Candy melts are a product that are often recommended for easy candy making or coating cake pops wit a chocolatey coating. They come in many colors and have a plain, vaguely milky flavor that serves as a base for additional flavorings. There are other products with very similar names out there that perform in the same way. Many people make the mistake of thinking that these are chocolate, since they’re recommended for candy making, but these melts are not chocolate. They’re primarily made with a combination of sugar and vegetable fats – not cocoa butter.
Candy melts are easy to use – just melt and dip – and they come in a wide variety of colors, which makes it easy to decorate with them and achieve a wide variety of looks. Since they are not chocolate, so they don’t need to be tempered. Candy melts will set up with the same look and texture after they have been melted and allowed to harden again. The only real downside is that they’re quite sweet and definitely don’t deliver that rich chocolate flavor to candies made with them.
Tempering chocolate – a process that stabilizes melted chocolate so that it has a smooth, glossy sheen with a nice “snap” after it sets up – can be a tricky process because you have to raise and lower the temperature of your chocolate to get just the right result. It can take a little bit of practice to get the hang of tempering chocolate, but it is well worth it for making homemade chocolate bark or other candies. Candy melts are best used for decorative purposes.
What do you think?