Does any one have any tips on how to color chocolate after it has hardened?
Thanks

I'm not sure if I understand the question? Did you melt it, then mold it and now you want to add color? If so you could use food markers or royal icing.

Is it still in its clay-like lump? If so, just break off the portion you need to color and knead it in. If you have already molded something, or cut something out, it's a little harder to make the color stick, but you could paint it with a mixture of color and vodka or color and lemon extract.

I think it was agreed in another post yesterday that you can't paint chocolate. The fat content will cause it to bead up like water on a windshield. Dry powder and dust is probably the safest thing.

if you use powders for chocolate you can this it with lemon ( or vodka) and paint right onthe chocolate that way. wilton also makes candy colors, they look just like their gel color for icing. thin it the same way and use that to paint.

You can paint chocolate with colored cocoa butter (which you can tint with either oil-based candy colors or powdered coloring, or you can get pre-colored cocoa butter in a full range of colors from www.chefrubber.com).

I have a pic on my website of a pirate ship done in modeling chocolate and painted over with the technique I described... I never uploaded it here because it was always such a dark picture. It's toward the bottom of the album called: Let Them Eat Cake. It's a version of the Debbie Brown Pirate Ship. The center masts are gumpaste. I covered it in chocolate because it was for a three-year-old who, of course, does not appreciate fondant.

Cool...thanks Win! I would have probably never attempted it thinking about fat repelling water based substances.

I tried to "paint" chocolate seashells last weekend and it beaded up like Jamie said earlier. I ended up having to dry paint with luster dust. Maybe Win you used modeling chocolate and giggysmack and jamie were talking about regular chocolate? Not sure.