“How do they make hollow chocolate bunnies?”
Last week, while shopping for staples in our local grocery store, we passed by the unavoidable Easter candy aisle. The Four-Year-Old immediately snagged a rather sizable bunny wrapped in gold foil. Naturally we purchased it.
After gnawing her way through the wonderfully solid chocolate ears, The Four-Year-Old exclaimed in some surprise: “Mommyo! The head’s hollow! How do they do that?”
How do they make hollow chocolate bunnies?
Not being a confectioner, I didn’t know, so we Asked the iPhone. If TLC can be believed, there are two common techniques.
The first is to fill a bunny mold that is open at one end (usually the bottom) with melted chocolate, wait a few seconds, and then pour out whatever liquid chocolate you can. The chocolate along the walls of the mold will have solidified, leaving you with a nicely formed hollow bunny. (TLC provides no information on how you are supposed to actually remove the chocolate from the mold without destroying its lovely new bunny shape. I suppose they are banking on this being self-evident for folks who actually have the molds in their possession. Never having made a hollow bunny myself, I can only hope that this is true.)**
If you can only find complete bunny molds, a slightly different technique is called for. Open the mold, pour in just a bit of liquid chocolate, and swirl the chocolate around to coat the inside of the mold. Allow the chocolate to solidify before re-opening the mold.
Serve and enjoy.
(Oh, and in case you are wondering, The Four-Year-Old said the hollow parts of the bunny tasted best.)
Update: I have just received word from a trusted reader in Texas that the open-ended bunny molds also come in two pieces, making it a relatively simple matter to pop open the mold and extract the bunny when it’s done.
Related articles:
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- Easter Candy History: Why are chocolate bunnies hollow? (Smithsonian blog)
- Tips for Using Chocolate Molds (abeautifulmess.typepad.com)
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One Response to ““How do they make hollow chocolate bunnies?””
[…] Chocolate bunnies may be a fixture of Easter celebrations here in the U.S., but since 1991, the Foundation for a Rabbit-Free Australia has been working hard to retire the Easter Bunny in favor of the Easter Bilby. Once common in burrows around Australia, the bilby — a cute, rabbit-eared marsupial native to the region — has been pushed out of its habitat by, you guessed it, the not-so-native rabbit. Since their introduction to Australia some 200 years ago, rabbits have eaten the bilbies out of house and home. As a result the once ubiquitous bilby now numbers in the thousands. […]
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