I am making a cake for a 7 year old boy. I know he is going to want to eat the figures, so I would prefer they taste good. I would like to try modeling chocolate but have never used it. Do I work with it in the same way as gumpaste? How would I attach arms to the chocolate body? Royal icing? Toothpicks? Do I tint it the same way I would with the gumpaste? Also can I cover RKT with it? Do I just roll it out like fondant first? I know I am asking a lot of questions, but I have never worked with modeling chocolate and would really like to try! Thanks!!

I use modeling chocolate (actually candy clay) a lot since kids are always eating it up and it does taste way better than gumpaste. Work it the same way as you would fondant and I would use dry spaghetti instead of toothpicks for safety reasons. I attach the pieces to each other with a little bit of piping gel. It dries up instantly so no downtime in waiting for the pieces to dry before assembling. I usually build up the entire figure all at once - you'll love it!

My blog has a couple tips and the recipes I use for candy clay. With RKT, I just cover it straight with the candy clay since it works great at filling in all the grooves and gives you a smooth surface to work with.

Thank you very much! You were very informative and helpful!! I am going to give the modeling chocolate a try (with confidence!)

Thank you! I have made the chocolate modeling chocolate before but I didn't have the instructions like you did here...and these look so doable! I have some figures I've been dreading doing for next week, now I'm looking forward to them!
thanks!

Dry spaghetti! Now why didn't I think of that? I did my first candy clay figure modeling this week and I used some bits of skewer to attach some of the pieces. But it's my own children eating the figures so I'm not too worried about the safety aspect.

The piping gel is a good tip too; I used some straight corn syrup as glue and it worked okay, but just okay. My figure kept losing her shoes, and was in danger of losing her hand as I was putting her on the cake.

I love the way you can reshape the stuff just by warming it a bit in your hands. so it's not too late to fix or change things after they dry. And my kids definitely like the taste better than fondant.

Holly