COOKING FOREVER

In modern urban neighborhoods, the kitchens have taken the central position. It would not be an overstatement to say that the whole house revolves around this room. You get three meals a day here, and it even doubles as a living room when you have intimate friends and family over.

As far as the contents inside the kitchen go, they are more of a subjective thing. It depends on how much you are invested in cooking, baking, and other that sort of thing. Still, there are many things that are common for every kitchen in the town, just like essential appliances. If you expect to see a refrigerator, you already have an idea of what is inside. Candy melts are one of those things.

Essentially, they are fantastic chocolate renditions that are used for multiple recipes, in order to enhance its taste and look. It is the only thing that allows you to dip other confections in it and give them an outer coat of chocolate. Simply, it is one of the best ways to make delicious treats for festivals and occasions.

All good things aside, many users have experienced that whenever they plan to use candy melts, it has much more consistency and viscosity that they need. This makes it hard to dip and coat items in the melted chocolate. There is a clear need to melt chocolate for coating and other ornamental purposes with ideal texture and consistency.

For your convenience, we have researched the subject and singled out the best methods to thin out candy melts. They will surely help you in your baking endeavors as well as get you a perfect recipe for friends and family.

Before we dive into these tips and techniques to melt chocolate with even consistency, let us take a look at some of the uses of candy melts.

Uses Of Candy Melts

It is perfectly natural to take a look into the uses of melted chocolate before we go out on a spree to melt it wholesale.

Apparently, there are so many!

One of the most popular among cafés and households is to make their own home-made chocolate lollipops. This is one of the surest ways to become popular among the kids of the neighborhood overnight, especially during festivals like Halloween or Thanksgiving. If you are wondering how to make chocolate lollipops at home, you will find molds of every type at a local departmental store or online. Pour chocolate in them, add a stick, and let them settle in a freezer.

Pro Tip: You can skip the stick part and make customized chocolates of your own. Wrap those in a food-friendly paper and gift them to your loved ones.

Chocolate Coating

Often, melted chocolate finds its way at the top of other confections and sweet items, as an added layer. For instance, in the bowl of melted chocolate, virtually everything goes inside and will come with delicious chocolate on top.

The most common things that are ornamented using melted chocolates are:

• Cake Pops

• Cookies

• Pretzel Sticks

• Fruit

The best thing about candy melts is that they are already pre-colored, so you do not need to add extra food color to give the perfect color to your chocolate. Just look for the color of candy melts that would go perfect with the theme of the event.

After going through the uses and ease of operating, now you will have a clear idea of why people love to use candy melts for a variety of purposes.

Why Do You Need To Thin Out Candy Melts?

All praises and qualities aside, people often complain about the consistency of melted chocolate. Even after heating and beating, it just remains quite thick which makes it hard to handle, especially for a dip and stick purposes. There is no way you can resort to heat chocolate periodically because that would burn the chocolate.

Viscous chocolate may give the impression of quality and purity, but its application is very difficult. For example, there are chances of breaking the item in the bowl of melted chocolate if it is too thick. Or the item is prone to breakage due to the stickiness of the chocolate.

Thinning out seems to be a great way to iron out kinks in, otherwise, awesome chocolate. It will easy to work around it and the consistency will go from thick to just perfect. The cherry on top is that your desired product will have a smooth chocolate coating on top without any lumps or bumps.

Now, let us explore the techniques of thinning out candy melts:

Thinning Aid

Since the problem is mutual for both business owners and households, there is a ready-made solution to this. Many chocolate brands decided to address the issue of thickness in candy melts by introducing their own “thinning aid” items. You can purchase them both from the departmental stores or online and they will help you in getting the right consistency for chocolate melts so that your task goes on without any hiccup.

The composition of such thinning agents is not a mystery. Usually, they are made of oils. On the brand side, they tinker with the formula a little bit to customize it according to their chocolate. The most common ration of mixing thinning aid with chocolate is two tablespoons of thinning aid with around twelve ounces of candy melts, once they are melted. For your chocolate and thinning aid type, you should read the instructions carefully before starting the thinning process.

On the other hand, if you have already candy melts at home, and you do not want to spend extra money or time to shop for the thinning aid, you are in luck. There are other ways to thin your candy melts at home, without any specialized item.

Shortening

This is by far the easiest and simplest method to thin out candy melts at home. Mostly, you would not have to go to a store to get any ingredients. There are healthy odds that you will have shortening already in some drawer of your kitchen, making it an extremely convenient option.

After you are done melting candy melts, add one teaspoon of shortening in the bowl, and stir the chocolate. If the melted chocolate does not reach the level of your desired consistency, you can add another teaspoon of shortening. Keep on stirring and add one teaspoon of shortening at a time. Be attentive and notice the marginal change of consistency after each spoon of shortening. If you get in too thin, you would have to add extra melted candy melts. Also, keep in mind that you want some thickness and consistency to the chocolate to be able to coat other items with it. If you make it too thin, it would not be able to stick and slip right off. You can do practice dipping to reach the perfect consistency level for your chocolate melts.

Keep in mind to stir for a while before adding another teaspoon of shortening.

Paramount Crystals

It is another product that you can purchase from the market to thin out candy melts at home. It is specially manufactured to thin out a variety of items including candy melts, carob, and many other items.

The main ingredient in the manufacturing of paramount crystals is hydrogenated palm kernel oil. Interestingly, it is not in liquid form as many of you expect it to be. Instead, they are packed as little crystal pieces that appear to be dry but melts instantly once you put them in your hot melted chocolate.

This is one of the preferred methods to thin out candy melts by professionals. The reason is the even consistency and perfect texture throughout the melted chocolate, once it is hardened. Since shortening will make the melted chocolate some extra soft because it is soft at room temperature, paramount crystals are hard at room temperature. This means you will get crisp in your melted chocolate when it cools down to room temperature.

Now if you are looking for a way to thin out candy melts with even consistency and let it settle crispy when cooled down, you have a winner here in the face of paramount crystals. You can buy them from a grocery store or you can order them online. They will, certainly, get you closer to your perfect recipe.

Cocoa Butter

Cocoa butter is one of the chief ingredients in the processing and manufacturing of chocolates. This is the constituent that gives the chocolate milky texture as it melts in your mouth. Now, if you add pure cocoa butter in a hot, melted candy, it will make the mixture thin and fluid in an instant. In a way, that is getting the perfect consistency of melted chocolate without adding any extra item in the mix. Candy melts will stay true to their origin so you do not have to worry about special circumstances in which added items could react in a strange way.

By the sound of it, this is an excellent method to thin out candy melts that will help you decorate both candy tops, cakes, etc. Yet, there is a catch in it. Cocoa butter is an expensive item. If you are willing to spare some extra bucks to thin out candy melts at home by staying true to the original ingredients of the chocolate, you have a winner. But if it too costly for your budget, you are better off using one of the other techniques to thin out melted chocolate. Just remember, this method will get you a creamy and buttery texture in your chocolate with the perfect consistency of your own specification. So, think over the pros over cons before making the final decision.

Oils

If you are in a pinch and want quick results, adding just a half teaspoon of oil can help you in getting the perfect viscosity for your melted candy melts. There is a trend in oils that they remain in liquid form at room temperatures. It means your finished product will not harden much once they are finished, or they would not have that crunch or crisp at the end that you need. This could be one of the downsides of thinning out candy melts in oils. Contrary to this, you will find that it is extremely easy to handle and work with melted chocolate when it is thinned in oils.

If you are in a region where room temperature is 75 degrees or cooler, coconut oil could be a great option because it is solid at room temperatures between that range.

Of course, you will get the taste of coconut in your finished product, so think about it before adding and stirring coconut oil in your melted candy melts.

If you do not like coconut to come closer to your chocolate, as many people prefer, there are other options in oils that you can use for your work. For instance, you can go for vegetable oil or canola oil. They work extremely well in the thinning process and do not have noticeable flavor. For optimal results, make sure to add half a teaspoon at a time and stir for a minute before adding more oil. In such processes, oils can be too powerful to handle in higher quantities.

Overall, you should opt for that method if there is a short window to create items with melted chocolate. Otherwise, other options are safer and true to the ingredients of candy melts.

Conclusion

Candy melts have always been extremely popular among bakers and confectioners to adorn their items with a top layer of creamy chocolate, for added color and flavor. For those who were struggling to achieve the perfect consistency and texture for the melted chocolate to cover items with an added layer, we have discussed many tips and techniques to thin out candy melts that would help them in easy working and handling.

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