DIY Honmei Choco
Since Junior High, I’ve been practicing the art of making and decorating chocolates to give to friends and loved ones every year（＾ ＾）It’s a fun way to be able to show appreciation to the people I care about in a form that everyone loves: C h o c o l a t e
Now, where did these all start? From what i know, it’s a tradition that started in Japan, where individuals give out sweets to the people they care about. There are three types that are given out which are Giri-Choco, Honmei-Choco, and Tomo-choco.
Honmei choco (本命チョコ, “true feeling chocolate”) are given as an expression of love or romantic interest. While bought chocolates are perfectly acceptable, home-made treats are considered the ultimate honmei-choco as they demonstrate time and effort, and hence are said to say something about your feelings for the person. This is often given to husbands, boyfriends or crushes.
Tomo choco (友チョコ, “friend chocolates”) tomo coming from the word tomodachi meaning “friend” in Japanese. These are basically chocolates or baked goods that are given to friends as an expression of their friendship.
Giri choco (義理チョコ, “obligation chocolates”) These are given to those to whom we are obligated to give Valentine’s Day candy. Examples could be your boss, co-workers, teachers or male friends. So as not to get any wires crossed, giri-choco are usually quite run-of-the-mill and not of very high value.
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Every year I’d give out some Tomo-Choco to all my friends in class and give out Honmei Choco to my then-boyfriend. This year, I decided to share out how I do my chocolates and tips and tricks to make some simple, but super cute Tomocho for your friends, or Honmei Choco to get that cute boy/girl you’ve been eyeing on!
What you need:
Cutely-shaped Chocolate Molds
Mixing Materials
Different Kinds of Chocolates: Dark Chocolate, Milk Chocolate, White Chocolate, Strawberry Chocolate, etc.
Decorations
Pastry Bag *optional
Mini plastic bags and Ribbons
Let’s start! 始めましょう！http://naominikola.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Takeuchi-Mariya-Plastic-Love-Night-Tempo-100-Pure-Remastered.mp3
I started off with separating each type of chocolates in separate bowls; A bowl for the Milk Chocolate, another bowl for the white, strawberry, etc..
To make it easier to melt, I chopped up the chocolates to smaller bits.
Important: As much as possible, avoid having your chocolates to have any contact with water. If just a little amount of water find its way to the melting chocolate, it seizes/curdles. This means 99%+ drying your bowls, utensils, molds as much as possible(´Ａ｀。)
What my personal favourite into melting the chocolates is to using the microwave method(o´ω`o)
Microwave the bowl for 8-15 seconds, taking it out and mixing it, then putting it back in the microwave 2-3 more times until it’s melted nicely. Be careful not to heat it too much! Remember as chocolates might get burned, so this is why we take it out of the microwave to mix them ourselves.
Now another way to melt your chocolates is to get that cooking pot and stove and put a bowl big enough to hang inside the pan, mixing the chocolates until it melts out nicely. Depending on how much chocolates, this shouldn’t take too long.
After one bowl of nicely melted chocolates, you can start pouring them on the mold. I do it the messier way since I was a bit lazy today💦 But! if you’re feelin’ a little extra, you can put the melted chocolate in the pastry bag and squeeze it out to the molds instead (▰˘◡˘▰) A much cleaner method if you’re looking into that!
Tips
If you want your chocolates to be half a different color/flavour, you can pour merely half of the melted chocolates into some of the shapes and later on pour the rest of the different type of melted chocolate to fill in the rest!
If you’re into nuts, this is the time you can put a bit inside the chocolates as they are its softest.
Another tip! If you’re gonna melt in some Appollo Chocolates, you can try cutting the chocolates in half and separating them in each bowl. It should look like this once it’s done!
Hello there sweet mess(｀・ω・´)”
Once everything has been filled, drag the molds on the table until you feel them shake/vibrate. This would eliminate any bubbles or holes that may have formed!
Refrigerate them for 2 hours until it’s hardened, then you can start with the decorations!
Decorating
I stacked some smaller chocolates on top of the bigger ones, using some leftover melted chocolates to paste them together.
If you’re using a pastry bag, you can try making drawings on top of the chocolates for decoration, like zig zags, letters, or other cute drawings
Other decorations: Sprinkles, small nuts, powdered sugar, go crazy!
Tada(*／ωヽ)✨
A tip for helping the chocolates not melt too quickly: After decorating, you can freeze the chocolates all night as to avoid melty chocolates for gifts!
Hope you enjoyed this post! This would definitely catch that cutie you’ve been eyeing on (´ε｀*) Let me know if you guys have any comments down below 🌹
Good luck (* ´ ˘ ` *)♡
