Making chocolate seashells is a fast way to decorate a cake, and they taste better than fondant or gumpaste.
If you want to do some shells that have a few details in contrasting colors on them, it’s pretty easy to do.
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How to make the chocolate shells.
Materials you’ll need:
- Chocolate or candy melts in contrasting colors.
- Food-safe paintbrushes.
- Silicone seashell molds.
Melt the candy melts or chocolate in a heat-proof dish. I used some Pyrex souffle cups and melted the candy melts in the microwave in 5-10 second bursts, stirring in between until the chocolate is almost melted.
When there are some lumps left, stop heating it and stir so that the residual heat melts the rest.
This method works best for silicone molds that make a fairly solid shape, since chocolate can break pretty easily if there are thin areas that stick up off of the mold.
Using a paintbrush, dip it into one of the colors and dab some spots on the mold. These will show up as the dark spots on the shells when the cooled-off chocolate is de-molded later on.
When the dots have cooled off a little, you’ll use the second color to fill in the rest of the shell.
Using a spatula, scoop the second color into the mold and smooth it down.
You want to do it this way because pouring the melted chocolate into the mold in can melt the dots and smear the contrasting color.
It will still melt a little but by dropping the second color into the mold you’ll minimize this.
When the mold is full, run the spatula over to flatten out the chocolate, then place it flat on a counter to set up.
If the mold that you’re using doesn’t have a flat back, you can set it up in a pan of rice so that it stays level while it’s cooling off.
How to paint a mold that has a lot of surface detail.
For a mold that has a lot of tiny surface detail, like this sea urchin, you can take some white chocolate and smear it into the crevices in the mold with your finger.
When you de-mold the finished shell it will have little white raised dots on it like a real sea urchin shell.
Fill the mold with a contrasting color the same way as the description above, and let the chocolate set up completely.
Using contrasting chocolate colors in this way will give you a lot of ways to add details to your shells.
You can use colored candy melts to match your cake’s theme colors, or make the shells more realistic.
This video shows the method of painting the mold itself so that there are contrasting details once the chocolate is poured into the mold on top of the painted areas.
