This series of livestream classes will give you a solid foundation of techniques and methods that you can use to make candy bars at home or for your work.
These candy bars have been designed based off of their original counterparts. Most of the classes give options for either shelling or hand forming the bars, so anyone with a little chocolate experience can being making them.
By making the recipes and practicing the techniques and methods outlined in this series of classes, you will lay a solid foundation of understanding how to work with chocolate and create cohesive layers that taste incredible and ‘eat well’ in their composition.
Each of these lessons teaches covers different fillings with very different bases. Each base, once learnt, can be experimented with to create brand new candy bars. The techniques and recipes are the most important thing to learn.
‘Twix’ Candy Bars
- Shortbread Cookie – We have to keep the flavours and textures of this bar as close to the original as possible in order for it to really hit the mark and spark those childhood feels. That starts with the shortbread cookie that forms the base of the bar. It’s buttery, crisp texture is vital and we accomplish that with a shelf stable, gluten, dairy and refined sugar free almond shortbread cookie baked to perfection.
- Caramel – In the development of these bars, I learned that too much caramel takes us away from the original bar which has a thin layer of caramel atop the aforementioned biscuit. After testing some variations, I landed on a maple caramel ganache. This is a rich, decadent caramel that has enough flavour to pierce through the dark shell and cookie without being overpowering. It works perfectly and is refined sugar, dairy and gluten free.
- Shelling – For this bar, we cast a dark chocolate shell and layer the caramel and biscuit inside before capping it off to seal all the goodness in. This bar has a 3-4 month shelf life.
‘Butterfinger’ Candy Bars
- Honeycomb – Learn how to make honeycomb using real honey, no glucose syrup! You can use maple syrup in place of honey for a vegan version.The flavour of caramelised honey is second to none… add peanut butter to the mix and it results in a flakey, light, aromatic peanut butter honeycomb you’re going to love.
- The Filling – These bars are a take on my favourite Butterfinger candy bars that I loved as a kid. In my version, the honeycomb is mixed through a dark roast peanut butter praline – you can make the praline in a stone grinder or, I’ll cover how to make it without a grinder. This version will be piped into a chocolate candy bar shell mould and capped to keep the oxygen out.
- The Real Deal – The original Butterfinger Bar is an enrobed peanut butter honeycomb bar, so, to give you options, I’ll show you how to make both in class. This way, you can decide which is best for yourself.
‘Viral’ Dubai Candy Bar
This chocolate bar has taken off massively the world over. Chocolatiers around the globe are being asked to sell the bars as they are not being sold by the company outside of Dubai. Unauthorised retailers are popping up here and there selling the bars at 3 x’s the price! This is the power of the internet.
Are they worth the hype? They are really yummy chocolate bars and I think what they nailed was the gooey factor and the texture of the pastry. That combo is a home-run. Ive spoken to several chocolatiers who are making these to sell and the way they have chosen to make them is not in line with the original creation from Fix.
Fix intentionally calls their bars, Dessert Bars, not Chocolate Bars. This is for good reason and we will discuss this in the class.
- Ingredients – When replicating someone else’s creation, without knowing exactly how they do it, we need to be smart about it and question everything… pay attention to everything. Research. Chocolatiers are missing the mark because they are not making it true to the original. We will discuss this in class in depth. And this process can be applied to other bars you might want to recreate.
- Assembly – From which mould to choose, which method/filling to choose, shelling, capping, dipping, decorating (or not)… this is all the material we will cover in the class. I will demonstrated the making the bar as I think the company makes it. We’ll discuss the pros and cons to this recipe. We will make it the way all other chocolatiers are recreating the world over and you can decide for yourself which is better. From people taste testing for me thus far, they love it and prefer the original version.
‘Cherry Ripe’ Bars
- Gooey Coconut Cherry Filling – This is the most important element of this chocolate bar. The texture is gooey with specks of coconut and pieces of sweet, dark cherries. It’s a masterpiece of flavour and texture. This filling is easy to make once you know the tips and tricks I have uncovered during the extensive development process. I’ve tested many iterations and will share my findings with you.
- You could alter this recipe by using the same methods, but changing the fruit that’s featured. Strawberry or blueberry would be really nice with the coconut too.
- Forming by ‘hand’ – If you don’t have experience with making chocolate shells, you can make these chocolates by forming them into balls, in a frame or a silicone mould. The process for making the filling will vary depending on whoch method you choose. We cover all of them in the class.
- Forming by shelling – We talk through the various professional chocolate moulds you can use for these bars. They don’t even need to be bars, they could be any shape you’d like. There are some important points on filling the shells and when to cap that don’t apply to your normal bars or bonbons, we’ll cover those details in the class and prepare you for success.
- Dark or Milk Chocolate – I have tested both shades and the winner for me and my taste testers was dark! But you can, of course, test it for yourself and decide.
Caramel Filled Bars
These bars are formed using silicone moulds to keep it simple for those students who don’t feel confident with shelling. You can, of course, shell a mould and form the bars that way instead.
Maple Pecan Candy Bars with milk chocolate pecan praline, maple caramel and maca cinnamon cookie dough
- For these bars, I wanted to create something multi-layered, but using methods that are really simple. I wanted the flavours and textures to stand out so the bars would be unforgettable, impactful.
- We have a classic flavour combo; pecan and maple. To make it stand out a little more, I added in maca as a flavour to bring depth and intrigue. Alongside that we have cinnamon which pairs well with all elements of this bar.
- The real stand out on both bars is the gooey caramel centre – the surprise of this element when it’s eaten is part of the pure joy of this bar.
Chocolate Walnut Candy Bar with chocolate orange caramel, walnut praline and boozy prune cookie dough
- The element I started with on these bars was the boozy prune cookie dough element. I discovered this a few months back and was waiting to see where to might feature in my work.
- After testing it, and making some flavour adjustments, it clearly stood out as a winner for Autumn and Christmas time.
- With that in mind, I set about creating the other layers; walnut pairs really nicely with prune, dark rum, orange and chocolate. And so, it came together into this unique, utterly moreish Autumnal candy bar.