Hi All,
if someone could help me I would very very much appriciate it.

Here in the Uk you can get wilton candy melts off ebay but at £3.95 & £1.95 postage for a 14oz bag thats alot of money. There are no other (that I know) alternatives to the wilton candy melts.

Also chocolate colorings are not easy to buy. i can only buy a few colours.

i am keen to try out the fab chocolate things in the whimsical bakehouse but cant as i don't have the colours or chocolate

Does anyone know what i can use over here instead of candy melts and anything that is available to colour chocolate

many thanks
Cecb

I'd love to know too!

oh id love to know too!!! i havent got the foggiest at what candy melts are and wouldnt know where to look, im sure i havent seen them in tesco lol!!

Candy melts are chocolate discs that you melt and come in a variety of colors. Wilton makes them here and you can also buy them in a bulk store.

HTH, there's not much more I can add. It's just melting chocolate.

Enjoy your day!

EDIT: You might be able to use white chocolate and try adding paste colors to it. I've never tried it, but maybe it would work. Just a thought.

hi,
thanks for your reply.

I must not have made myself clear. I know what the candy melts are but here in UK don't know what to use or where to buy instead of them

White chocolate would have to be tempered I assume and don't want to go down that road as yet

thanks for taking the time to reply
cecb

I have seen dark chocolate and white chocolate disks in a few cake decorating shops here (no colors unless it's Wiltons). If I remember correctly they are using marked as 'coating chocolate', and have 'non-tempering' somewhere on the label. (The shop in St. Neots Cambridgeshire that I like carry the dark and white, but I've never looked at the price.)

Squires Kitchen sells some chocolate coloring, but it's quite expensive.

Sugarshack UK sells the Wilton melts starting at 2.50 GBP (price varies by color).

To consider: another UK CCer that I've chatted with buys chocolate straight from Callebaut and uses the easy-tempering microwave method. This might be your best cost option.

As far as I know, this company are the (only??) main importer of Wilton goods into the UK.

http://www.cakedecoration.co.uk/search.ihtml

Above is the link for candy melts.

Fortunately, their h/o is literally a five minute drive from me, so I avoid the p&p.

Suzanne x

This is great Relznik, thank you for the link!

I thought candy bars & chocolate chips are already tempered, so you would only need to color the white chocolate once melted. Use caution when melting white chocolate, it burns much easier. Best way is over a pot of simmering water and watch it closely.

i too can't get candy melts where i live. i also don't have access to chocolate coloring. so i used powdered food coloring and make it very concetrated for a drop of water i carefyllu add just a drop of it to my white chocolate and then i usally add in a drop of cocoa butter.
HTH

It's been a while since I shopped in the UK but I think the equivalent is just "cooking chocolate" - the bags of chocolate buttons for cooking - also called compound chocolate here in Australia. Can't help on the colouring though I'm afraid.

HTH

What you want is good old fashioned Scotbloc cake covering (comes in bar form) - you find it in the baking aisle of the supermarket (go to a big one for most choice!), and can get it in white, milk & dark and it is the same as candy melts (i.e. not real chocolate!). Tempering real white chocolate is really difficult and if you don't do it right you will get blooming on your finished piece spoiling the look. As for colouring, I use Chefmaster oil-based colourings, they are great (better than Wilton), and last for ages. I bought mine on Ebay in a set of 7 and you can mix to make most colours. Hope that helps!

Edited to add: go to Ebay and search 'chocolate colouring', and there you will find a UK seller of the Chefmaster colours, offering all of the colours that are available. They are not cheap (they are quite big bottles though), but I have had mine a couple of years, and I do a lot of chocolate transfer work, so they last!

Ahhhh! I see...

Out of interest, when would you use this, instead of real chocolate??

Scotbloc! That was the name I couldn't remember! Yes - its the cheapy not real chocolate stuff

Oh, I see.

I'll definitely give it a go. I hate trying to melt real white chocolate.

Thanks.

In a pinch I have used white chocolate bars, or white chocolate pellet things (can't recall their name right now, stars with a C...) and use gel colors. I've been pleased with results actually...we have places with Candy Melts, but I don't enjoy paying so much money, and still not have all the colors I need anyway.

Hi cecbi 1 check out the link. A UK cake deco supply site. They carry candy melts.

HTH

http://www.sugarshack.co.uk/index.html

I've been buying mine off of Amazon, its not too pricey and a lot of the sellers do free delivery :)

Would Scotblock work for making Cake Pops? If its cheaper then I'd definitely want to use it!!

Thanks x

Hi there,

Hobbycraft also sell them for £3.00 per pack.  They also sell a lot more of their products including food colouring.

Chefmaster are really good for colouring, but as you say they are limited to the colours over here, but I've also heard the sugarcraft ones are also good, not used the latter one myself but I am considering it.  There's also quite a few other me;lts out there on ebay, if you enter 'candy melts' into search engine you'll find other brands, if you buy in bulk they do work out cheaper, although I don't think they taste as nice as the Wilton candy melts though.

Hope this helps.

Jan.x

I think Scotblock tastes disgusting and nothing at all like real chocolate.  I don't really like the flavour of candy melts either compared to using chocolate (and there are warnings about behaviour in children and I've seen kids have cake pops covered in them at parties and go hyper after so do believe that warning!).  I use the microwave method of tempering too and Callebaut chocolate as somebody else has suggested too.  I haven't had much luck with colouring white choc with paste colourings as it just siezes but powdered colour works brilliantly x

If there's a Hobbycraft shop near you I know that they sell lots of different colours of Wilton candy melts.  They're still pretty dear, but cheaper than what you were paying before (the website lists them as being £3 per pack).

Merckens is a brand of candy coating that tastes decent, and it comes in excellent deep vibrant colours that can be melted together for more shades. They sell it here in bulk shops, I have not seen it in retail sized packages.

The Merckens website identifies that they do sell their "compound" goods in Europe...but that led me to the fact that you cannot call this stuff "chocolate" in the EU.

I googled "compound candy coating UK" and got links to Merckens candy melts. They have factories in NL and BE so the stuff should be less expensive than Wilton.

Thanks Kikiandkyle that made me laugh!  I went to America a few years ago and was surprised at some of the things that were on offer and also the sheer size of some of the things too!  I often take the warnings with a pinch of salt but I saw the effect the candy melts had on the kids at the party (including my own little one) and realised I was right not to use them - my friend also gave them to her friends at a dinner club and she said everybody was acting extra drunk and merry that evening and she was sure it was the cake pops so maybe it affects adults too!  

There is a couple of websites in Ireland that sell candymelts, I cant think of the names right now but Im sure they would deliver to Uk also, not too sure but think two of them are, kitchendresser.ie and stuff4cakes.ie

AFrom what I've heard, in the tesco's bakeware section, silver spoon chocolate buttons are available, but only in white, dark, milk and raspberry [chocolate]. These work well, but I normally eat them before decorating. The colours blend well, too, and are only about £2 a bag. Hope this helps xx:-)

Do they dry or firm up as quickly as candy melts? That's the only positive I see it using candymelts, I can move the cake pops around not long after dipping them.