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Halloween / Haunted
Chocolate House Project

By Bob Sherman

Halloween is a popular time of year for chocolate making, yet surprisingly I was unable to find a large haunted house mold for this project. Looking over my choices, I decided to convert a stone church mold into a mausoleum with graveyard. For illustration purposes, I have chosen to use a wide variety of techniques rather than maintain a strict haunted cemetery theme. Although you may use these ideas freely, my concept was to encourage folks to get creative with their own haunted house projects.

These make a great centerpiece for Halloween parties and although they look fairly complicated, you will see below they break down into very simple steps. Since this article is heavy with photos, I have spread it over several pages to speed load times. I have tried to keep this as simple as possible, however skilled cake decorators may opt for more embellishment with a decorating bag and tubes.

Although these could be embellished with paper, cardboard, and plastic items I try not to use anything that is not edible in my chocolate houses. This forces you to be more creative when decorating. Note that there are many edibles that make great embellishments, and a visit to your local candy store will supply lots of ideas. Since I wrote this article in August, the selection of Halloween / spooky candy available at my local stores was pretty slim and required a lot of improvising. If you make these closer to Halloween, you will have a much better selection of candies to choose from.

Most of the items you may need can be ordered directly from this page for your convenience.

PLEASE NOTE!! - Although chocolate making is relatively safe for the entire family to participate, adult supervision is required.

Chocolate
I prefer to use chocolate wafers designed for home molding chocolate. My preferred brand is Merckens which works well with all chocolate molding projects without tempering, and tastes great.

Melting Chocolate
I use a combination of two melting methods. For the walls and roof I prefer a double boiler. For the lesser colors requiring small quantities, I used the microwave method.

Double Boiler - See Double Boiler Usage Instructions.

A microwave may also be used but care must be taken not to overheat the chocolate.

  1. Place the chocolate in a microwave safe bowl.
  2. Heat for 30 seconds. Note: When heating small amounts of chocolate, reduce this to 10 second increments.
  3. Remove and stir.
  4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 until the chocolate is creamy.
  5. For best results, chocolate should be used at 88 to 90 degrees F. Under no circumstances should chocolate ever be poured hotter than 160 degrees F. because this will destroy the mold.

Icing
For best results I highly recommend using Royal icing. Although the appearance will be much the same with any type of icing or frosting, it will be much more fragile. Royal icing dries very hard and will increase the durability of your project - especially if you need to transport it.

Chocolate Making Supplies And Materials

The following chocolate making supplies and other materials were used to make this project. Clicking on the item name will bring you to that item's page with a full description and ordering information.

Item Amount Used
Church Mold For this theme I prefer this mold, but you may wish to use a different one.
Mummy In Coffin Mold One
Halloween Assortment Mold One
Cake Board I prefer to use oversize cake boards and cut them to fit my design. Some folks like to cover these with foil, but I find my pieces adhere better directly to the cardboard making it more durable for transport.
Toffee Used to make the walkway flagstones.
Edible Confetti Autumn Leaves Used in various places.
Butterscotch Crunch Used to denote graves.
Chocolate Dark and white chocolate was mostly used here, although some milk chocolate was also used.
Royal Icing For making the grass. May also be used to add other embellishments. Note: Avoid using Royal Icing on days of high humidity.
Food Color Powdered food color was used to color the icing.
Thermometer One
Double Boiler For melting chocolate. A microwave may also be used.
Decorating Bag and Tube For Royal Icing I prefer disposable bags since any fats remaining from a previous use will cause it to break down. A #233 hair tube was used for the grass. Optional: If you are skilled with a pastry bag other tubes (such as flower tubes, round tubes, etc...) could be used to embellish this project.
The following items were used in this article, but feel free to use your imagination and substitute.
Cookies A flattened cookie with rounded ends looks good for tombstones when broken in half.
Candy Corn For fence
Black Gum Drops For fence.
Black Licorice Twist For gateway.

Step By Step Instructions

1. The molds are used without modification. This mold makes a complete building with the exception of one side wall (side wall cavity needs to be poured twice). 2. Several "accessory" molds were chosen as well. By choosing these in the beginning you can fill these with leftover chocolate while making the main building.
3. To add some visual interest, small amounts of white chocolate were dribbled into the mold avoiding the window and door areas. 4. The mold was then filled with dark chocolate and stirred slightly to create a marbled effect.
5. To impart a rundown, neglected feel some areas were thinned. This will make the walls easier to "punch through" in a later step. 6. For the same reason, some mold areas were not filled.
7. Place the mold in your freezer just long enough that the chocolate de-molds easily. Use your finger to punch through the thin spots created in step 5. 8. Some melted dark chocolate is applied to a corner.

Continue to Part 2


Support Free Projects
You can help ensure the continued availabilty and production of free chocolate projects by telling your friends about them. The more popular they are the more we can produce so tell your friends, mention them on message boards, link to them from your web site, etc... More information is available here.


Disclaimer: The information presented here is accurate to the best of my knowledge and common chocolate molding practices as of the time of this writing - August 2006. The author and the publisher accept no liability for the use or misuse of any of the information presented in this article. This article is presented for informational purposes and is used at your own risk.

Author: Bob Sherman

Publisher: Bobby's Craft Boutique Inc.

This article is provided free of charge for personal use. No portion of this article may be reproduced for publication elsewhere without express permission from Bobby's Craft Boutique Inc. with the following exceptions:

  • Non profit organizations such as religious groups, scouts, 4h, etc... may use this information without permission for printed materials provided it is used without modification and credit is given to both the author and onestopcandle.com
  • Reprinting to the web is prohibited without permission, however web sites wishing to link to this article may do so without permission.

All other requests need to be submitted via our reprint request form.

 

 

 

 

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