How to Make Tangy Valentine's Day Chocolates

In this delicious How-To, I will share with you the various steps needed to create Tangy Chocolates for Valentine's Day. These also make a great anytime pick-me-up (literally) snack!

Step 1: A Little Backstory

First of all: my personal narritive.

I love Kool-Aid. I have made it, mixed it, and done just about anything culinary that you can with it. (I haven't dyed my hair with it. What a waste of a good powdered drink!) I also love anything "Black Cherry" flavored. Naturally, when I discovered Black Cherry Kool-Aid, I felt justified in buying 10 or 20 packets of it, for experimentation. Anyway, after much making and mixing with Dan, it came over us that it might be nice if I could flavor chocolate with Kool-Aid (we called it yummy chocolate at the time)! After melting it and stirring in the powder, I noticed a strange occurrence. Instead of turning the entire chocolate mixture a nice purplish color, as with water, it simply colored it a washed-out pink, and the flavored particles stayed as particles, not dissolved into the chocolate.

So, rather disappointed, I cast them in my molds, and waited glumly for them to harden. Then, forlornly, I took a lick of my chocolate-covered spoon. But- GASP! What was this? It tasted... GOOD! I eagerly waited for the chocolates to harden! After popping them out, I took one and popped it into my mouth. At first, it tasted sweet, and slightly black cherry-y. Then, as my roaming taste buds came across one of the undissolved nuggets of cherry-oscity, my mouth exploded in a great wave of flavor! This wonderful sweet & sour pattern continued throughout the duration of the chocolate. And, as I have not been able to uncover this technique elsewhere, I feel it is my culinary duty to share it with you.

So... off we go!

Step 2: Gather Your Ingredients

--1 package of WHITE CHOCOLATE (You can tell this from other chocolates because it is not brown. Don't use "Chocolate flavored" candy coating unless you like nasty fake chocolate. Which you might! Hey, to each, his own. I usually just buy the brand that's on sale. Also- I found that milk chocolate worked well, but it has a less fruity flavor when combined with Kool-Aid. You could try adding more Kool-Aid. Semisweet chocolate just doesn't work well. And, following the same pattern, you could assume that dark chocolate works terribly. Because you would be correct.)

--1 Standard size packet of unsweetened Kool-Aid. (My favorite is Black Cherry. I found that Orange didn't work very well. It's still good, though! Invisible Raspberry is good, but it's hard to tell how evenly you've mixed it. Because it's mostly invisible. Duh.)

--1-3 spoons (Depending on how skilled you are, or on whether you are enlisting someone to help with the molding.)

--Some candy molds (Depends on how big they are. If you have no candy molds, or they're extremely ugly, as many are, you can spread out some wax paper on a large countertop area. But, you'll probably get sort of lumpy disks.)

--A double boiler (If you have one, great, if you don't, you can use a saucepan filled with water underneath a metal bowl, like I do.)

--A source of heat (Like a stove.)

An oven mitt or potholder ( This depends on your situation. My pots have crappy
handles, so I have to use pot holders. Maybe you enjoy pain, or perhaps you have better pots than I do. Either way, I wish you good fortune.)

Step 3: Prepare

--Set up your double boiler or equivalent. For those of you who don't know how, here you
go: Fill your saucepan with water. Put on stove. Turn on stove. Put the bowl on top of the pan. Make sure that the bottom of the bowl doesn't touch the water.
--Set up your molds or wax paper. You can grease the molds if you want to: personally, I feel that it's more trouble than it's worth. Or, you can spread out your wax paper. That's pretty much all you have to do.

Step 4: Melt & Stir

--As your chocolate melts, make sure to stir it constantly to avoid lumpiness. There's nothing worse than being halfway through a chocolate and finding a blob of solid, non-tangy white boringness.

--DON'T GET ANY WATER IN WITH THE CHOCOLATE! This could cause a chemical reaction that forms a highly explosive substance that reacts with air, causing a catastrophic explosion that might just cause enough toxic radiation to kill every cockroach in a 20-mile radius. Actually, it'll just cause the chocolate to seize up and be yucky. But don't do it anyway!

After the chocolate is smooth, melted, and lump-free, you may stir in the Kool-Aid powder. It is best, I have found, to constantly stir, whilst sprinkling the powder at a slow, steady rate. This avoids the formation of a blob of powder which you have to smooth out. After you've gotten it all stirred in, you can be ready to pour!

Step 5: Pour & Harden

Take your candy-to-be off the heat and start pouring it into your molds or onto your wax paper. This is where your spoons come in handy! Scoop & plop. You can also use one of those frosting squeezers (it's a plastic bag with a hard tip) but I think it wastes too much chocolate. If you want to make your chocolates extra-pretty and even-bottomed, you can scrape a spatula over the top of your mold after they've hardened a little and re-mold or melt them later. I did not do this, as I am presenting them in little cups.Your wax paper ones are going to be kind of ugly no matter what you do. But they're just as yummy!

Let them harden. You can speed this process up by sticking them in the freezer or fridge. After they've hardened, plop them out over a plate. Then, enjoy!

Step 6: It's All in the Presentation

I really don't have anything to say here- but I had fun taking the photos, so look at them... please?
Oh- you could also put your chocolates into little cups if you wish.

Step 7: Thanks-

Thanks to:
Dan, my partner in pizazzy-ness.
My Mom, for the shiny adornments and enduring the Kool-Aid.
Dan's Dad, for enduring the Kool-Aid.
Claire, for being cute and cat-like.
Edwin and Kitty Perkins, for inventing "Kool-Ade".
And finally...
You, the most excellent, amazing, sexy, wonderful and talented reader of this Instructable. Did I mention that you should vote for this one?