Frugal Valentine’s – Make Homemade Chocolates Tutorial

In my post last week, I gave some frugal ideas that we use at our house. One thing that I do each year, is make my own chocolates to give as a gift to my husband and boys.

Making homemade chocolates is really not that difficult…and they’re delicious (especially the ones with peanut butter filling). The picture on the left shows all the items that you’ll need to get started:

• Chocolate Melts (I’m using dark chocolate)
• Chocolate molds. If you want to have a filling in the chocolate (like pb or mint), you’ll need a deeper mold
• Paintbrush – you’ll need this for spreading the chocolate on the filled chocolates

Not Necessary:

• Chocolate Melting Pot – you can either use this, microwave the chocolate or use a double boiler on the stove
• Box for chocolates

Step One: I made my peanut butter filling.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup peanut butter
• 1/4 stick (2 tbsp) melted margarine or butter
• 1 cup powdered sugar

Mix together until it looks like the picture above.

Step Two: melt the chocolate. You can either purchase a Chocolate Melting Pro, like the one pictured (with a 40% off coupon at Michaels or JoAnns, of course), or you could melt the chocolate in the microwave or in a double boiler on the stove. It is very important that you do not get the chocolate wet or too hot (in the microwave) or you will ruin it.

Step Three: once the chocolate is melted, you can start spooning it into the molds.

Solid Chocolates – For solid chocolates (like the ones above), spoon some chocolate into the mold and then bang the mold on the table to level it. You will want to level the chocolate pretty quickly after spooning the chocolate in, so that it doesn’t solidify first. Once you have all the molds filled, stick it in the freezer in a level spot for about 10 minutes.

Filled Chocolates: In order to do a filling, you will need to spoon some chocolate into the mold and then use the paintbrush to spread the chocolate around the bottom and sides of the mold (to create a shell). You don’t want the chocolate to be too thick (or there’s not much room for filling and it will have a thick shell when you bite into it), and you don’t want it to be too thin. I usually pick up the mold and check for any thin spots where I can see the light through it. See the picture above for an example of the shell. Once you have all the shells complete, stick the mold into the freezer on a level spot for several minutes.
Step Four: pull the mold out of the freezer and add your filling. I usually take some peanut butter filling and roll it into a ball and pat into the shell. It’s easier to add more filling than it is to pull some filling out, so smaller is better. Once you have the filling in, add some more chocolate to the top, making sure that it touches the shell to completely enclose the filling. You can see an example of some chocolates with the pb filling and with the top on it in the picture above.

Step Five: arrange your chocolates in a container to give for Valentine’s Day. I reuse this box that I bought several years ago for my husband. You can see all the chocolates that I made in the picture above using only 1 bag of the candy melts.

The important thing to remember when you’re making chocolates is to have fun! It doesn’t matter if the chocolates turn out perfect…they’re homemade, right? It’s the thought that matters .

Have you ever made chocolates before? Any additional tips you’d like to add? Are you inspired to try making chocolates now?

For more frugal tips, visit Being Frugal and for more Sweetheart Treats, visit Life as Mom.