Chocolate Kintsugi

Chocolate is an excellent medium for experimenting with kintsugi. It is fast, inexpensive, and delicious. It makes a wonderful activity for parties, and can be adapted for any audience from young children to sophisticated adults.

How to make chocolate kintsugi

1. Break some chocolate.
2. Melt some chocolate.
3. Use the melted chocolate to glue the broken chocolate back together.
4. Decorate as desired.

Wait, I want more details!

Great! Here are some more details that will help you get the most out of chocolate kintsugi.

1. Break some chocolate.
   • Choose the chocolate.
     • Decide which chocolate to use as your base. Are flavors more important to you? Aesthetics? Do you want to use shaped chocolates?
     • Filled chocolates are (very) hard to work with, but feel free to give them a try.
   • Cold chocolate is easier to repair, so cool it in the refrigerator or freezer.
     • Test a small amount first, some chocolates will bloom if they get too cold.
     • Cold chocolate will resist melting in your hands for longer.
     • Cold chocolate will make the repair set faster.
   • Think about how you want to break the chocolate.
     • How am I going to apply the breaking force?
       • Hands work well for bars or other flat pieces, and allow more precise breaks.
       • Should I score the chocolate first to more finely control the break point?
       • Am I going to use a hammer, drop it, or otherwise trust to randomness?
     • How is it going to look?
       • For bars I like to break at a diagonal so the breaks look more natural.
2. Melt some chocolate.
   • Choose the chocolate (again)
     • Taste is less important, since this is used in much smaller amounts.
     • Contrast is good for recalling traditional kintsugi, but there is nothing wrong with subtlety.
     • If you are using any colorant/glitter/etc. it will probably show up best on white chocolate.
   • Heat the chocolate slowly!
     • Overheating the chocolate makes it more difficult to work with, not easier!
     • The proper working temperature is just past the melting point, if you have to stir for a while as the pieces slowly melt you are at a good temperature.
     • If the chocolate starts to behave badly and more heat doesn't help you have probably gone too far and the chocolate is no longer tempered. You will need to melt some new chocolate or try to temper the existing chocolate.
   • Keep water away from the chocolate!
     • Water will most likely make the chocolate seize, which will ruin that batch. If you manage to blend in something with water, such as milk or butter, it will make ganache, which is delicious but will never harden.
   • Heating methods:
     • A hair dryer or low temperature heat gun are excellent for heating small batches of chocolate.
     • Microwaves work as well, but you need to stop and stir very often to prevent hot spots from forming and to check the temperature.
     • Double boilers are often used to melt chocolate, since the heat is applied slowly, but you have to be careful to keep the water away from the chocolate.
3. Use the melted chocolate to glue the broken chocolate back together.
   • Test assemble the pieces first.
     • Make sure you know how the pieces go together so you don't have to search once the melted chocolate has been applied.
     • Plan in what order to join the pieces. Assemble smaller pieces first, so that the entire length of larger edges can later be joined in one step.
   • place a thin line of melted chocolate along the broken edge.
     • Add enough melted chocolate so that when the edges are squeezed together the entire edge will be covered in a thin coating of chocolate, and the desired amount will squeeze out to create the visible repair.
     • Unlike traditional kintsugi, placing on only one edge, rather than both, seems to work better.
   • Hold the pieces together for long enough for the chocolate to harden.
     • If this can be done on a surface, good! The heat from your hands may melt and mar the chocolate if you hold it for too long.
     • For complex (3D) repairs try to use rubber bands or other tools to hold everything together (keep those hands from melting the piece).
   • Freeze spray can be used to make it harden more quickly if necessary.
4. Decorate as desired.
   • Edible metallic glitters work well, but will likely need to be ground to a fine powder (spice grinders work well for this).
     • Edible glitters tend to stick to the base chocolate as well as the melted chocolate, so brushes can be used to help remove the bulk, but some will likely remain.
   • For more sophisticated result, edible gold and silver can be used.
     • Make sure to recover any extra!
   • Have fun, this is art, so there is no wrong way to do it!