Make Your Own Chocolate: Teens

This is such a fun program, but it’s very labor intensive, and is best for older teens. Basically, you melt chocolate down, pour it into squeeze bottles, and then squirt the chocolate into molds. Pop them in the fridge for a few minutes, and they’re ready to eat. You can buy different colored chocolate melts, or buy white chocolate and use food coloring. To keep the chocolate from hardening in the bottles, I kept them warm in a slow cooker. I’m hoping to do this program again some day, but it’s expensive, and there’s a lot of prep work and clean up. You’re also working with very hot liquid, so depending on the maturity level of your kids, this might not be the best program to try.

 

I purchased fancy, flowery molds with pretty intricate details. I had a fun time making the samples, but it was a little too labor intensive for the teens—they just wanted to squiggle the chocolate into the tray and eat it as fast as possible. Next time, I’d use more basic molds, and include more vibrant colors. Maybe we could make ‘tie dye’ style chocolate?

The chocolate was actually difficult to melt. I had to do it before the teens arrived, and then keep the chocolate warm—it was a mess. I used a china bowl in the microwave. Guess what? Chocolate burns really easily, so you have to nuke, stir, and repeat.

The molds and the chocolate (and the plastic bottles) were a bit pricy. I wasn’t able to reuse the plastic bottles, as they got kind of warped and were impossible to clean.

The teens seemed to enjoy themselves. I was surprised to find that most participants were the oldest, coolest guys. If I do it again, I’ll cap attendance so that everyone has a chance to use the different colors, and nobody’s fighting over molds or materials.

For the record, the chocolate tastes terrible, but it was a fun project.