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.

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.

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.

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