Buying chocolate candy to snack on is nice enough, but what if you want to make some of it for yourself? Well, it’s actually a lot easier and more fun than you might think, whether you’re doing it alone or getting your friends or kids involved.
We’ve come up with this list of the best chocolate candy recipes for you to try, so dessert for tonight is covered!
1. Homemade Peanut Butter Cups
Who doesn’t love Reece’s Peanut Butter Cups? They’re a classic snack mixing chocolate and peanut butter in an irresistible combination, but did you know it’s easy to make them yourself? And it’s cheaper than buying them!
We mean it: all you’ll need are chocolate chips, peanut butter, powdered sugar, and salt. You can cook all this up together and put it into muffin cups to cool.
It’s also super easy to do your own variations – why not try using your favorite jam or jelly to make PB&J cups? Or you could add in some banana or Nutella – the choice is yours!
2. Peppermint Bark
This is a great festive recipe for the holiday season that you can also enjoy at other times of the year. This one is incredibly simple – all you’ll need is white chocolate, dark, chocolate and peppermints.
That’s it, no other ingredients. Since this is such a simple recipe, all three ingredients are at the forefront, so it’s best to use the best quality you can get. Once they’re done, the chocolate and mint mixture means that these will go quickly at parties.
3. Homemade English Toffee
This wonderfully nutty, buttery toffee is made complete with the addition of delicious chocolate.
It’s very rich, so go easy on it. We’re telling you this because although your stomach will be telling you to stop, your mouth will be urging you to take another bite. You can sprinkle chopped nuts over the top if you like, though this version uses Christmas sprinkles.
4. Pretzel Turtles
These sweet, salty, crunchy treats are really simple to make and will be a real crowd pleaser at any kind of party.
All you need are some mini pretzels, some halved pecans, and a bunch of Rolo candies. It couldn’t be easier – place one Rolo on a pretzel, put it in the oven until it melts, and then take it out and put a pecan half on it. Easy, quick, and delicious.
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5. Rocky Road Fudge
This isn’t a traditional fudge in that it’s not full of butter or cream. This makes it (a bit) less rich than fudge usually is, so it’ll be a little easier on your stomach.
All you’ll need is some chocolate chips, some crunchy peanut butter, and some marshmallows. It’s another happy marriage of chocolate and peanut butter, and the marshmallows are the icing on the tempting fudge cake.
6. Oreo Cookie Balls
These Oreo balls are another quick and easy dessert snack and even better, they don’t even require any cooking! They’re very easy to customize, too.
Peanut butter and Nutella are obvious possibilities, but you could also try spiking them with a sweet liqueur like Kahlua or Baileys. Coconut is another great possibility, but you can try what you think will work.
7. Chocolate Raisin Clusters
There are plenty of simple recipes on this list, but this one’s even simpler – literally all you need are chocolate and raisins, although the recipe is very easy to adapt to other things as well – cornflakes, trail mix, fried fruit and others will all work.
You can also choose whichever kind of chocolate you’d like – milk, dark, or white. There are also plenty of flavored chocolates you can use to add some depth and sophistication to this simple treat.
8. Chocolate Covered Potato Chips
There’s nowhere to hide with this one – it’s about as far from healthy as you can get. But this is a list of chocolate candies, so what did you expect? It’s not just decadence for the sake of it though.
These actually make a surprisingly great sweet appetizer or canapé and are simple to customize by choosing whatever chocolate you like, plus whatever toppings you think will go with them.
9. Easy Homemade Filled Chocolates
These deliciously creamy little chocolates are the perfect after dinner treat, and can be made just as easily with white, milk, or dark chocolate. You could even go for a little bit of caramel as well!
Nuts, coconut, and fruit are also on the table. You can also go crazy with the different shaped molds for this one, as any and all shapes are welcome for these tasty candies.
10. Black Forest Truffles
Black Forest gateau is a classic German cake of dark chocolate, cream, and cherries. That killer combination has been adapted to a chocolate truffle in this recipe, and we think you’ll agree that whoever first came up with this idea deserves high praise.
The recipe calls not only for the dried cherries themselves, but also a little kirschwasser, a German cherry-flavored liqueur that literally translates to “cherry water”. Other cherry liqueurs will be a good enough substitute if you can’t find it.
With the rest of the ingredients, this makes a delectably rich, tart, and sweet confection that’s addictive in a classy way.
11. Chocolate Coconut Candies
Chocolate and coconut are natural friends, as this recipe proves. They’re quick and easy to make, which is good, because they’ll be gobbled up just as quickly as you can serve them up at any party.
If you want to take things a little bit further by adding chopped hazelnuts, sprinkles, or a little bit of confectioner’s sugar frosting, who’s going to say no? Nobody, that’s who!
12. Chocolate Dipped Apples
Use your favorite chocolate for this, whether that be white, milk, or dark. All you need to do is melt it and then make sure your granny smith apples are coated in it. Extra toppings are naturally enough up to you.
Apples are still healthy, even if you’re coated in chocolate, right? Either way, these are a great treat for kids, though you shouldn’t be surprised if a few of the adults are lining up for theirs as well.
13. Phyllo Chocolate Cigars
While we wouldn’t want to encourage anybody to take up smoking, you understand, there’s still something cool and elegant about a good chocolate cigar. These ones are made with ultra-thin, crispy phyllo pastry and filled with chocolate.
The recipe even suggests dipping them into chocolate syrup when you eat them, and while this is delicious, it might be chocolate overload for some people.
Of course, you can fill these with whatever you like, really. Nutella is an obvious choice, but what about dulce de leche? Or honey with nuts, to turn them into a kind of cigar-shaped baklava? Have fun and see what you can come up with.
14. Exploding Truffles
Don’t worry, these truffles aren’t a danger to you or your property. However, they will pop in your mouth when eaten, hence their intriguing name. The combination of chocolate with popping candy is a little bit unusual, but is guaranteed to be a crowd pleaser.
15. Sweet And Savory Chocolate Bacon Bark
If you thought the chocolate and popping candy mix in the last recipe was unusual, then you might be thinking that this one is just downright weird. But give it a chance, because chocolate and bacon is a very underrated pairing.
In fact, it’s starting to become something of a trend in the high-end chocolate market. No need to pay top dollar, though, because it’s easy to make at home!
The absolute most important thing here is that the bacon is as crispy as possible – you do not want soggy bacon mixed in with your chocolate!
With that out of the way, making this is actually not a difficult process at all – it’s just a case of sprinkling the crispy bacon bits onto the melted chocolate and then allowing it all to set.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Is The Difference Between Dark Chocolate, Milk Chocolate, And White Chocolate?
Good question, and to answer it properly, you need to know just a little about how chocolate is made. As you might know, chocolate comes from cocoa beans (aka cacao beans).
About half of the weight of the bean is fat, and this is what’s known as cocoa butter. The remaining half is cocoa solids.
This is where the main difference lies – in dark chocolate, the percentage of cocoa solids is higher than in milk chocolate and crucially, dark chocolate does not have any milk solids added whereas milk chocolate does (hence the name).
The amount of cocoa solids is what the percentages you sometimes see written on the packages of fancy chocolate mean.
There is no exact percentage that marks the boundary between dark and milk chocolate, but dark chocolate usually has a cocoa solid percentage of 50% or more. In some extreme cases, it can be as high as 99%.
All this means that dark chocolate tastes more like “real” chocolate, meaning that it’s more bitter and crumbly, whereas milk chocolate is sweeter and smoother.
But what about white chocolate? Well actually, white chocolate isn’t really chocolate at all, since it contains no cocoa solids at all, though it mimics the overall style and texture of “real” chocolate as far as possible.
What Is The Most Expensive Chocolate?
There are several brands that cater to anyone who want the highest levels of luxury and quality with their chocolate, but one of the most renowned is Knipschildt.
Their brand is known for the best quality natural ingredients, avant-garde flavor combinations and superb craftsmanship. Others include Godiva, Teuscher, and Vosges Haut-Chocolat.
Their chocolates aren’t designed with snacks like the ones on this list in mind, but if you did use it, they’d certainly be some of the best chocolate candies in the world!
What Goes Well With Chocolate?
There are so many things that go well with chocolate that it’d be impossible to make a full list. Fruits are often good options – strawberries, cherries, apples, and more will all work well.
Nuts are another good choice, and you’ve probably seen all kinds of dishes that combine chocolate with nuts before, whether it’s peanuts, almonds, pecans and so on. That’s far from all, though.
This very list has a recipe that pairs chocolate successfully with bacon, which is proof that when it comes to chocolate, the sky’s the limit.
Final Thoughts
Now that you’ve read this list, your mind must be buzzing with possibilities for making delicious chocolate candies. Whether you’re making them for a party, for your kids, or just to treat yourself, you’ll be sure to find something that you’ll fall in love with here.
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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