Enrobing vs. Moulding Chocolate

Have you decided to start making chocolate sweets? You can choose from multiple methods. If you’re new to the world of confections, making chocolate can seem like a lot of work. Of all available methods, the most popular ways to cover snacks and candies with chocolate are enrobing and moulding. Each of these techniques works differently and has its own benefits and considerations.

What Is Enrobed Chocolate?

Chocolate enrobing involves coating a piece of candy or a snack in a layer of chocolate. This process is often done with snacks such as pretzels, cookies, popcorn, small candies and even chocolate itself. All types of chocolate can be used for enrobing, including milk, dark and white chocolate.

The traditional method of chocolate enrobing involves manually dipping the snack or candy into tempered chocolate, similar to how cake pops are made. However, this process can be time-consuming, especially since the demand for sweet treats is always growing. To combat this, new chocolate enrober technology was developed to help speed along the process.

How Does a Chocolate Enrober Work?

Chocolate enrobers have made the method of covering snacks in chocolate simpler and more efficient from beginning to end. These machines work in steps to help you get that perfect sweet treat. Here is a breakdown of how a chocolate enrober works:

  1. Tempering: To begin, the chocolate must first be tempered in the tempering units, which helps it become a smooth liquid that can easily coat different food items.
  2. Prebottoming: Next, the candy or snack serving as the inclusion is placed on a wire rack that moves the pieces through the enrobing line. The inclusions are moved through the prebottomer, which coats the bottom of the candies or snacks in chocolate.
  3. Cooling: The inclusions move toward the enrober, stopping at a quick cooling system to set the chocolate from the prebottomer step.
  4. Enrobing: The wire rack now travels through the enrober, passing through a chocolate waterfall that coats each piece. Any excess chocolate falls through the wire to take another trip in the waterfall.
  5. Evenly coating: A vibrating table vibrates the wire rack to make sure the chocolate has coated every piece evenly.
  6. Detailing: The wire rack runs through the detailer. This part of the machine gets rid of the “tail” that a piece of candy may have due to the enrober.
  7. Glossing: Finally, the pieces travel to the cooling tunnel, which has a specific airflow system that sets the chocolate and creates a gloss for the final product.

Benefits of Enrobing Chocolate

Enrobing chocolate is a quick and easy way to make many products in a short amount of time. With the increase in demand for chocolate confections, enrobing snacks and sweets with chocolate by hand takes too much time. That’s why chocolate enrobing machines have become a must-have for confectionery businesses. These machines greatly increase production rates and make it much easier for businesses to produce high-quality candies, enabling them to focus their attention on other projects.

Benefits of enrobing chocolate

Enrobing chocolate also gives you more freedom when decorating individual pieces. You can make different markings on the chocolate pieces, decorate them with spices and even add flair by using edible gold leaf. Create designs resembling marble by using colored cocoa butters, giving your chocolates a more eye-catching appearance. The thin, glossy look that comes from enrobing chocolate is also highly desirable and part of what makes chocolate enrobing so popular.

What Is Moulded Chocolate?

Moulded chocolate is made from a mould or hollow container. Liquid chocolate coats the sides of the mould, and the mould can either be filled completely with chocolate or coated thinly so that the final product will be hollow. Once the liquid chocolate is in place, it is left aside, placed in a refrigerator or cooled by another system to harden before being removed from the mould.

Chocolate moulds can consist of various materials, including plastic, metal, rubber and silicone. The type of mould material you use will likely be determined by your goals for chocolate-making since each comes with its own benefits. For example, silicone and metal moulds are both easy to clean and can last a long time. Plastic moulds are often more affordable, but keep in mind that they also break more easily.

Benefits of Moulding Chocolate

One notable benefit of moulding chocolate is that you have plenty of freedom regarding shape and design. You can use moulding chocolate to make logos, emblems, caricatures and even complex edible decorations. All you need is a mould made in the desired shape, which can be created by hand or with a mould press. You can even hire a third party to make unique chocolate moulds to suit your needs.

If you leave your moulded chocolate hollow, you can use an almost limitless range of inclusions, such as cream, caramel, smooth chocolate or whatever else you desire. Having such diversity with your moulded chocolate-making abilities enables you to create more goods your customers will love.

Enrobing vs. Moulding

Deciding which method to use when making your delicious confections depends on what benefits you are going for. Compared to moulding, enrobing chocolate has a few key advantages, such as faster production times, easier cleaning and lower costs. The speed at which enrobing machines work makes them an ideal choice for businesses looking to fulfil more orders in a shorter period.

Moulding chocolate allows you to have more freedom with the design and shape, but it can also take significantly more time to create the product. The number of chocolates you complete solely depends on how many moulds are available and how quickly each mould can be cleaned for reuse. Moulds can be filled by machines instead of by hand, but this still brings up the consideration of how many usable moulds you have on hand at any given time.

Enrobing chocolate can offer you a greater speed and a heightened ability to complete many chocolate pieces at one time. Most importantly, using chocolate enrober machines will help you keep up with the growing demand for confectionery delicacies.

Contact Warrell Creations for Our Chocolate Enrobing Capabilities

Contact Warrell Creations For Chocolate Enrobing Capabilities

Adding enrobed chocolate candies or snacks to your product line is an exciting prospect, and Warrell Creations would love to help! We have various options for your inclusions, coatings and finishings so that your product line will be perfectly tailored to your brand and your customers’ desires. Our contract manufacturing and private-label candy-making can help you make your confectionery dreams a reality.

Take the leap and get started with our services by contacting us today.

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