Make it at home

How to Make Chocolate Bonbons: A Beginner's Guide

By Oliver BennettPublished October 15, 2026Updated October 15, 202613 min read

To make chocolate bonbons at home, you line a mold with a thin shell of tempered chocolate, fill it with ganache, let the filling set, then seal each cavity with a chocolate cap and tap the bonbons out. Plan on two days. The shells and the filling fit into one afternoon, but the ganache needs hours to firm up before you can seal it.

You should have tempered chocolate at least once before you start. Everything else is below, step by step. If you haven’t, how to make chocolate at home sets out the projects to work through first.

What you need

Apart from a mold, you need the same kit you temper with plus a few tools for scraping and piping.

• A polycarbonate mold: rigid and clear, so you can see through the bottom whether the chocolate has pulled away from the walls.
• Chocolate for the shells and caps. Couverture is the usual choice because it has more cocoa butter and coats thinly. If the label lists a vegetable fat instead of cocoa butter, it’s compound chocolate, which sets without tempering and isn’t what these steps are written for. Real vs compound chocolate explains the difference.
• Chocolate and heavy cream for the ganache.
• A digital probe thermometer and a kitchen scale that reads in grams.
• A bench scraper or a wide offset spatula, for scraping the top of the mold clean.
• A piping bag for the filling.
• Baking paper to rest the mold on while the shells drain.
• Bowls and a silicone spatula, all completely dry.

Plan your timeline

Spread the work over two days: shells and ganache on day 1, then cap and release on day 2. The break is there for the filling. Ganache leaves the pan as a warm emulsion and only firms up as it cools: the cocoa butter and milk fat start to crystallize, and the fat crystals form bridges between the fat droplets, as a 2024 review by Lapčíková and colleagues describes. That takes hours, which is why capping waits for day 2.

Day 1:

1. Clean and check the mold.
2. Temper the chocolate and make the shells.
3. Make the ganache and let it cool to piping temperature.
4. Pipe the filling into the shells and leave the mold somewhere cool to set.

Day 2:

5. Temper chocolate again and cap the bonbons.
6. Let the caps set, then release the bonbons and store them.

How long each stage takes depends on your recipe and your room.

Step 1: Prepare the mold

The mold has to be clean, dry and free of scratches, because the shell picks up whatever is on the cavity walls. Scratches also make chocolate stick. A 2009 doctoral thesis on chocolate release by Keijbets, citing industry work, notes that small defects on the mold surface “significantly increase the amount of chocolate residues sticking” to it.

1. Hold the mold up to the light and check every cavity for scratches and leftover chocolate.
2. Clean off any residue and dry the mold completely. Chocolate makers’ troubleshooting guides list moisture on the mold as one of the main reasons shells stick.
3. Polish the cavities if you choose to (see below).
4. Let the mold come to room temperature. Professional guides warn that a large temperature gap between the mold and the chocolate can leave the shell looking gray.

Cleaning advice is less settled than you’d expect. Most of the care rules you’ll read, such as a soft cloth, no dishwasher and nothing abrasive, come from retailers rather than from studies. The same thesis points the other way on washing: in industry, cleaning molds has been found to make release worse, probably because it removes a thin film of fat left on the surface after each batch. That finding comes from production lines, not home kitchens.

Polishing each cavity with cotton wool before you fill it is common pastry practice, and a habit you can take or leave.

Optional: colored cocoa butter

Colored cocoa butter is brushed or sprayed into the cavities before the shell goes in, so the color ends up on the outside of the finished bonbon. Two kinds of coloring are used, and they behave differently in fat.

Some colors dissolve in fat, such as beta-carotene, which US rules allow in food generally under 21 CFR 73.95. Many others are lakes. A lake is made by fixing a water-soluble dye onto alumina as an aluminum or calcium salt, as 21 CFR 82.51 defines it, so it doesn’t dissolve in the cocoa butter. It sits in it as fine particles.

The rules also differ between markets. Titanium dioxide (E 171), a white color additive, is no longer authorized as a food additive in the EU. Regulation (EU) 2022/63 entered into force on February 7, 2022, and foods made under the old rules could still be placed on the market until August 7, 2022, according to the FSAI.

In the US, titanium dioxide is still permitted in food, up to 1 percent of the food’s weight, under 21 CFR 73.575. Reds are changing there too. The FDA revoked the authorization of FD&C Red No. 3 in food on January 15, 2025, and food makers have until January 15, 2027, to reformulate.

So read the label before you buy. Check that the product is sold as food-grade and that its colors are allowed where you live and where your bonbons are going.

Step 2: Temper and make the shells

Temper the shell chocolate, fill the mold with it, then tip most of it back out so a thin layer stays on the walls. For the tempering itself, follow how to temper chocolate at home, take the temperatures from your chocolate’s packaging or data sheet, and run a test strip before you pour.

1. Check the chocolate with a test strip. Don’t fill the mold until it passes.
2. Fill every cavity to the top with tempered chocolate.
3. Tap the mold firmly on the counter to bring air bubbles to the surface.
4. Turn the mold upside down over the bowl and let the excess run back in.
5. Scrape the top of the mold flat with the bench scraper.
6. Rest the mold upside down on baking paper for a few minutes, so the chocolate doesn’t pool in the bottom of each cavity.
7. Once the chocolate has started to set, scrape the top clean again, so each cavity has a clean edge for the cap to sit on later.
8. Let the shells set completely before you fill them.

Aim for thin shells. One thing to watch: chocolate that has thickened in the bowl drains slowly and tends to leave heavier walls. If that happens, warm it gently back to its working temperature, as the tempering guide describes. Chocolate molding compares shell molding with the solid and one-shot methods.

Step 3: Make the ganache filling

Ganache is chocolate and cream turned into an emulsion. Hot ganache is an oil-in-water emulsion, and as it cools it becomes a bicontinuous system, with fat and water phases running through each other, as Saglio and colleagues described in 2018.

The cream’s milk fat doesn’t stay separate either. Melting tests by McGill and Hartel show it mixes with the cocoa butter.

That may look odd after the tempering guide warned you off water. A drop of water makes melted chocolate seize. Cream added in quantity forms an emulsion instead. Stick to your recipe’s proportions so you stay on the right side of that line.

What controls the texture

Water and fat balance accounts for most of it. Saglio and colleagues found that the main things explaining ganache texture were “the quantity of free water in ganache, and the balance between the aqueous phase and the fat phase.”

The chocolate matters as much as the cream. More cocoa solids make a firmer ganache, while more milk powder and sugar, which dissolve in the cream, make it softer, according to the same McGill and Hartel work. So dark, milk and white chocolate won’t set to the same firmness with the same amount of cream.

Ganache has a crystal side too. The Lapčíková review notes that the cocoa butter needs enough stable crystals to act as seeds as the ganache cools, and that without them the ganache “may have a grainy texture.” That’s background, not an extra step: you don’t temper the ganache.

Make the ganache

1. Chop the chocolate finely, or use drops, and put it in a bowl.
2. Heat the cream to the temperature your recipe gives.
3. Pour the cream over the chocolate, wait briefly, then stir until the mixture is smooth and glossy.
4. Let the ganache cool to your recipe’s piping temperature, stirring now and then.
5. Spoon it into a piping bag.

If the ganache splits

A split ganache isn’t an emulsion anymore. The Lapčíková review explains that in a split ganache there are so many fat droplets that they merge before the fat can crystallize. Split ganaches also tend to have more cocoa particles and less sugar, and those particles move into the watery phase and thicken it, which makes the fat even harder to break back up. On that point the review draws on Saglio’s 2018 work.

Kitchen sources blame very dark, high-percentage chocolate, too much heat, and cold cream added to warm ganache. The first fits the research: very dark chocolate brings more cocoa particles and less sugar, and a 2021 study by Merachli and colleagues found that too much cocoa mass can turn a filling grainy.

The usual kitchen fix is to whisk in a little warm liquid, a spoonful at a time, until the ganache comes back together.

Step 4: Fill and let it set

Pipe the cooled ganache into the set shells, stop a little below the rim, then leave the mold somewhere cool until the filling has firmed up.

1. Check that the ganache has cooled to piping temperature. Professional guides set an upper limit for filling temperature for a simple reason: warm filling melts the shell.
2. Pipe the ganache into each cavity, stopping short of the rim. The gap leaves room for the cap.
3. Tap the mold gently on the counter to level the filling.
4. Leave the mold to set.

Don’t underfill to be safe. Professional guides warn that too little filling leaves an air pocket under the cap and shortens shelf life.

Professional instructions give setting temperatures for a controlled cooling cabinet. At home, leave the filled mold somewhere cool until the ganache is firm enough to cap.

Step 5: Cap and release

Seal each bonbon with a thin layer of tempered chocolate, scrape the mold clean, let the caps set, then turn the mold over and tap the bonbons out.

1. Temper a fresh batch of chocolate for the caps and check it with a test strip.
2. Some professional guides warm the top of the mold very briefly with a heat gun at this point. It’s optional.
3. Spread a little tempered chocolate across the top of the mold.
4. Scrape firmly across the mold with the bench scraper, leaving a thin, even cap over each cavity and a clean mold surface between them.
5. Let the caps set completely somewhere cool.
6. Flex the mold slightly, turn it upside down over a clean surface and tap it. The bonbons should drop out.

Release depends on two things. Tempered chocolate contracts slightly as it sets (the reason is in what tempering is and why it matters), and that contraction helps it come out of the mold, while untempered or partly tempered chocolate contracts little or not at all, according to the Keijbets thesis. But the same thesis found that crystallization isn’t the main reason chocolate sticks. In its tests, the mold surface itself controlled how strongly chocolate held on. So if bonbons won’t come out, look at the temper, give them more time somewhere cool, and look at the mold as well.

A clear mold helps here. Patches where the chocolate still looks dark and pressed against the plastic usually haven’t released yet.

When bonbons fail: causes and fixes

A failed bonbon usually points to its step: a thick or bubbled shell goes back to Step 2, a cracked or leaking cap to Steps 4 and 5, and a dull or stuck bonbon to the mold and the temper.

Thick shells

Check two things first, both covered in Step 2: how long the mold drained, and whether the chocolate had thickened in the bowl.

Air bubbles and holes

Tapping the filled mold firmly in Step 2 brings bubbles up before the shell sets. If you see holes, tap harder or longer next time.

Cracked shells or caps

Cracks can appear well after the bonbons looked fine. In tests reported in the Lapčíková review, pralines with wetter model fillings cracked sooner and more often than those with drier ones. The review adds that microbes growing in ganache can crack the product by producing gas. A crack that shows up later is a reason to check the bonbons for spoilage, not just appearance.

Dull bonbons, or bonbons that stick

A dull surface or a bonbon that won’t release points to chocolate that wasn’t fully in temper or hadn’t set long enough, or to a scratched or damp mold. Step 5 explains why the mold counts as much as the temper.

Storing and gifting

Keep ganache bonbons in an airtight container in the fridge and eat them soon.

The figure professionals work from is water activity. The FDA defines it as the ratio of the food’s vapor pressure to that of pure water, so “a water activity of 0.80 means the vapor pressure is 80 percent of that of pure water.”

Knowing the water content isn’t enough to control shelf life, a 2010 review of water in confections by Ergun and colleagues points out. You need water activity as well.

Commercial fillings are generally regarded as stable largely because makers add alcohol or preservatives, according to De Clercq and colleagues (2015). A fresh-cream ganache at home has neither, and nobody measures its water activity.

Even shop-made bonbons aren’t out of reach of spoilage. In a 2014 study of pralines from nine manufacturers by Marvig and colleagues, water activity ran from 0.70 to 0.898, and one yeast found in them could grow at water activities down to 0.70.

You may also run into food-safety thresholds online. The FDA Food Code 2022 treats a food that hasn’t been heat-treated, or hasn’t been packaged after heat treatment, as not needing time and temperature control for safety when its water activity is below 0.88, whatever its pH. The Food Code is written as a model for retail food businesses, and home cooks aren’t its audience. Nor can you tell which side of that line a homemade ganache falls on without measuring its water activity and pH. You’ll also see 0.85 described as a federal standard for home producers. In the FDA’s water activity guide, 0.85 marks the scope of the regulations for canned and acidified foods, which is a different question.

The fridge slows spoilage. The Lapčíková review notes that refrigeration “at 4 ± 1 °C or lower” can preserve the quality of ganache products by slowing the growth of microbes, and recommends an airtight container to keep out oxygen and moisture. The risk comes on the way out: condensation can leave sugar bloom on the shells. Keep the container closed until the bonbons come to room temperature, the same wrap-and-wait approach our chocolate bloom guide describes for bars.

If you’re giving bonbons away, include a list of ingredients and allergens. A cream ganache contains milk, and the chocolate’s label may list soy, nuts or more milk. The EU names 14 allergens that food businesses must declare under Regulation (EU) 1169/2011. The US names nine, which the FDA lists as “milk, eggs, fish, Crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soybeans, and sesame.”

Selling them is another matter. Home food production rules differ by country, and in the US they vary from state to state, as the National Agricultural Law Center tracks. The Utah Department of Agriculture and Food, for one, says its home-produced candies “do not include cream-based chocolates such as ganache and truffles.” If you plan to sell, ask your local food authority first. Nothing here is legal advice.

Sources and open questions

Shelf life in days for fresh-cream ganache made at home: we found no food-safety authority or university source that gives a number.

Shell thickness: no measured standard, and no study linking thickness to cracking or leaking.

Fixed chocolate-to-cream ratios quoted for each chocolate type: none traced to a study that tests them.

Where added water stops seizing chocolate and starts forming an emulsion: not pinned down in the sources.

Polishing mold cavities with cotton wool: common pastry practice, with no test of it found.

Setting ganache in a home fridge or on a kitchen counter: the setting guidance found is written for professional cooling cabinets.

Whisking warm liquid into a split ganache: the fix appears in cooking blogs, and food-science papers don’t test it.