colouring chocolate for painted bonbons - my gel colours keep seizing everything!!

The cement was chemistry doing exactly what it must: gel colours are WATER-BASED, and water is chocolate's one unforgivable enemy - even a drop seizes it into the angry paste you met. Your gels are innocent for cakes and lethal for chocolate.

The correct system: FAT-SOLUBLE (oil-soluble) powder colours, dissolved into warmed COCOA BUTTER - not into the chocolate itself. The course ratio: roughly 10 parts cocoa butter to 1 part colour. That coloured cocoa butter is your paint - brushed, sponged or sprayed into the polished mould cavities, allowed to set, and THEN the tempered shell is cast over it. The colour transfers onto the shell surface with the mould's shine.

The cocoa butter should be at its own working temperature when painting (and yes, it tempers like chocolate does - properly handled it sets with shine and snap rather than smearing).

Buy "oil-soluble" or "chocolate-grade" powder colours specifically - the packet must say it. Everything labelled gel stays in cake country, where it belongs 🎨

Around 1-2mm is the professional target. That's the sweet spot where the shell is sturdy enough to demould and handle but thin enough to snap cleanly and let the FILLING lead the eating experience - clunky shop-inferior bonbons are almost always over-thick shells hogging the bite.

The technique that gets you there: fill the cavity completely with tempered chocolate, brief pause, then INVERT the mould and tap so the excess pours back out - what clings to the walls is your shell. The longer you wait before inverting, the thicker it sets. Cold mould and thick chocolate = clunky; properly tempered fluid chocolate and a confident early invert = elegant.

Weigh a finished bonbon against a shop one sometime - the difference is nearly all shell 🙂