I'd like to try and paint some chocolate pieces and I'm wondering if anyone has some advice for me. What best to use as the 'paint'? I've read about melted cocoa butter. I bought a few solid bars today that would need to be colored. At the cake shop they said I could use regular gel colors but I keep reading you need to use candy or powdered colors. Would it be better to paint with melted chocolate? I was thinking that could get a little clunky as I was working. Thanks for any advice you have!!!

well as i understand u will need an oil based food coloring or powedered.. anything water based might not be a perfect solution because it might get chuncky but it might not.. there is a ratio of water/chocolate that u need to keep in mind when adding anything that contains water "to which i dont remember" i have colored white chocolate with light pink once using wilton gell food coloring didnt cause me trouble.. im guessing the more color u add the more you will be at rick of getting it chuncky.... wat colors are u going for??

I have tried colouring chocolate using normal gel pastes and it was a FAIL! The choc immediately turned hard and chunky and looked seized. Sorry I don't have any advice for you, but a warning should shed some light in what NOT to do. Hope somebody has an answer!!

I like to use powdered colors with melted cocoa butter. You should be able to get them at your cake shop. Cocoa butter is much thinner than melted chocolate, so it's far superior for painting than melted chocolate.

Thanks for the replies! DianeLM - I read somewhere that it's hard to get the cocoa butter to have deep colors (I'd like to do red) with the powdered colors. Have you had that problem? How do you melt the cocoa butter - I just have bars. Thanks!

I haven't tried any of this, but I'm going to tell you what I'm listening to on my DVD.

I just got the baking arts DVD. This guy's instructions to make this kind of cakes:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/7518775@N04/

Those cakes are covered in rolled chocolate. He is talking about not using white chocolate because the colors can't be that vivid. He uses coating chocolate (white or dark). He's also saying that the other reason not to use white chocolate is because it contains cocoa butter (which has a lower melting point). The other two ingredients in his chocolate modeling paste are corn syrup and glycerin.

And then, he adds just the regular blue color from Americolor. And he talks about what you might have heard about the color not being good for chocolate. He's saying it's not true, and that if you check the ingredients for the color, it's corn syrup with a dye, and that's not going to seize your chocolate.

Haven't checked though, if that's true, but according to him, using the gel is fine. It's actually his preferred coloring.

So...cocoa butter can't have vivid colors (still_learning might be right)...gel colors might be OK to paint/color your chocolate, or so Richard says in his video.