Flavoring Chocolate

Chocolate pairs well with a wide variety of flavors. Vanilla, of course, is the most common, and many candy manufacturers add either pure vanilla or vanillin (an artificial vanilla flavor) to their chocolate candies, since our palates have become accustomed to chocolate with a light vanilla undertone.

Chocolate can be flavored with alcohol-based extracts, liqueurs, or flavored oils.

Alcohol-based extracts are commonly found in the baking aisle of grocery stores and include flavors like vanilla, almond, hazelnut, coconut, and lemon.

Liqueurs and spirits that pair well with chocolate include amaretto, brandy, rum, Cointreau, Grand Marnier, and Kahlua. The important thing to remember about adding alcohol extracts and liqueurs is that these liquids need to be added to chocolate mixtures, not pure melted chocolate, otherwise the alcohol will cause the chocolate to seize and form a lumpy mass. These flavorings are well-suited for ganache mixtures or other candies that involve mixing melted chocolate with cream, milk, or other substances.

Oil-based flavorings, sometimes called “candy flavoring,” can be added directly to melted chocolate without causing it to seize. Common oil-based flavorings include mint, cherry, strawberry, hazelnut, cinnamon, and orange. Many of these flavorings are potent—especially mint—and should be used more sparingly than their alcohol-based counterparts. Oil-based flavorings can be found at some specialty cooking stores, craft stores, and online confectionery retailers.

So how do you color and flavor chocolate?

It’s pretty simple: use flavorings and colorings that do not have any water in them.

So if you wanted to make mint flavored chocolate you would add peppermint oil, there are tons of types of flavoring oils. They are very simple to use, a few drops of the oil and you have a pound of chocolate flavored to taste.

For the colorings you have multiple choices from colored cocoa butter and dry colorants which are fairly expensive to oil based colors which are a lot more economical.

Sometimes you can find a limited selection of candy colors in a craft store, you have to be very careful because the company that makes these colors also makes frosting colors and the packaging is exactly the same, you must read the packaging to make sure it is the oil casted candy color and not the water based frosting color.

In a commercial environment dropping $75 on a set of high end colorants is not a big deal, but for the average hobbyist the minimum quantities would be a bit much. That’s where the oil based colorings come into play, they are a lot less expensive.