Quick Answer: What Are The Best Ways To Thin Candy Melts?
Candy melts are a great addition to any dessert, but they can be difficult to use in your recipe because they are too thick and difficult to spread. You may use different ways to thicken candy melts such as adding, cocoa butter, natural oils, shortening etc.
Candy melts are a fantastic ingredient in all kinds of baking recipes.
They allow you to melt chocolate super quickly and easily to be added to cakes, cookies, and brownies.
However, the issue many people have with their candy melts is that they become quite thick as soon as they’ve melted.
If you need thin, liquid chocolate for your recipe, this can be quite problematic.
Thankfully, there are plenty of ways you can make your candy melts thinner once you’ve melted them.
In this guide, we’ll be going over our top 5 methods for thinning candy melts!
Method 1: Paramount Crystals
Paramount crystals are another harmless way to make your melted chocolate thinner if you’re having problems with it.
Their most common use in baking is to make melted chocolate easier to pour into molds without them sticking to the surface.
However, one of the other results of mixing them into melted chocolate is that it will thin it out in much the same way as the previous two methods we’ve looked at.
Paramount crystals are made from partially hydrogenated kernel oils, lecithin, and citric acid.
While these might sound like strange chemicals, they are all completely harmless and won’t have any detrimental effects on your food.
Instead of liquid oil that you can mix into your melted chocolate, paramount crystals are small, solid rocks that will instantly melt into the chocolate.
One of the key benefits of this as a method for thinning melted chocolate is that it has pretty much no flavor whatsoever.
This means that your chocolate will still taste almost identical to how it would without any paramount crystals added to it.
Another one of the key benefits of using paramount crystals over some of the alternative methods is that it gives the chocolate a more desirable texture.
Some people find that things like thinning aids and shortenings can make the chocolate too soft when they return to a solid state.
On the other hand, paramount crystals tend to give melted chocolate a wonderfully hard and smooth texture once it returns to room temperature.
Therefore, this is often the best method to use for thinning candy melts.
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Method 2: Using Store-Bought Thinning Aids
Believe it or not, the problem of candy melts being too thick isn’t new and companies came up with chemical solutions a long time ago.
These thinning aids are often a solution made with different kinds of oils that are completely harmless but do a great job of making your melted chocolate thinner.
One of the most popular thinning aids you can find online is Wilton’s EZ thin dipping aid for candy melts.
Simply mix around one tablespoon of this thinning aid with every 6 ounces of chocolate you have melting and you should find a much more liquidy consistency forming very quickly.
While this is a pretty convenient solution to your thick chocolate melting problem, you might find that it alters the flavor of your chocolate ever so slightly.
This effect isn’t necessarily anything negative, of course, and these thinning aids have been designed to taste good as well as thin your melted chocolate.
However, if you don’t personally enjoy the flavor that a certain thinning aid gives to your melted chocolate, you might want to try one of the alternative methods,
Method 3: Shortening
Another elegant and convenient solution to your melted chocolate coming out too thick is to use an ingredient called shortening.
Shortening is simple any kind of fat that is solid at room temperature and is often used to make pastries.
You can pick up plenty of shortenings, online.
Much like thinning aids, shortening is simply added to melted chocolate in quantities that will differ depending on the kind of shortening you use.
As you mix it into your melted chocolate, you should notice that the consistency becomes thinner and thinner.
Because the recommended quantities differ depending on the shortening and the chocolate itself, your best bet is to add a little bit of shortening (one teaspoon) at a time.
Stir it in for around 30 seconds before adding any more because it will take a little while for the thinning effect to kick in.
As we already said, shortening is made up of purely natural ingredients and so it won’t be harmful in any way when consumed.
However, it also has the issue of altering the flavor of the melted chocolate slightly.
You might try a certain kind of shortening and decide that you don’t like the flavor it gives to your chocolate.
In this case, trying a different one is often a good idea because the flavors can vary quite dramatically from one brand to another.
However, if you really don’t like any of them, one of the next few methods might be better for you…
Method 4: Cocoa Butter
Perhaps one of the most appropriate methods for thinning candy melts is to use cocoa butter.
After all, cocoa butter is an essential ingredient in making chocolate itself.
However, adding cocoa butter, on its own, to melted chocolate is actually a great way to thin it out.
In fact, cocoa butter will not only make melted chocolate thinner but will also give it a much smoother, more desirable consistency.
This is why it’s a go-to ingredient for plenty of home cooks and professional chefs alike.
Another unique benefit of using cocoa butter to thin melted chocolate is that it does not negatively alter its flavor in any way.
Because coca butter is a natural ingredient in chocolate itself, it’s a very natural flavor to compliment it.
The only real issue with using cocoa butter as a thinning agent for your candy melts is that it is quite expensive.
In terms of cost-efficiency, any of the previous methods we’ve looked at are much better than using cocoa butter.
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Method 5: Using Natural Oils
All of the thinning agents and methods we’ve looked at so far are based on natural products that are specifically used by professional cooks to thin their melted chocolate.
However, cooking oils can also be used for exactly the same purpose.
Something like coconut oil is a perfect thinning agent for melted chocolate because it has a good natural flavor.
Other oils like canola and vegetable will also work, though they won’t really add any noticeable flavor to the chocolate.
The main issue with using oils as thinning agents is that certain oils react differently at different temperatures.
Some oils might ruin your melted chocolate at certain temperatures so you need to research how yours will react to different levels of heat before you use them.
For this reason, oils like these should only really be used in cooking emergency situations when none of the other previous methods are viable options.
Simply adding half a teaspoon of oil at a time will be enough to tell how quickly your melted chocolate is thinning out.
Why Do My Candy Melts Come Out So Thick?
If you’ve ever melted some candy melts and ended up with a liquid that’s way too thick, don’t worry.
Pretty much everybody has gone through this at some point and it can be hard to work out exactly why it happens.
The answer lies in the temperature and humidity of the candy melts’ environment.
Chocolate reacts very temperamentally to certain heat environments and even a few degrees can make the difference between perfectly melted chocolate and a ruined batch.
Not to mention, different kinds of chocolates will react differently to certain temperatures, meaning there really is no way to know exactly what your batch will do.
That is, unless you do the proper research.
A packet of candy metals that you can pick up from the store will often have instructions on the packaging about what temperature will work best for that brand.
If your pack doesn’t come with such instructions, the window falls somewhere between 105°F-130°F so it might take some experimentation to find out what works best.
The other key contributing factor is air humidity.
Naturally, if there’s more moisture in the air around your melting chocolate, it will cause the liquid to turn out differently to how it would with less moisture surrounding it.
As a general rule, greater humidity means your chocolate is more likely to seize up, which is disastrous for melting.
Once this happens, there’s really no way to save the batch so it’s always best to work in as low humidity as possible.
Frequently Asked Questions
How Do You Make Candy Melts Smooth?
A good way to get your candy melts to have a smooth texture when melted is to use paramount crystals.
These small flakes can be mixed into any kind of melted chocolate to make the liquid thinner and smoother.
Plenty of professional chefs and bakers use paramount crystals with candy melts because of the desirable texture it gives their melted chocolate.
What Are Candy Melts Used For?
Candy melts are a super simple solution to melting chocolate.
They are designed to melt into a smooth, liquid consistency that can then be used for all kinds of things.
One example is if you’re working with molds wot create chocolate sculptures. To do this, you’ll need to melt your chocolate before pouring it into a mold.
Candy melts are nice, easy way to get your chocolate to a desirable consistency first.
Why Should I Thin My Candy Melts?
Once you’ve melted your candy melts, they might come out in a fairly thick consistency.
If you’re melting the chocolate to dip other foods in it, this thick consistency will make things more difficult and much messier.
For this reason, you’ll often seek the thinnest consistency you can manage from your candy melts.
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Hi! My name is Jessica, and I recently decided to set up the site My Baking Heart, as an extension of my love for baking. It is something I have enjoyed since being a young child, when I would bake cookies and cakes with my grandma
Over the years, I have developed my skills and love to try all kinds of baking, from genoise sponges, to peach cobbler, and everything in between. New recipes are so much fun to follow and recreate.
Through this site, I hope to teach others the basics of baking, from how to use certain equipment, to the best types of recipes to follow. My site is a mixture of useful informational content, recipes, and of course, review of the best types of baking equipment.
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