Challenging Koi

I am a sucker for pretty molds, even though they are often way beyond my ability to use them properly.  Ignorance is bliss, I suppose.  I got the koi mold, and promptly set about to mold them.  And curse them.  And mold them.  And curse them.  And mold them.  And curse them.  You get the idea.

Besides having a ton of detail, the molds also have some very shallow spots and some very narrow deep spots.  This makes getting chocolate in them and paint in them very hard.  The paint stuck, the air bubbles got trapped no matter what, and the fins, whiskers and tails broke off.

I suppose that I could have gone the easier route and just made solid chocolate shapes that were not filled.  But what's the fun in that?  I put the mold away but didn't stop thinking about it.  I now saw this mold as a learning challenge.  If I could master this mold, the fussiest one in my collection (not extensive by any means, but I'm not suffering for lack of molds, either) then I figured that I'd be on my way to being a better chocolate maker.

This mold requires carefully painting with the finest brush, using toothpick and paintbrush, splattering well, and thinning down the chocolate with cocoa butter quite a bit for the shelling.  And very carefully unmold, using a backing sheet (piece of cardboard or the like) so that the pieces gently fall out of the mold, no smacking like we see in those fancy YouTube videos.  Otherwise the whiskers, fins and tail break.

So while I'm not quite there yet, I think I'm getting close.  White chocolate with orange butter ganache koi.