As I mentioned last night, as well as making soap on Sunday we also made candies, a series of Halloween-themed lollipops. They turned out nicely in terms of flavor and detail, but the breakage rate was unfortunately very high. That was largely because of me not realizing how fragile they would be, so I think if I did it again, I could get much better results simply by being more careful. Anyway, if you’re interested there are some more pictures after the break.
After making the master plugs and molds (which you can see here), the first step was to place lollipop sticks into the grooves that I’d left for them.
The candy filling was made by melting a bar of white chocolate in the microwave, to which I added an eyedropper full of marshmallow flavor and another of cotton candy flavor, as well as a bit of pink food coloring (which if I remember right is made of crushed beetles or something like that). This was scooped into the molds with a popsicle stick and then scraped flat to minimize the overflow. They were taking a long time to harden so I put them in the freezer.
Putting them in the freezer was perhaps not the best idea, because it made them doubly fragile and in the morning when I popped them out of their molds I damaged quite a few of them which was a little disappointing. Only about half of them survived. The detail level was good though, and other than a few places where I hadn’t completely filled the mold, there were no issues with bubbles or anything like that.
Finally, here are some close-up pictures:
Even though there were some problems, I think I still consider this a success overall. The only unsolvable problem is that I really don’t like candy that much, so I’m not sure what to do with the things I create. I suppose that applies to most of the things I make. I’d sell them on Etsy or something but the problem with sites like Etsy is that they’ve driven the price of handcrafted items so incredibly low that it’s hard to justify bothering to have a store — the profit margin is so slim that you might as well be giving them away. Nonetheless, I do enjoy it.
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Is that a Sandman comic in the background in the first picture?
Love and Rockets. The Jaime Hernandez side of things.
Freaking awesome!
Not a fan of candy either, however if you were to explore this further, I would recommend heading over to bulk bar where you can get all kinds of colored chocolate discs and candy making supplies. Also on a side note (not to nit pick, but I am a Chef ;) )
When working with any chocolate it’s best to use it in non bar form. Although chocolate chips makes for a great medium. Reason I say this is because chocolate bars are already tempered, which can affect how they melt/take shape and so forth.
Very cool idea though! I checked out the site you listed and I wish I had some cash, I would totally be all over that!
i have often wondered what is your etsy site..
…forgot to add that i love the candy molds and soap molds youve created :)
I don’t have an etsy site…
So, I got to play with this low-temp thermoplastic the other evening, and given your recent projects, I thought of you immediately. https://shapelock.com
No, I’m not a spambot – I just thought this stuff was really neat.
Shapelock looks like really fun stuff… I’ve been wanting to use it for something for ages, since first seeing it on the website of the guy that makes those little steam powered robots.
This guy: https://www.crabfu.com/swashbot/swashbot3.html
Aw, those things are *adorable* – I can’t get over the little moving eyes!
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