Hey all,

   Since I had the day off from work I decided to get started on some figures for my sister-in-law's baby shower. I bought some modeling chocolate (dark and white) from the Baker's Kitchen since I've never used chocolate before and didn't want to waste time testing recipes. The chocolate seemed dry and hard (actually crumbly) to start with so I put the tiniest bit of shortening on my hands (as the package suggests) and started working it and microwaved it for 5 seconds. The heat definitely made it more pliable but after awhile it'd get quite firm and hard again. After working with it for awhile, I started to notice that folds weren't blending into each other. I'd try to roll a piece into a ball or log and would get deep creases where parts came together but couldn't get them to blend unless pinching and flattening. I have no idea if this is because of the shortening, the heat or if it's not pliable enough yet. Any suggestions??? Has anybody use TBK chocolate before? Thanks for any suggestions! 

i've never used it

my guess is that the product has not been throoughly brought up to the same temperature so it's not melding well with itself

chocolate is weird

i think you have to knead it quite a quite a quite a bit

but it's a temperature thing rather than a pliable thing

It sounds like it's very dry and you need to add quite a bit of shortening to it. If that doesn't help, get some Duff's fondant and mix it about 50/50. It's been my experience that Duff's is pretty oily so that should offset the dryness, but still give you some elasticity.

Thanks guys. I don't think it was a heat issue since it never got sticky like I'd expect from being too warm. Adding shortening seemed to make the problem worse. Since the instructions said to add corn syrup if it was too soft (which it wasn't, it was HARD and dry), I was hesitant to try that but eventually decided it was worth a shot. Adding corn syrup obviously made it a bit more sticky temporarily but REALLY helped with the blending seems issue!