Chocolate Cake Balls: How to Make at Home, Recipe, and Photos

Content

1 Preparatory stage (choosing dishes and chocolate)
2 Technology of making chocolate balls
3 Possible problems
4 Transparent balls
5 Design ideas

If you've already mastered making 3D chocolate figures for cake decorations and are looking for something new and unusual, we suggest learning how to make luxurious chocolate cake balls yourself. This decoration will make a truly special birthday cake for girls or boys, and can also serve as a stunning addition to a New Year's dessert.

Preparatory stage (choosing dishes and chocolate)

Chocolate balls aren't the easiest cake decoration, but making them at home is entirely possible and, in fact, no more difficult than making any 3D chocolate figures.

The edible chocolate sphere can be made in any shade or even coated with shiny candurin, which will make the balls look as close to real Christmas decorations as possible.

To create such an unusual cake design you will need:

high-quality chocolate (you can make balls from white, dark or milk chocolate, as well as confectionery callets);
convenient utensils for tempering chocolate;
a special shape that will allow the mass to form a hemisphere when it hardens.

Important: If you're tempering chocolate for the first time, we recommend using confectionery callets (chocolate drops) or a high-quality chocolate bar. Airy, porous chocolate, or bars with nuts or other fillings are not suitable. Also, avoid molding decorations from glaze, since its properties are significantly inferior to tempered chocolate.

How to Make Chocolate Spheres for Cake Decorating

Chocolate balls are made in a round mold, so you can't do without this essential element. Today, the market offers a wide variety of molds for creating decorative balls of varying diameters.

Plastic molds

Advantages:

affordable price;
easy to care for and clean;
ease of storage.

Flaws:

fragility (plastic is quite fragile);
the surface is not perfectly smooth, which makes it difficult to extract the figure;
slight roughness, which makes the balls matte (not shiny).

Silicone molds

Advantages:

affordable price (mid-price category);
easy to care for and clean;
relatively good surface.

Flaws:

soft walls (on the one hand, this simplifies the removal process, on the other hand, the risk of damaging the balls when removing them from the silicone mold increases significantly);
not a perfectly smooth surface (although better than plastic);
matte surface (not important if you plan to cover the glaze with velor or paint with candurin).

Polycarbonate forms

Advantages:

ideal surface smoothness, which allows you to achieve a luxurious gloss;
easy to care for and clean;
maximum durability.

Flaws:

The high price won't please those who want to try making chocolate cake balls for the first time.

Regardless of the material your round molds are made of, it's important to remember not to scratch them or rub them with anything with lint. Any imperfections in the mold will inevitably affect the appearance of the chocolate figure. An old, scratched mold will prevent you from creating a perfect decoration.

Technology of making chocolate balls

To understand how to make chocolate cake balls at home, we offer a detailed look at the main stages of producing this exclusive decoration.

Step 1 – Tempering the Chocolate

Tempering is the process of changing the crystal lattice of the chocolate mass, during which the product acquires a number of properties that are important for every confectioner, such as:

increasing the melting temperature (tempered chocolate does not melt in your hands);
luxurious shine (a glossy surface is characteristic of tempered chocolate);
strength (the chocolate becomes less crumbly, so the crafts made from it are stronger).

Tempering involves heating chocolate to its melting point and then cooling it. The temperature required for recrystallization varies for dark, milk, and white chocolate.

Chocolate	Melting	Crystallization	Filling the hemispheres
Dark	47-50℃	27℃	30-32℃
Lactic	44-45℃	25-26℃	28-30℃
White	44-45℃	25-26℃	28-30℃

Step-by-step chocolate tempering lessons in various ways you will not find in the corresponding article of the section "Adviсe» site.

Stage 2 – formation of hemispheres

By pouring the tempered chocolate mass into a cooled mold, you get hemispheres (half balls), which, after cooling and removing from the mold, must be glued to each other.

There are two possible options:

Complete filling of the ball volume chocolate (used for small diameter spheres).
Manufacturing of hollow hemispheres (more suitable for larger chocolate balls).

Important! The wall thickness of the hollow balls must be at least 1 mm.

Hollow Cake Balls: A Step-by-Step Cooking Guide

Working with hollow balls is more difficult, but this type of decoration is more in demand today, so it is worth learning how to make these types of balls.

Step-by-step cooking instructions with photos:

Pour the melted chocolate into the mold (the mold must be well cooled).
Spread the chocolate mixture over the inside of the hemispheres, tilting the pan or using a spoon. This will be our first chocolate layer.
Let the mixture set in the refrigerator (usually 3-5 minutes) and apply a second layer of chocolate.
We spread the chocolate with a spoon, but you can simply pour the excess chocolate glaze back into the bowl by quickly turning the mold upside down. This will make the balls thinner.
Allow the hemispheres to stabilize at room temperature (this process takes 12 to 24 hours).
Carefully remove the chocolate hemispheres from the mold.

Step 3 – Assembling the balls

How to make chocolate balls from halves? Simply glue the pieces together. Attaching the halves isn't difficult, but it does require some skill. Your movements should be quick and precise.

The algorithm is quite simple:

Heat a plate (a frying pan or a saucepan will do).
Place the two halves of the ball on the heated surface so that the joint line is straightened.
Quickly remove from the heated surface and glue.
Hold the figure for 2-3 minutes until the chocolate sets, and then carefully remove any excess drops or streaks that may form in the seam area.

Stage 4 – decorating the balls

White, chocolate, and colored balloons, which are essentially painted before the hemispheres are formed, don't require any additional decoration. However, if you want to coat the balloons with a velvet coating from a spray gun or with shiny candurin, this should be done after the chocolate has completely set in the seam area (at least 24 hours after gluing).

For more information on how to make chocolate cake balls, watch this video:

Step 5 – Decorating the Cake

It is best to attach such complex, exclusive decoration to the cake immediately before serving or before handing the cake over to the customer.

If the cake is covered with thick cream, then no additional fastening for the balls will be required; they will hold well enough on such a surface.
If the cake is covered with mastic, then during the process of installing the decor it is necessary to additionally drip a little melted chocolate at the points where the balls and mastic are attached.

For added security, you can secure the balls together. If the chocolate isn't setting well, you can also use a freezer to quickly set the contact points.

Possible problems

Even if you know how to make chocolate balls for a cake, you can't always create this decoration the first time.

The spheres break

Balloons can become brittle due to a number of reasons:

Low quality chocolate.
Violation of the technological process of tempering.
The walls of the hollow spheres are too thin.
The shape is too rough, making it difficult to separate the finished hemisphere.

The balls melt in your hands

Sometimes novice pastry chefs complain that they can't decorate a cake with the balls in time, as the decorations melt at the slightest touch. Most often, this problem indicates that the mixture wasn't tempered correctly. Try repeating the process of making the hemispheres using ready-made pastry callets.

The surface is not shiny

Even though you're using good chocolate and the correct tempering recipe, your balls are matte—replace your molds! Any mold will do for your first attempts, but if you plan to perfect your unique design, you'll need to invest in high-quality polycarbonate molds.

Fingerprints are visible on the balls

To minimize defects, wear gloves when handling the chocolate! Don't hold the sphere in your hands for too long. Cool the spheres before gluing them together, and the balls before mounting the decorations on the cake.

The seam from the glue is very noticeable

Achieving a perfectly smooth sphere is a true skill that you'll master over time. While striving to make the seam as unnoticeable as possible, immediately remove any drips or smudges that form when gluing the hemispheres.

Transparent balls

Transparent balls can be made from gelatin or isomalt.

Design ideas

Now you know how to make colored or gold (glittery) cake balls from tempered chocolate. See the photos to see what a homemade holiday cake decorated with these homemade spheres can look like. Perhaps you'll love one of these wonderful ideas and successfully replicate them, adding your own touches.