Instead of making a lunch, brunch or dinner this weekend, we decided to make chocolate Easter candy for next week’s festive occasion. When I say Easter candy I don’t mean anything extravagant or complicated. Since we hadn’t made chocolate in 30+ years, we were a little concerned with even the tempering of the chocolate. Maybe next year we’ll try something like a truffle.

I bought good milk chocolate (Callebaut 823 33.6% Milk Couverture Chocolate Callets – 2 Pound Bag) from worldwide chocolate website. I also found different Easter molds: two were silicone, one was plastic.

After looking at multitude of websites, instructions, and videos, we decided to go with the microwave seeding method to melt and temper the chocolate. It didn’t look too scary. We put 3/4 of the chocolate in a glass bowl, then began the microwave process. That included microwaving the chocolate for 30 second increments stirring after each time. When it had all melted we tested the temperature which was about 105°, we wanted to reduce it to about 90, so we added the remaining Chocolate and stirred until it at all melted. I didn’t take that much longer. And the temperature ended up being around 85°. Honestly that was the easiest part of this whole process. We were looking for a shiny chocolate, and once it was all added in mixed in it was shiny.

Now we had to begin pouring the chocolate into the mold. Easier said than done. Ginger, let’s just say, has a special gift at getting the chocolate everywhere. On the floor, on herself, on the table, and yes in the mold. To get it into the molds we used spoons, ladles, and pouring. That wasn’t too bad, it was leveling it afterwards that was difficult. We didn’t have the right equipment so we used knives, spatulas, and anything that might work. This is when we also learned that the plastic mold was much easier because you could hold it and wipe the chocolate off versus the silicone molds you could not do that with. I’ve now become a fan of the plastic.

After filling two of the four molds, we decided to go with the biggest one last. Because it was just tiring. So we made 3 Easter eggs using the blue mold, and used the rest of the chocolate.

Once they were in the molds, you had to tap the mold against the counter to eliminate any air bubbles. Again much easier with plastic than silicone. Next we put them in the refrigerator to allow them to harden. We probably left them in longer than necessary, but we wanted to be sure. Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of the chocolates once final, but will add this later.

Would I make this again? Yes. We learned some less along the way, which will make the next time easier. Tempering chocolate isn’t as scary as it used to be. But next time will probably do some thing a little more challenging.