Chocolate Bar Creation for the Holidays

Just in time for Christmas and other winter holidays comes another Magic Choc product that lets you play with your treat before you eat them: Chocolate Picture Maker.  This makes candy bars that you or your child designs and molds, teaching how these treats are made as well as encouraging creativity  Plus this is all real chocolate without unnecessary added fats or oils.  Just as we tested the molding chocolate with a couple of kids we tested this with the same two little girls so we can comment about which kit they preferred and would recommend at the end.  We received three kits -- a four-pack and two one-packs meaning that we could make six bars in total just enough for each of us to make one.

The kits have the activity tray you put the chocolate in as well stencils set you use to help make the image. I looked for more stencils for the Chocolate Picture Maker online and found them here though there were not hundreds as the boxes claimed only 56.  I didn't print out any extra because I felt we had enough variety as it was.

32 stencil patterns were included in the kits themselves.  The stencils are labeled from Easy to Medium to Hard depending on how any lines and small shapes you need to make for each image.  You cut each stencil picture out and tape it to the bottom of the tray you need the side that has depth to pour your chocolate into.  The directions in each box gives useful hints but also makes it clear you need to this a certain way -- dark chocolate to outline, white to fill in, and milk to cover it all and make the bar's back and bulk.

Using the Chocolate Picture Maker was more fun than the modeling chocolate several of our testers thought; they were about equally messy.  This chocolate though was much better tasting since nothing had to be done to make it moldable only pourable and that only requires pure chocolate in all three varieties.  However this kit was less creative on some levels because you had to either start with a stencil or pre-plan a shape out since you outline first but I think most of us added something onto the image for example this cat got a hat he didn't have in the original stencil while the moon and stars I made got some dark chocolate craters added to the lunar landscape so that I'd get more dark chocolate.

Beyond the outlining you could be more messy though you still needed to be careful about move the dark chocolate or the white chocolate around with each layer.  This sheep just had white chocolate dumped over the outlined body then spread gently around but the dark lines showed through.  Toothpicks helped move the chocolate into the proper places we found out with much less mess and line damage than using a finger even if you got to eat the chocolate that way.

Since you had to cover the entire back and tray with the milk chocolate just drizzling it everywhere then spreading with a small spatula worked great we discovered.  This made a mostly even backed bar that was fairly uniform in thickness.

Here are our final results!

Have you use the Chocolate Picture Maker?  If so please leave us a comment and let us know what you thought of it.  We give this a Sacrament Status for fun and quality chocolate but it is expensive for anything beyond a very small party or family gift.