Learn how to make chocolate heart mold from silicone, fit for Valentine’s Day or anytime, with this fun tutorial from chocolate-lover Elily Temam.
Whether you want to create one large heart for someone special, or a handful of cute chocolate hearts to whisk out to your friends, this tutorial will have you sorted. Today, food scientist and sweet-tooth cook Elily Temam explains how you can make your own custom chocolate heart mold.
She explains how to select your tools and build your mold step-by-step, plus a couple of recipes for crafting beautiful chocolates with your new heart mold.
How to Make Chocolate Heart Molds
By Elily Temam, Food Scientist and Chocolate Addict
By now I’m sure it’s well known about my love for chocolates. Being a chocolate enthusiast, I have seen a lot of Chef Amaury Guichon on my feed.
The one thing I’ve noticed from all the chocolate art he creates is that he barely uses any molds for his chocolate, he uses different and creative techniques to create those beautiful pieces he makes, and I’m fairly certain that an octopus-shaped chocolate mold doesn’t exist. While Chef Amaury is excellent at making those chocolate masterpieces without any molds, beginners like yourselves may need to use a mold.
In this article, I will briefly talk about you can make heart-shaped molds at home. It is a fun DIY project where you work with different materials like silicone, and a cast model, which will make you feel like you are very artsy.
How to Make Chocolate Heart Mold – MethodÂ
Equipment & Tools
Heart-shaped Cookie Cutter: this is needed to get the perfect heart shape for your clay. The size is up to you, it can be small, medium or large.
Flexible, Deep Plastic Tray: this is used to attach your model hearts onto it. Make sure that your plastic container has a flat bottom and is at least a quarter inch taller than the object you are trying to take a mold from.
Play-Doh: I know that Play-Doh might sound like an odd thing for this project, but you are going to use it to make the heart shapes that are going to be the base for the mold
Food Grade Silicone Mold: This is the main part of our mold. This must be food-grade, not industrial/construction silicone.
Digital Scale: This is needed just in case measuring is required during the mixing of silicone.
School Glue: This is used to attach the hearts to the plastic tray to prevent the silicone mix from getting under the heart and ruining the shape of your mold.
Step 1: Knead & Roll the Play-Doh
Play-doh is known for being a colorful and fun thing that kids play with. For this project, you will use the Play-Doh to create the heart shape, and therefore the color of the Play-doh does not matter.
The first thing you need to do is to knead your Play-doh well to remove any air bubbles that might be present and flatten it using a rolling pin.
The thickness of the Play-Doh should be equivalent to the molds depth since we are going to be using it as our cast for the chocolate mold after you have rolled out the play-doh.
Step 2: Cut the Play-Doh
Grab your cookie cutter and start punching heart-shaped holes in your play-doh, again the amount of hearts you make is up to you since they are equivalent with the number of hearts that are going to be present on your mold.
Once you have made your play-doh hearts set it aside to let it dry. Based on the thickness level there are two options to dry the play-doh:
Air Drying: this method works for thinner play doh, although it will take about 2 to 3 hours, it will dry very well with no risk of cracking
Oven drying: this method works best for thicker play doh, all you need to do is pre-heat the oven to 200-250oF (90-125oC), place your heart-shaped play-doh on parchment paper so that it doesn’t stick to the baking sheet, and bake it for about 10 minutes.
Step 3: Glue Hearts onto Tray
Now that your Play-Doh is properly dry, get your plastic tray and start brushing your hearts with school glue and stick them onto the tray. Place the hearts at least 3 centimeters apart from each other.
Step 4: Create the Silicone Heart Mold
After assembling all your hearts and gluing them on your tray, get your silicone (food grade) and measure the amount that you might need to make your chocolate mold.
Follow the instruction on the package to make your silicone mix. The mix you make has to be enough to cover at least a quarter inch taller than your heart-shaped cast.
Pour your silicone mix on the plastic tray with the heart shapes and let it sit and harden. This might take 18 to 24 hours.
Step 5: Remove Silicone Mold from Tray
Once it is fully set, pop the silicone out of the plastic tray and remove any heart pieces that might be stuck in the mold. After removing any remnants of the Play-Doh, wash your silicone mold. Then get ready to make delicious heart-shaped chocolates with your newly made chocolate mold.   Â
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How to Make Chocolates in Your Heart Mold
Now that you have made your heart chocolate mold, you must be eager to try it out. Since making the mold was hard work, I’m going to make the chocolate-making step as easy as possible. For a more advanced chocolate molding tutorial, you can check out Chef Prish’s professional chocolate molding instructions, but for now we’ll keep it quick and easy.
For this recipe, all you need is two ingredients; milk chocolate, and various shapes and colors of sprinkles.
Equipment & Ingredients
- Heat-safe bowl
- Rubber spatula
- Your newly made chocolate mold
Ingredients for Sprinkle Chocolate Hearts:
- Milk chocolate
- Sprinkles
Once you have gathered all the necessary things, let us make our chocolate hearts.
How to Make Chocolate Hearts in Your Mold
Melting Your Chocolate
Two main ways are used to melt chocolate: microwave melting and the double boiler or the stove top method. If you are making the half-half hearts, you’ll need two separate bowls/pans for melting.
Microwave Method
This is the easiest way you can melt chocolate:
- First and foremost, evenly chop your milk chocolate for it to melt evenly.
- Place it in a microwave-safe bowl and microwave it at 30 second intervals, continue this process every 30 seconds. After each interval, take it out of the microwave and stir it until it has melted uniformly. Do not overcook the chocolate, it tends to burn.
Double Boiler Method
- In a saucepan fill 1 or 2 inches of water and boil it on the stove, once it comes to a simmer reduce the heat to low.
- Get your milk chocolate and chop it into equal pieces or grate it.
- Get another bowl that is heat safe and can sit on top of the saucepan safely. Put your chopped or grated chocolate in the bowl and mix with a rubber spatula or a wooden spoon, whichever one you have.
- Stir constantly until it has fully melted, then remove from heat immediately. Don’t forget it on the stove, or else your chocolate will burn.
Chocolate Sprinkle Hearts
Once you have melted your chocolate, get your chocolate mold and sprinkles ready.
- First place some sprinkles at the bottom of your mold (the sprinkle is placed at the bottom of the mold so that it appears on top of the chocolate once it is taken out).
- Pour the melted chocolate on top of the sprinkle layer.
- Once you have filled in all of your molds, let it sit for about 10 minutes before transferring it to the fridge, where it will set.
- Once it has finally been set, remove it from the mold carefully, and enjoy your creamy and crunchy chocolate hearts.
How to Store Your Chocolate Hearts
Just like any homemade chocolate, you are going to need to store them in an airtight container and no direct sunlight exposure.
Make sure to store them in a cool, dry place like you would any store-bought chocolate, these chocolate hearts if stored properly can keep for more than a week. Alternatively, you can also store them in the fridge for a longer shelf life, although storing them in the fridge will mean that you have to wait for them to reach room temperature before you will be able to enjoy them. The freezer is also another option if you would like to store it for over a month.
If you are looking to share your nice little creation with your friends and family, you can use a chocolate packaging of your choice, be sure to warn them of the required storage conditions of the chocolate.
Chocolate Heart Recipe Variations
Half White and Half Dark Chocolate Hearts
Instead of sprinkle chocolate hearts, with not much extra work you can make hearts that are half white chocolate and half dark chocolate. With these hearts, you will enjoy getting two different types of chocolates in one bite.
Equipment:
- Heat-safe bowl
- Rubber spatula
- Your newly made chocolate mold
Ingredients for Half-Half Chocolate Hearts:
- Dark chocolate
- White chocolate
- Coconut oil
Method:
First melt your two different types of chocolates using either the double boiler method or the microwave method. You will need separate bowls/pans for each.
- After you have melted your white chocolate, make sure to add about one tablespoon of food-grade coconut oil.
- Then get your mold ready and pour in either your white or dark chocolate halfway up the mold.
- Let it set for a little bit, then pour in the other type of chocolate. This is done to prevent them from mixing and although it would give you a tie-dye kind of appearance, we are trying to go for more of two different layers stacked on top of each other.
- Repeat this process for the rest of the molds and let them set in the fridge.
- Once they have fully set, slowly remove them from the mold.
Different Flavoring Options
Nuts: adding bits of crushed nuts to your chocolate heart will give it an extra flavor.
Orange/Lemon Zest: In case you would like to use dark chocolate instead of milk chocolate, the zest of citrus fruit is a very good flavor option
Biscuits: it is a universal fact that chocolate and biscuits are a match made in heaven, biscuits have a sweetness, and adding crushed-up biscuits to your chocolate is a nice surprise when you bite into it.
Shredded Coconut
Pomegranate: this fruit works well with chocolates and can be added to the chocolate hearts easily due to the seed’s small size.
Tips on How to Make Chocolate Heart Molds
We hope you’ve enjoyed this article from Elily Temam on How to Make Chocolate Heart Mold shapes from silicone. When following this tutorial, make sure to only use food-grade silicone available from specialty stores such as Make Your Own Molds or similar, and do not use industrial/construction silicone from the hardware store which may have toxic substances.
Learn more about how to make chocolate heart mold treats…
MOLD MAKING
Interested in taking it further? Don’t just stop at chocolate hearts. Chocolatier Simon Knott explains how to make chocolate molds from silicone and other materials, in any shape or form you can imagine. Check out Simon Knott’s article on how to make chocolate molds for more inspiration and instructions.
FOIL WRAPPING
If you want to give your chocolate hearts a beautiful presentation fit for Valentine’s Day or whenever, learn how to use chocolate foil wrappers with Simon Knott in his instructional article on chocolate wrapping.
MELTING, MOLDING & TEMPERING
Lastly, learn how to mold and temper your chocolate hearts to a professional standard, with Chef Prish. Check out Chef Prish’s articles on how to make chocolate in molds and how to temper chocolate for details.
Happy chocolatiering!
