Well, sometimes it happens. The melting candy sometimes becomes troublesome. Usually, the chocolate, dark chocolate, white, and superwhite candies give no problem at all. But the colored candy can sometimes be stubborn. One of our customers called me and told me that the pink melting candy was too thick to work with and would not flow easily. After I spoke with her, I grabbed a bag of the pink, ripped it open, and melted it down as a test.
It turned out to be a little thicker than usual, but I was able to work with it, and even poured it into molds and dipped some graham crackers. Here’s the process I went through:
- I melted the candy like we recommend, in the microwave, twice, at half power for 30 seconds, stirring after each 30 seconds.
- At the end, the candy was somewhat thicker than normal, and it seemed to start to harden even as it was being poured. I threw in some shortening flakes (paramount crystals) to thin it out. I used a lot of the flakes, about twice as much as I would normally recommend. That made the candy considerably thinner, but when poured into a mold, it didn’t spread out to fill the mold, but remained thick and ropy (see the photo).
- I picked up the mold, still flat, about a half to one inch from the table and dropped it onto the table.The candy immediately spread out and properly filled the entire mold, and then went on to harden in the refrigerator into little candy treats (see the photo).
To sum it up, colored candy melts can sometimes be thicker than usual. If you have a particularly stubborn batch of candy, add about twice as many shortening flakes as you normally would. Even a little more, if you have to. If the candy pours into the mold easily, but doesn’t fill it properly, pick up the mold about an inch and let it fall to the table again. That should smooth it out just fine.
