Nothing says “holiday indulgence” like a box of chocolates, and nothing beats homemade chocolate candies for richness and taste. They’re fresh, carefully and individually made, and they usually come out bigger than the store-bought varieties. In this article, I’ll line out how I put together a gift set that includes buttercreams, chocolate-covered cherries and homemade peanut butter cups! They’re easy to make and can be made assembly-line style for extra speed and volume, in case you’re really pressed for time. In Christmases past, I have made close to a thousand individual candies over a period of about two weeks. Don’t worry about special equipment, either. I didn’t use a double boiler or a candy thermometer, just saucepans and a careful eye!
Two Essential Components: Fondant and Chocolate Coating
Fondant: I used a no-cook recipe I found online here, although any fondant recipe will do for this project. I made a few adjustments to fit my needs.
Fondant (Makes about 50-60 candies):
½ cup Butter
1 teaspoon Vanilla
1 teaspoon Salt
⅔ cup Sweetened condensed milk
6 cups (about 1 ½ lbs) confectioner’s sugar
Mix the first three ingredients together. The recipe calls for creaming them, but melting the butter and stirring in the ingredients works just as well. Stir in the condensed milk, and then slowly add the confectioner’s sugar, stirring and then kneading it until it is firm. You can knead the mass in its own mixing bowl to save time, space and mess. I have very limited kitchen counter space, so this is an important consideration for me. Knead the fondant until it is smooth and firm without stickiness. You can add extra confectioner’s sugar while kneading to achieve the proper texture, but don’t allow it to become too dry.
The Chocolate Coating: Melting and Tempering.
There are many ways to create a good chocolate coating, but I used one of the simplest. Melt a 12 oz. package of semisweet chocolate chips with about a third of a ½ inch thick slab of paraffin wax. Scale up according to your needs, and plan to use more than you think you need. The linked recipe above calls for more wax than this in its recipe for chocolate coating, but I found the lower wax-to-chocolate ratio provides a better flavor and hardens just as nicely.
Melting and tempering. Use a double boiler or a smaller saucepan inside a larger one, as long as the water is kept well away from the top reservoir. Chocolate and water do not mix, and even a drop of water will harden and ruin whatever chocolate it contacts. I used two glass saucepans, carefully monitoring the lower reservoir’s water level and gently stirring the chocolate and wax with a wooden spoon. I had no mishaps using this method.
Keep the heat on low while melting wax and chocolate. Be careful, as chocolate scorches easily. Stir slowly, and turn off the heat once everything is melted. Allow it to cool slightly, stirring constantly. When the pan is cool enough to be comfortably warm to the touch, turn the heat back on low and continue stirring. This process tempers the chocolate, preventing its hardening with an ugly gray cast. My chocolates came out just fine without the precision of temperature monitoring, but if you’re not experienced with it, you might want to use the tempering instructions on this page.
Making the Candies.
Chocolate-covered fondant buttercreams: These can be flavored with extracts and colored with food colorings to provide several flavors. I made both an orange buttercream and an almond buttercream (with a whole almond inside) for the sample in the photo.
Making these candies. Knead the fondant and roll into 1″ diameter balls. Place them on waxed paper to dry before dipping. You don’t want to introduce moisture into the dipping pan, or the chocolate will harden and become difficult to work with. I often use a small fork to hold the fondant balls while dipping them. Then I use a spoon to ladle chocolate over top of the balls. Just make sure they are covered and allow excess to drip off before placing them on the waxed paper to harden. If you are making more than one flavor, then you should make a small amount of buttercream decorator’s icing in a color like orange for orange fondant, pink for cherry or peppermint, brown for chocolate, and so on. Add as an identifying garnish once the chocolate is hardened and dry.
Chocolate-covered cherries: Use maraschino cherries, enclosing them in the fondant before dipping in chocolate. I like to leave the cherries slightly moist so they will slowly dissolve the fondant inside the chocolate shell, just like the commercial varieties!
Making these candies. Drain maraschino cherries on paper towels. Take a small amount of fondant and flatten it out into a circle large enough to encircle the cherry. Work the fondant around the cherry and pinch it closed, making sure there none of the residual cherry juice leaks out (very important!). Allow these to dry slightly and then cover with chocolate.
Peanut-butter cups: Use the chocolate coating to cover small baking cups, let them harden, spoon in peanut butter, then cover with more chocolate. Nothing could be easier, and they taste so much better than any you can buy!
Making these candies. I like to use straight peanut butter or smooth almond butter for the filling. When the filling is not sweetened, it offsets and complements the sweetness of the chocolate coating in a more satisfying way than too-sugary fillings. I used small baking cups and poured just over a teaspoon of chocolate coating into each one in turn, using a bamboo skewer to “paint” the cup sides with the chocolate. Allow it to harden for about 10-15 minutes. Then spoon a ball of peanut butter into the cup and level it off. Spoon the same amount of coating over the top of the filling to seal.
Arrange these homemade candies in a small foil pan or a decorative tin, using a sheet of waxed paper on a cut out piece of cardboard or thick paper to separate layers if you wish to have 2 or more layers in the gift box.
If you want to mail the tins to your friends and relatives, seal with a few pieces of tape at the edges and perhaps a decorative and secure cross-tied ribbon. I have sent many of these gift tins from to Florida in past years, and they were always a big hit.
Cost of Homemade Chocolate vs. Store-Bought Varieties
I tallied the costs of the ingredients I purchased for making these candies (including cups and waxed paper), and it came to about $26, excluding decorative tins, which will run you anywhere from $1-$4 each, depending on size and elaborateness. The ingredients that I purchased would probably make 8-10 portions of the size seen in the picture, thus a 9-piece gift box in a decorative tin would cost about $4 to $8 to make, depending on the tin and the size of the candies made. A commercial box of candies of similar size would cost about $13, not counting shipping. The real cost of this gift option is time, but I made twice the amount shown in the photograph in a single afternoon. It is possible to make these fast, and getting the family involved using an assembly-line method will speed it up even more.