Christmas chocolate bombs to add to hot milk to make a chocolate drink

Name: Christmas chocolate bombs to add to hot milk to make a chocolate drink
Prep time: 60 min
Cook time: 20 min
Total time: 120 min
Yield: 8
Cuisine: Switzerland
Ingredients: 300 g couverture chocolate (dark), tempered; 6 tbsp chocolate powder; 2 tsp gingerbread spice; 60 g mini marshmallows

Hot Chocolate Bomb

What are chocolate bombs? It’s quite simple to explain. Basically, chocolate bombs are nothing more than chocolate balls filled with drinking cocoa powder and other ingredients. You simply drop them into hot milk, which melts the delicate chocolate coating, revealing the cocoa powder, which then dissolves, leaving you with a delicious cup of hot chocolate. You may have spotted the odd chocolate bomb on Instagram or Pinterest. There, these balls are very often made using silicone moulds. Although it might seem easier, silicone moulds aren’t actually the best option when it comes to working with chocolate. In this blog post, we’ll show you how to make these chocolate bombs properly – and, above all, that it’s not that difficult at all. All you need is well-tempered couverture chocolate, a few cocoa butter colours and a good mood!

Key figures

Quantity: 8 pieces

Difficulty: Medium

Shelflife:3 months

chocolate coating

Chocolat de couverture \| dark, tempered		300 g
Cocoa butter colours \| as desired		a little

Chocolate filling

Cocoa powder		6 tbsp
Gingerbread spice		2 tsp
Marshmallows \| mini		60 g

Chocolate mold hemisphere Ø 5 cm, 12 pieces

Ready-to-ship quantity: more than 20 pieces

CHF22.90

Cocoa butter dark gold

Ready-to-ship quantity: more than 20 pieces

CHF15.90

Cocoa butter Tiffany Blue

Ready-to-ship quantity: more than 20 pieces

CHF15.90

Making the chocolate coating

If you’re working with cocoa butter colouring, we recommend always having a bowl of warm water to hand. This helps keep the colouring nice and runny. This is particularly handy if you’re working with several colours in different stages. However, the water should never be hotter than 45 degrees, otherwise the cocoa butter will become grainy. If you want to melt the cocoa butter in the microwave, you must set it to a low wattage and, ideally, heat the colour in several short bursts.

Once the colours are liquid and you’ve thoroughly wiped the mould with kitchen paper, you can finally start decorating it. To do this, place a little of the cocoa butter colour onto a tablespoon and quickly brush along the edge of the spoon. This will create small splashes of colour on the mould. You can easily vary the size of the splashes by adjusting the speed and the size of the brush. Repeat these steps with all the colours you wish to use (we used dark gold, pearl blue, honey gold, Tiffany blue and white for the splashes). Next, you need to rotate the mould by 180 degrees. But don’t turn it upside down; simply rotate it on the worktop so that the side which previously received virtually no splashes can now also be splattered with paint. You’ll then need to repeat all the previous steps again.

Once the balls are covered in paint to your satisfaction, you need to tap the mould once or twice on a kitchen roll to remove the excess paint. If there are still large patches of paint left, you can use a kitchen roll to wipe down the gaps in the mould and clean them more thoroughly. However, you can only do this whilst the paint is still wet. Leave the mould to stand for at least 10 minutes afterwards so that the paint can dry thoroughly before the next step.

Silicone brush, 20 cm

Ready-to-ship quantity: more than 20 pieces

CHF16.90

Cocoa butter night blue

Ready-to-ship quantity: more than 20 pieces

CHF15.90

Cocoa butter strong glitter honey gold

Ready-to-ship quantity: more than 20 pieces

CHF15.90

Once the splashes of colour have dried sufficiently, you can now move on to the next step. You now need to paint the Christmas baubles entirely with cocoa butter paint. For this step, you can either use an airbrush designed specifically for cocoa butter paints, or you can paint the mould with a brush. To do this, simply brush the mould completely with the liquid paint, leave it to dry for 10 minutes, and then apply another coat on top. The second coat ensures that the chocolate won’t show through at all later on, leaving you with a perfectly coloured Christmas bauble. After applying the second coat, you must leave the mould to dry for at least another 10 minutes before you can pour the chocolate coating.

Lindt Couverture Dark 0.5 kg

Ready-to-ship quantity: more than 20 pieces

CHF17.50

Spatula Large

Ready-to-ship quantity: 19

CHF25.50

miniSchoggi tempering device for couverture and chocolate

Ready-to-ship quantity: more than 20 pieces

CHF99.00

Pouring the chocolate coating

Not sure how to temper chocolate properly? Then have a look at our blog post or come along to our couverture tempering course!

Using a ladle, fill the mould to the brim with the tempered couverture. We’ve used dark couverture here, as these will later be filled with sweet drinking cocoa powder, but if you’d like them even sweeter, you can of course also fill the shells with milk couverture or white couverture.

It’s really important that the balls are filled right to the brim. Once you’ve done that, tap the mould several times with the back of a spatula so that any air bubbles rise to the top and the mould is filled evenly. You can also run a metal spatula along the sides to keep the mould nice and clean and avoid getting chocolate-covered fingers.

Now set the mould aside briefly and leave it to stand for about 1 minute. This will give the Christmas bauble a slightly thicker chocolate coating. After this short wait, you can turn the mould upside down completely and pour the chocolate back into your tempering machine. As you do this, you’ll need to tap the sides of the polycarbonate mould several times with your spatula, gently tilting it each time to help the chocolate flow out more easily and ensure you end up with a chocolate coating of even thickness.

Now run the spatula along the base of the mould to scrape off the excess couverture. This will give the baubles a smooth, clean edge later on. Finally, run a metal scraper over the mould once more to ensure its surface is completely free of chocolate.

Then turn the mould out onto a baking tray lined with baking paper and place the mould in the fridge for 25–30 minutes. Turning the mould out onto the tray allows the remaining chocolate to flow downwards and form a wider rim. This wide rim is important so that you can stick the spheres together later without any problems.

Once the cooling time is up, you can take the half-sphere mould out of the fridge, gently wiggle it slightly at the opposite corners, and then simply remove the spheres from the mould. The spheres should come away from the mould without any resistance and should have a nice, approx. 2 mm thick rim.

Gingerbread spice, 60 g

Ready-to-ship quantity: more than 20 pieces

CHF8.90

Cake tray Ø 28 cm

Ready-to-ship quantity: more than 20 pieces

CHF16.90

Finishing the chocolate bomb

Mix the chocolate powder with the gingerbread spice in a separate bowl and spoon one tablespoon of the mixture into each half of a ball. Now add one tablespoon of marshmallows. Cut a piece of cake ribbon and tie it into a loop. In the meantime, heat some water in a wide pan and place a baking tray over it. Now take an unfilled half of a ball, place it carefully on the hot tray and allow the edge of the ball to melt slightly.

Now place the open end of the cake ribbon loop into the filled half of the ball and press the slightly melted half of the ball on top. You need to press very gently so that the two halves stick together properly.

To serve, simply dip the ball into hot milk and remove the ribbon.

Have fun making it!