate I have to add less corn syrup to get to the same end working consistency just as an example here some finished white chocolate dough its bendable and pliable it's fairly rigid if I'm just holding it in my hand this is not going to start out that way it's going to be kind of soupy and pasty but after a day or two days sitting in an air tight container wrapped in plastic it will solidify into this working consistency so as I said I'm going to add less corn syrup in this case it's about a quarter of a cup but I've got my melted chocolate sitting on a scale so I'm just going to weigh it in that quarter of a cup is about two point four ounces of corn syrup so I'm going to be watching the scale a couple more big squeezes ought to do it there we go okay same process I'm going to stir it I'm going to take it off the scale to do that focuses a little bit easier in my chocolate is cool it's kind of lukewarm it's not steaming hot now if I stir it it's going to come together but it's going to it's this is a more sensitive product than the dark chocolate dough and as I stir it it tends typically especially if the chocolate is at all warm to exude more cocoa butter in that cocoa butter if it's left sitting on the dough it'll ease out and the kind of a yellow mill it'll look like melted butter surrounding the dough I've stirred it enough I'm actually not seeing too much but you'll notice that the dough isn't as slick and homogeneous as the dark chocolate dough I don't know if you notice that they're like little holes in it so what I like to do is bring it together by kneading it a little bit and this also works out the excess cocoa butter I find does I'm kneading you'll see this cocoa butter coming out I find that if I don't do this and I were just to package that up the way I packaged up the dark chocolate dough it would settle and some of the cocoa butter would ooze out if it didn't is out already and it would settle into pockets on the interior for the dough once that set up but cocoa butter it recrystallizes and it recrystallizes into something that's very very hard that and then ultimately makes the dough very gritty so by working out the cocoa butter this way I get a lot of it out to begin with the dough is now looking much more plastic like it's not as there not as many holes in it and that will end up that will end up giving me a just much smoother and product and I'd say probably released about one to two teaspoons of cocoa butter in that kneading process if I sit this down on the counter here and package it up immediately you'll see there's still a lot of cocoa butter sitting around the outside and that too will recrystallize when I package it up so I want to blot this dry before you do package it because I want to again avoid any kind of recrystallization either on the interior on the surface and to blot it dry I simply use a paper towel I blot it quickly I don't let it sit on the surface too because it'll stick and then you have to you'll struggle to get that paper towel out of the dough and I'll flip it over clean up my work surface and get the extra cocoa butter off sometimes give myself a new set of towels if those are pretty soft and Pat the backside as dry as I can possibly get it sometimes as it sits it exudes more cocoa butter so I may do this two or three times before I actually package it up flipping it over repeatedly but I think it's looking pretty dry so I'm going to move it on over to the side again clean up my work surface maybe give it one more pat on the top and you'll notice it's pretty solidified I started with a much cooler white chocolate than I did dark chocolate so my dark chocolate was floppier at this stage because my chocolate was cooler to start it's almost it's almost manageable it's still too floppy to shape ribbons and roses and such with so again I'm patting it some more and that's beginning to look pretty darn good it's never going to be completely dry at this stage but if you get off all the big obvious pools of cocoa butter you'll be in good shape and again I like to flatten it into a disc and I set it on plastic again it's important to get any wrinkles out of the plastic or they'll set into the chocolate I'm going to Pat it dry one last time you'll see I'm trying to get most of the glisten off the top and that looks pretty darn good simply package it up the way I did the dark chocolate dough maybe give it another layer of plastic so it's a little bit easier to handle and move it and then I store it in an airtight container if I were just to leave this out over time wrapped in plastic the plastic is permeable and the dough would get hard and kind of crunchy much more quickly than if I store it in a Tupperware container for instance so when it goes and in about 24 hours it'll be set up so something that's more like this consistency and in the case of the dark chocolate dough it sets up even firmer typically to something more like this consistency simply put the lid on top I like to always date my container so I know when the batch was made this will stay fresher very very long time and workable for a very very long time but if you let it go months for instance it can get really hard and unworkable and then it's not really salvageable and you want to move on to a new set of chocolate dough hey I'm back it's a day later I told you that the chocolate dough that I made yesterday would set up to a firm working consistency ready to make ribbons and roses I don't know if you believe me or not but I just wanted to show you that it in fact what I said was true here's the chocolate dough very very rigid now this is the dark chocolate dough made with semi-sweet chocolate and just to verify I can break off a nice solid chunk roll it into a ball and do all sorts of other things with it same is true of the white chocolate dough I made here it here it is again not so floppy anymore this is just this is actually not even overnight it was about 12 hours stored at room temperature maybe 65 degrees Fahrenheit maybe a little bit warmer in an airtight container wrapped in plastic for that period of time the white chocolate dough will always be a little bit softer than the semi-sweet chocolate dough don't let that alarm you and it will also melt more quickly in the heat of your hands and that's because of the higher cocoa butter contents so with this dough you have to be a little bit more careful in terms of how much you handle it you might need to let it sit a little bit longer to set up in the dark chocolate dough too but as you can see this one is forming nice round balls that hold their shape even 12 hours later please join me in my next video where I'll be talking about how to shape this dough into ribbons and all sorts of other edible treats that are perfect for cookie and cake decorating live sweetly

Channel: JuliaMUsher

Views: 625,846

Rating: 4.8536587 out of 5

Keywords: how to make modeling chocolate, modeling chocolate, chocolate dough, how to make chocolate dough, cookie decorating, cake decorating, How to, how to make, tutorial, decorating, decorating techniques, Julia M Usher, Recipes for a Sweet Life, Ultimate Cookies, Cookie Swap, baking, desserts, sweets, semisweet modeling chocolate, white modeling chocolate, white chocolate, semisweet chocolate, recipe, modeling chocolate recipe, chocolate dough recipe

Id: 34aSpbvdD-k

Length: 14min 43sec (883 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 05 2013