Simple Christmas Gift: Chocolates!

Clutter-free gifts are so thoughtful because you’re not adding clutter to the homes and lives of your friends and family. Today I’m talking about a long-standing tradition in our family… chocolates!

These are easy to make and everyone loves them!  We give them to neighbours, friends, and family every year. 

I initially made these with my parents when I lived at home, and I’ve made them nearly every year since then {that’s over 40 years of making these chocolates!}. 

To make these chocolates, you need to wafers like these.

They also come in milk chocolate, dark chocolate, and coloured chocolate.  We also usually buy some red and green for Christmas chocolates. In my area the bulk food store carries them so I can get as much or as little as I need each year.

You also need plastic molds like these, these, or these.  I still have a few molds from back when I made these chocolates with my parents.  They are very durable, especially since we only use them once a year.  I’ve also expanded our collection of chocolate molds through the years and added sucker molds (the kids love those!).

Here’s how you make these chocolates:

1.  Melt the chocolate wafers.  We do it in the microwave on 50% power and stir every minute (or 30 seconds when the wafers are nearly melted).  You can also do it in a double boiler, but I find the microwave easier.  My son was usually in charge of the melting.  He was very careful to stop the microwave every minute to stir so the chocolate doesn’t burn.  

2.  Pour the melted chocolate into the molds.  You can use a spoon if you don’t have a lot of chocolate.  Or you can use a chocolate funnel if you have a lot.  I use a spoon for the coloured chocolates and use the funnel for the milk chocolate and sometimes the white chocolate or dark chocolate since I do a lot of those.

3.  Tap the tray a bit to get any bubbles out of the chocolate and to level the surface of the chocolate.  My daughter usually helps with this part. She also helps move the molds around, depending on what colour I’m pouring.  She likes to make all the Santa’s with red, Christmas trees with green, snowmen with white, etc.

4.  When you’ve filled your tray, put it in the freezer for a few minutes to harden the chocolate.  It can be done in the fridge too – it just takes a little longer.  The chocolate also hardens just sitting at room temperature, but it doesn’t come out of the molds as easy and the finish is often less shiny.  

5.  Take the molds out of the freezer and tap them upside down on waxed paper.  Be careful not to touch the chocolates with warm fingers because they will melt a bit.  I try to touch them as little as possible to keep the finish nice and shiny.  

And that’s it!

You can make these chocolates any time during the holiday season because they keep well.  I usually try to make them several weeks ahead so I can focus our time closer to Christmas on the last-minute baking or food preparation.

It’s best to keep these at room temperature or in a slightly cool place.  You don’t want them to melt, or get too cold (the chocolate can turn a bit white if it’s cold).

We put the chocolate suckers in treat bags and tie them up with seasonal curling ribbon.  Then we give them to people as stocking stuffers or attach them to their gifts instead of a bow.

Here’s my daughter tying up the bags.  {Yep that was chocolate smeared on her face and sleeve… good move letting her wear white!}

We also attach suckers to Christmas cards for families with kids in our neighbourhood.

We often make “turtles” with milk chocolate and chopped pecans (or walnuts).

I haven’t figured out how to incorporate the caramel, so they’re definitely not as good as the actual ones, but they’re pretty cute. We often put some in a bag for another cute gift.

For family gatherings, we bring along trays of these chocolates for dessert or just munching.  This one has a variety of molded chocolates around the outside and some of our white chocolate candy cane bark in the middle.

Here’s another tray we made with similar chocolates and a few pieces of bark scattered throughout the tray.

You can also box these up for people as gifts for colleagues or take a tray to the office.  I have one mold for chocolate cups and I usually add either crushed candy cane or nuts to these cups.  The finished cups can be placed in pretty paper cups, just like the fancy chocolates you can buy.

People appreciate the effort you put in to this “homemade” gift and these chocolates taste delicious!

You can be as fancy as you want or keep it very simple.  You can “paint” the molds with various colours if you’d like.  For example, I used to put little red berries on the holly or green wreaths in front of the word “joy” on some molds.  It looks really pretty, but it’s extra work.

I keep it pretty simple these days, since the holiday season is busy enough!  I use different coloured chocolate wafers but stick to one colour per mold. I watch for sales or coupons for the wafers in the months leading up to Christmas to save a bit of money.

Chocolate making isn’t limited to Christmas either.  We made our wedding favours with chocolate molds, as well as chocolate golf balls as part of the thank you gifts to the guys in our wedding party.  I’ve also done chocolates for baby showers and birthday parties.  We have a few other seasonal molds too.

Making chocolates used to take a good part of a day.  I made them on my own for years when I was single, and once we got married my hubby helped too. We only had a few molds so there was a bit of wait time between “rounds”. 

Now, the process is quicker because we have more molds, and my helpers melt the chocolate.  My son sometimes melted chocolate faster than I could keep up with the pouring!  We got to a point where it only took us a little over an hour to make most of the chocolates. 

Of course it’s messier with kids helping.  There were usually chocolate finger prints all over the microwave and drips of chocolate on the floor and table. 

But it’s so worth it!  We had a lot of fun and it’s a great shared memory-making experience, especially now that my kids are older and not around as much to help.

I’m feeling a bit nostalgic thinking about how my kids sometimes sang songs while we made chocolates.  It made it harder for me to concentrate sometimes, but I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

One year they had a blast singing silly stuff like combining 3 different versions of the 12 Days of Christmas.  They had a cute book called A Porcupine in a Pine Tree, which is a Canadian version of the 12 Days of Christmas and has lyrics like 10 Leafs a-leaping, 8 Mounties munching, 5 Stanley Cups, 3 beaver tails, etc.

They also loved the Bob and Doug McKenzie version… it’s hilarious and they laugh all the way through.  If you need a laugh to break up your Christmas prep, here it is!

My kids combined all 3 version together and it was a different version every time they sing it!  I had a headache by the end of our chocolate making session, but it was so fun to hear their creativity.

I knew there would be years they won’t want to or be able to participate in this tradition, so I always said I’ll take the headache and the spilled chocolate while I can! Look how cute they were 🙂

I love that this is a tradition that has lasted so many years.  It has morphed over the years but it hasn’t really changed.  And I love that my kids enjoy it too!  Oh, and of course, we always love sampling the fruits of our labour at the end.

So if you’re looking for another clutter-free gift to give, that’s yummy and well-received, make some chocolates!  Just be prepared to make extra because your family isn’t going to want you to give them all away!

If you need help decluttering or organizing, contact me for in-person organizing services in the Mississauga area, or virtual organizing services anywhere else.

Happy organizing!