Happy Bat Appreciation Day! It’s fair to say I celebrate bats everyday of the year. I admit… I’m infatuated! But since today is the official national holiday, it seemed worthy of a post dedicated to my favorite little winged creatures.
With Easter around the corner, the baking aisles of stores are filled with sweet pastels… pink cupcake liners, Easter egg baking molds, bunny rabbit cookie cutters. Definitely NOT as cool as Halloween! BUT… you know I like to draw inspiration from just about anywhere! As I stood looking at all of the pink and yellow, and daydreaming of the day Halloween supplies will once again fill those aisles… I had a thought. While everyone else was making their sweet little treats, I too would make a treat… Black Bat Lollipops! Today may not be Halloween, but this holiday definitely gives us a great excuse to add a spooky touch to our baking… especially this time of year! And when Halloween does finally roll around…. these will make a perfect snack for your party!
Recently I was attempting to organize all of my baking and candy molds, so when I decided to celebrate bats by whipping something up in the kitchen, I remembered having several bat molds. After a day or two of playing with them and different ingredients, I am surprised to say I ended up doing something very simple. A FAR cry from my original plan! Once I saw these Black Bats formed out of chocolate melts, I absolutely loved them as is. My daughter was thrilled because that meant all of the cupcakes and cakes I made during my experimenting were up for grabs!
I decided to use Black chocolate melts to create the lollipops. It’s important to mention that the chocolate melts are actually “candy melts” with imitation flavoring, but they work really well in molds, and taste quite good. I toyed with using real chocolate, but once my husband began sampling my experiments, he reminded me how much he loved those melts… Melts it is! If you do choose to use real chocolate, just remember it will need to be tempered.
Another tip…. While the black melts are quite dark, they are not black enough for my taste. I added a few drops of black gel food coloring to the melted chocolates to achieve a blackest black. I will warn you there is one problem with this plan. As soon as you add the gel, it cause the chocolate to seize, and changes the texture of the chocolate melts. It will go from an almost pourable and smooth chocolate to a thick and gritty substance. Obviously, it is far easier to make these lollipops with smooth chocolate that can be poured into the molds. But if those Black Melts are not black enough for you… be sure to add a tiny amount of coloring at the last possible second (once the chocolate has melted), and you’ll have to spoon the mixture into the mold and manually spread it to fill all of the cavities. This didn’t seem to have any affect on the face side of the bat.
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What you’ll need to make these:
Follow the directions on the package for melting the “chocolate”. I like to use small bowl fulls of the melts… microwave them for 30 seconds, stir, microwave for 30 seconds more, and then stir continuously until the chocolate is smooth. If you have too may melts in your bowl, you may need to cook for a bit longer. Once I pass the 60 second mark, I microwave them at 10 second intervals.
If you choose to add any food coloring, do so once chocolate is melted. And use sparingly.. as I mentioned earlier, it will cause the chocolate to seize and become way more difficult to work with.
Immediately add the melted chocolate to the bat mold. Fill to the edge, and place the lollipop stick in place.
I like to gently tap the mold on the counter to ensure the chocolate spreads evenly… as there are a lot of crevices in the face of the bat.
Put the mold into the refrigerator until the chocolate becomes hard, and easily pops out of the mold.
Tie a ribbon around the neck to spruce these pops up…. and Enjoy!
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