Playing with chocolate

Melting chocolate for the purpose of making lollipops is not nearly as easy as it sounds. I was pretty sure that chocolate + heat = melted chocolate, which is why I decided to take on the task of making 30 whale lollipops for my baby shower this past Sunday. Who knew it wouldn't be quite that simple? This chick right here.

Good news is that after two days of trying, failing, and trying again, they still turned out fabulous.

This whole project began when I decided to make shower invitations with whales on them. It wasn't intentional that the theme would ultimately become whales and pastels, but that's what happened. I wanted to make favors that would be cute, simple, and not cost a lot of money because I'm cheap frugal. Nan had the genius idea to make chocolate lollipops, and I was on board. I found these cute happy whale molds on Amazon for $3 a piece and bought two. 

Fast forward to last week when we had all of our chocolate lollipop making supplies. Here's how round 1 went down:

1. Nan bought melting chocolate because duh, it's supposed to melt when you follow the instructions. Which is what we did... almost. 

2. We started with the double broiler method, which was a fail from the get go because we were too eager to realize that the top pan is NOT supposed to be immersed in the water of the bottom pan. It looked like we were baking a cake - that chocolate would not melt and we couldn't figure out why.

3. We decided to try the microwave method exactly as it was explained on the bags of melting chocolate. FAIL. Just as we thought would happen, the microwave only ended up burning the chocolate.

4. In a last ditch effort I thought that maybe the yellow chocolate was defective and perhaps the green would respond to microwave melting better. Well... it didn't. 

So we scratched the whole thing for that night. The next day Nan returned the melting chocolate for some white chocolate chips instead, hoping these little buggers would make for an easier time. Here's how round 2 went:

1. Good ol' Nestle white chocolate. The melting instructions were basically the same. We just hoped that for whatever reason it would be different this time. And it was - thank you!

2. This time we decided to do the double broiler method correctly. The key is patience... don't stir the morsels until they are shiny and starting to melt. 

3. Once the morsels are shiny and melty looking, take the top pan off the bottom and stir/fold the chocolate until it gets to a more liquid/viscous state, as shown. This was the AHA moment. The chocolate can now be poured into the molds.

4. We lost a few soldiers due to air bubbles. Make sure to shake the tray back and forth a few times and check the bottom before putting the mold into the refrigerator to set.

After this I got into a rhythm, but it still took another trip to the store for more chocolate chips and another morning to complete the task. With the help of some food coloring I gave the happy white whales a new look.

Overall I'd say this was worth the time and frustration - people loved the pops. And the whale pop tree looked pretty snazzy next to our delicious cake, don't you think?