Moulded chocolates

My mum was great with making fancy decorated birthday cakes for my brother and I when we were young. I have wanted to do more with cake decorating, and rather rashly agreed to make a birthday cake for a friend's son's 7th birthday. I was hoping he'd request something simple. Nope, he wants a Batman cake!

I spotted some cute Batman logo lollipop moulds on eBay and decided I'd make some logos in chocolate to use on the cake. I had originally planned to tint the chocolate a shade closer to black with icing colouring gel for the bats, but as the colours I've ordered haven't arrived, I went ahead and made some, just using dark chocolate for the bat and tinting white chocolate yellow for the background. They're not perfect, but I'll probably only use one, in which case I can choose the best one.

Sometimes it is useful to use a paintbrush to paint the chocolate into the moulds if you are trying to highlight part of the design. The bat was pretty big though, so I just spooned it in and used a skewer to help distribute the chocolate. It is a good idea to tap the mould firmly on the bench a few times to remove air bubbles. The chocolate was then placed into the fridge to set before adding the yellow-tinted white chocolate layer.

I was an 80s kid. My uncle had an Atari and I loved playing Space Invaders and Frogger. I spotted this silicone ice tray by Fred and had to have it. I ordered it online last week in the hope of making an army of chocolate space invaders to decorate my brother's birthday cake, but I didn't end up making him a cake, and the mould arrived 2 days too late. I decided to make a small sample of invaders in dark chocolate as I was melting some to make Batman logos anyway. I think they turned out rather well.

The Fred silicone mould after moulding a couple of chocolates. This mould is intended for making ice, but I think the cavities are a perfect size for making little chocolates, and the silicone makes it incredibly easy to pop the chocolates out once they are set. I used a skewer to move the chocolate into the small sections of the mould.

Cool, huh?!