Yolli For Your Homemade Spooky Treats

So happy to have another UK based company join our list of brands whom we've featured on The Chocolate Cult. Why? Well, our 3rd highest readership is from the United Kingdom. We've featured other UK brands in the past but today we are looking at Yolli a company that focused on helping you, whether you are an average consumer or a candy business, make your goodies. Today we'll look at their candy melts that can be used in conjunction with chocolate to make treats. I experimented over the course of an entire weekend day to see how they worked best with a mold I have with ghost and jack o'lantern shapes. I was sent two bags of the black, white, and orange candy melts in exchange for this review.

I learned that that "painting on" the colors melted the chocolate and it wasn't a great idea as you can see here with the partly melted ghosts. So I turned next to layering the melts and the chocolate in the molds. That was a bit tricky given my basic home equipment. Remember I'm not a professional chocolatier only a woman like you who loves chocolate and wants to spend my money wisely. I'm sure a professional would have much better equipment but doing this did teach me to respect the candy makers even more.

The Black Yolli Melts were my least favorite of the three. The melted pieces made a thick liquid and it was difficult to spread. I also tasted them and yuck... really, that just tasted horrible to me. So at that point I decided not to continue to use them. If they had tasted like licorice, awesome, we've had that type of chocolate before but this taste was just horrible. The ingredients of this product includ Sugar, Hydrogenated vegetable fat, Sweet whey powder, Skimmed milk powder, Emulsifier (soy lecithin), Food acid, Vanilla Flavour, and Natural colours.

The White Yolli Melts melted into a thinner liquid and was easier to spread. It had a very creamy vanilla flavor to it so I paired it with a basic dark chocolate. The ingredients in these melts included Sugar, Fully hydrogenated vegetable fat (palm kernel oil), Skimmed milk powder, Emulsifier (soy lecithin), and Flavour. It took me a few tries to get a thin enough layer that still provided a white cover for the ghosts. The final products may not be professional quality but still not horrible for just setting out for friends and family to eat. In the photo you can see the plain white melt ghosts versus my attempt to make a layered ghost with 55% chocolate as the bulk and a thin layer of the white over it. I did this by applying the white coating to the mold first then adding the chocolate and spreading it out.

The Orange Yolli Melts melted into the thinnest liquid and it was much easier to spread in the molds. Because it is easier to spread you can see that the coverage is more even and nearly blocks out the 55% chocolate unless you look at them from the bottom. I also tested these melts by alone, pre-melted. I don't know if it just my mind playing tricks on me but I think there was a hint of citrus. A specific flavor isn't listed in the ingredients which include Sugar, Vegetable fat (fractionated and hydrogenated), Skimmed milk powder, Emulsifier (soy lecithin), Color, and Flavour.

The candies that you see above clocked in at 25 calories for the chocolate only (not shared in photo form) since I'm focused on the Yolli Melts) vs 27-28 for the layered pieces. It took about 10 minutes to make the layered pieces and then an hour to cool in the refrigerator so not a lot of time.

I got some other molds that were larger and tried another set of candy making but my initial results reminded the same. The Black has a icky taste by itself, the white is good, but the orange is best in terms of flavor and pourability.

If you haven't used candy melts before a few words of advice. Treat it much as you would chocolate -- keep water away from it, do not add any water based ingredients to it, and heat it in short burst with stirring between the heating. If you are used to working with chocolate you know how hot it can get but I notice that these candy melts fully melted more quickly and therefore did not heat up as much. The upside of that is that you can work with it more directly than with chocolate but you can also overheat more easily.

Since I know that we have many readers in the UK I'm curious to your comments about Yolli products. I loved the white and orange candy melts and I'm looking forward to trying the chocolate flavored sugar strands for the winter holidays.