Painting chocolate molds allows another dimension in creating chocolate confections, and beautiful colour combinations are fun for both the person who makes them and the person who eats them. The cost of commercial cocoa butters can escalate quickly depending upon your appetite for a varied and expanded color palette and the quantity you are making.
Make your own colors. It is simple to do, saves money, and gives you the flexibility to produce your own custom colors and quantities. Let's go through the materials you need for basic colors.
Colored cocoa butter requires just two ingredients: cocoa butter and FDA Lake pigments. Let's talk a little bit about what to look for in these ingredients.
- Cocoa butter should be deoderized. You can also get bleached cocoa butter, which will have less of a yellow color. However if you are looking for organic, you may have a hard time finding that. A 20Kg block (I prefer block form as it keeps better) from Cocoa Supply costs, including shipping to CA, roughly $300US. That comes out to $1.50 per 100g.
- Lake pigments are made by using an aluminum salt, and they disperse in fat. Dyes release their color when encountering water, and they "bloom". Commercial dyes start out as powders, but they will not color a fat based product (cocoa butter). So do not buy a dye, buy a Lake pigment. When you buy a Lake pigment, there will be a percentage number after the word Lake. This tells you the percent dye content (even though technically Lakes are not dyes). Again, do not use a dye, which requires water (except for Violet #2, but that is not approved for food). Lake pigments will give you the color that you see, unlike dye powder.
for example, a label may read: FD&C Blue #1Lake 28-31%
this translates to Food, Drug & Cosmetic Blue #1Lake with 28-31% "dye content". The higher the dye content the more color it has. In this case, the 28-31% is on the high side for content. You may be tempted to use D&C Violet #2. This is a powder, and makes a beautiful purple, and unlike other dye colorants also is fat dispersible. But it is not F (for Food) approved.
I buy bulk FDA Lakes from Flavors & Colours. While their web site sells perhaps a bit more than you will need in this lifetime, you can also get smaller quantities from them at reasonable prices on Amazon. There are only 5 FDA approved Lakes, plus Titanium Dioxide you will need:
FD&C Blue #1 Lake
FD&C Blue #2 Lake
FD&C Yellow #5 Lake
FD&C Yellow #6 Lake
FD&C Red #40 Lake
Titanium Dioxide
Perhaps you are wanting to use glitters and "natural" colorants. You may then find this list very helpful: FDA List.
Natural colors have their own set of challenges. For example, reds can be made from the shells of insects and then your product may not be available for the vegan or vegetarian market. Some colors wonk out with time and temperature. Many don't store well. And if you want yellow or white, please don't pay the fancy prices. Yellow comes from tumeric powder and white, yup, it's titanium dioxide. Also my experience with natural colorants is that they work reasonably well if used for hand painting, but not always so well for the airbrush as the vegetative matter from which many are derived is not ground up finely enough to keep the airbrush nozzle from clogging. Try using a thinned down white chocolate for a backing color.
Glitters and Lustre Dusts. We all love shiny things, but while many are non toxic, many are not listed as edible by the FDA. Again, take a look at the FDA List. Edible lustre dusts are made and the big producers for the food industry are
Merck with their Candurin line of food shimmer colors are out of Germany
IFC with their ColorGlo pearlescent pigments are out of New Jersery USA
As far as I can tell, they only sell in bulk to large manufacturers, but most certainly these are resold by people like SugarArt, CK, Bakell, Chef Rubber, all at very high markups. Perhaps the most "reasonable" priced source for this that I have found is Pfeil & Holing's Online Store when you buy the 50g size. These luster pigments are made by plating mica platelets. The smaller sizes are classified as "lusters" while larger platelets are "glitters". Lusters don't add as much shine but they go through the airbrush a lot better because of their particle size.
One last comment on colors - please don't be tempted to buy colorants that are not FD&C classified, or EU classified. There are lots of beautiful inexpensive colorants out there from Asia. But there is no way to know the manufacturing standards or ingredients that went into them.
Equipment:
To make your colored CB it is handy to have:
- lidded glass jars - glass jars don't stain like plastic, and are easy to clean, put in the microwave or melter, and let you see the color and how well you have stirred the pigment into the cocoa butter. I tend to work in 100 g increments and a 4oz lidded glass jar works well for me.
- Bakery sheets - plain bakery sheets for working on and to pour cocoa butter out on
- Immersion Blender
- Very very fine mesh sieve
- Gram scale
- Tall metal or glass mixing container (I use a milk shake container)
- Metal spoons for the Lakes
- Dust Mask - The pigments are very fine and nasty, so be sure to wear a mask.
- Glass measuring cup to melt and pour cocoa butter
- Pyrex clear glass bowls
Transparent - good for airbrushing when you will back later with white chocolate or Titanium Dioxide
For each 100 g of cocoa butter, figure 5-12 grams pigment, depending upon how dark you want your final mix to be. Less is lighter, more is deeper, darker. I like to go dark and then add more cb later to bring it to the shade I want.
To each 100g melted cocoa butter, in a high sided container, place 10 g pigment and blend with immersion blender. Strain through the sieve into a pyrex container. Store.
You can make more CB than what fits in your jars and store for later use, especially helpful for colors you use a lot. Just pour the excess cocoa butter onto Bakery sheets (paper sheet pan liners), let set. Break up when set and put in a plastic bag and store for later use.
White - To each 100g melted cocoa butter, in a high sided container, place 10 g titanium dioxide pigment and blend with immersion blender. Strain through the sieve into a pyrex container. Add a few grains of Blue #1. Just a tiny tiny bit! The blue is going to counteract the yellow from the cocoa butter. And in concentrated form it will have a barely blue hue. But once you spray it on it will be white.
Opaque - good for airbrushing and when you are going to paint by hand and another color will be covering it
Simply add white to the transparent color to get the tint you want.
A simple approach to making many colors is to mix up 5 transparent colors in each of the 5 lakes, and mix up White. Say 500 g of each. With these colors in liquid form, mix them together to obtain the colors you want. This is much easier than playing with the powders to get your colors.
Cost breakdown for 200g colored CB is $5 (prices include shipping, your shipping charges may be less)
- Jar with lid 8oz $1
- 200g CB $3
- 20g Titanium Dioxide (at .05 cents/g includes shipping price) $1
