Faster way of cleaning molds

[Dark side]

Having a huge pile up of molds needing to be scraped is one of the dreaded things in this kitchen. Has anyone come up with a more efficient or quick method to removing hardened chocolate from polycarbonate molds (or even the cheapies)?

[Jim D.]

There is no easy way to accomplish this nasty task.  I use a warming tray, turn it up high, put a Silpat on it (to help keep slipping from being so bad), then place shop towels on top and rub the molds to melt off the chocolate.  It takes a lot of towels, but it works.  It also prevents the chocolate from doing down the drain.  If your kitchen has a grease trap, you could just wash the molds and let the chocolate go down the drain.

[curls]

6 hours ago, Dark side said:

Having a huge pile up of molds needing to be scraped is one of the dreaded things in this kitchen. Has anyone come up with a more efficient or quick method to removing hardened chocolate from polycarbonate molds (or even the cheapies)?

 

Just chocolate or lots of colored cocoa butter? I don't spray colored cocoa butter so I save all the chocolate shavings from cleaning my polycarbonate moulds and put them in a container to be used for our personal hot chocolates. Too many possible cross contaminates in my chocolate (mostly peanut butter, nuts, gluten) for me to offer these chocolate shavings for sale. I keep track of it while making the chocolates but sometimes it is a bit before I set aside a day to get out the dirty moulds, parchment paper, gloves, and scraper.  It actually doesn't take that long -- tempered chocolate is very willing to separate from the moulds. Since the chocolate shavings are for personal use I have no qualms mixing dark chocolate, milk chocolate, hazelnut chocolate, etc..

[pastrygirl]

What's your current method?

 

I bang my molds on the table a few times, it's not perfect, chocolate shards fly everywhere, and maybe that's why there are so many little scratches on my marble 😆

 

Then I line them all up on edge in the sink and spray the rest off with hot water.  I do have a grease trap but still try to minimize the fat that goes down the sink, because guess whose job it is to clean it out later? 🤢

 

Edited April 19, 2022 by pastrygirl (log)

[Dark side]

On 4/19/2022 at 10:51 AM, pastrygirl said:

What's your current method?

 

I bang my molds on the table a few times, it's not perfect, chocolate shards fly everywhere, and maybe that's why there are so many little scratches on my marble 😆

 

Then I line them all up on edge in the sink and spray the rest off with hot water.  I do have a grease trap but still try to minimize the fat that goes down the sink, because guess whose job it is to clean it out later? 🤢

 

Haha yeah I don’t have a grease trap, but have an annual plumber visit… 

currently we use scrapers and just scrape all the built up stuff off, and only hot wash if the molds got scuffy or if there have been allergens used in them. It just takes sooooo long to scrape it all off I was hoping someone had an idea I hadn’t thought of yet.

[pastrygirl]

Was just cleaning some molds & thought of this - for the outside edges you can stack 2-4 molds together (whatever is comfortable to hold onto) and scrape more edges per movement.  That might help a little 🤷🏻‍♀️