Welcome to the Cake Decorators Q&A

I love your courses and was motivated to try and make modelling chocolate after watching the class with the bear and the modelling choc with colourful hearts.
My attempt at making modelling chocolate turned out in an oily mess and very hard and unyielding.
I melted the chocolate over hot water and added glucose and it did not mix and blend well and oil started coming out of it as soon as I touched it. I put it in the fridge anyway for a trial and when it hardened I softened it in the microwave and more oil started pouring out of it. Yuk.
can you please tell me how to make it correctly, and also tell me what I have done wrong?
There will be no modelling done with this disaster.
kind regards
Brenda

Hello bwilkin

As far as I am aware, Paul doesn’t make his own paste. His preferred modelling chocolate is the Squire’s kitchen brand which can be purchased from their online shop or ebay: http://www.ebay.co.uk/bhp/modelling-chocolate
Making the paste at home can be tricky if the mixing method isn’t quite right. The easiest method is to melt the chocolate in the microwave at intervals of 20 or 30 seconds on a low to medium heat before adding the glucose.It’s extremely important to stir the chocolate gently after each interval (or even less time) of heating. This method does run the risk of burning the chocolate if care isn’t taken. The double boiler method carries the risk or incorporating steam and droplets of water into the chocolate which can seize it and cause grainy, crumbly texture. Ideally the glucose should also be approximately the same temperature as the melted chocolate. Warm the glucose in a bowl standing over a bowl of hot but not boiling water. Again take care not to incorporate droplets of water or steam into the glucose. Alternatively stand the tube or bottle of glucose in a jug of hot water to warm it up. You’ll find different chocolates will give different results depending on their purity. Take a look at the following site for recipes and helpful advice:
http://www.wickedgoodies.net/modeling-chocolate-recipe/
Don’t over mix the melted ingredients. To prevent copious release of oils from the chocolate use a folding method when incorporating the ingredients. This is probably the part which you, I and everyone else gets wrong when first attemping to make modelling chocolate. You’ve no idea how much chocolate I wasted initially in trying to get a paste vaguely useable. Rather than use speciality chocolates try using basics from the supermarket or use candy melts or better still buy commercially made paste, Modelling chocolate goes a very long way. The price of buying paste of quality and consistency imho beats wasting money, time and ingredients at trying to make it home. To make it go even further it can be mixed 50/50 with sugarpaste.
I make modelling chocolate at home for smal projects but for anything with detail or if is time consuming I find buying a good commercially made paste less stressful and in the long run much cheaper too!
For hundreds of other recipes google ‘modelling chocolate recipes’. You’ll see they are all much of a muchness with small variations. The trick is in the type of chocolate used, temperature of both ingredients and definitiely the mixing method. Good luck with your next batch!