UK alternative to American 'candy melts' in cake baking?

[Pusheen]

I keep seeing recipes with candy melts but they seem to be around £5 a pack!

Is it just chocolate?

Can I use white chocolate with food colouring?

White chocolate is probably your best bet - the value stuff might be closest

I want to do Halloween cake pips but no way I'm spending £20 for green, orange, black and white!

I’ve used white chocolate and food colouring before and it worked fine. Gel colourings gave the bright colours I needed.

Umm I think it has something in it that means it hardens quicker after melting, but it taste foul !

White chocolate and food colouring works well. You can get suitable colours in a variety of forms - paint, powder, gels and cocoa butter. With some of the cocoa butters, you can paint or spray it on afterwards.

Not all colourings will work with chocolate - if you look online at the various cake supply websites, they usually tell you if it is suitable for chocolate or not.

White chocolate also (usually) tastes better than candy melts.

Hobbycraft has it at 3.25 a pack 3 for 2.

And colours for colouring white chocolate.

They taste horrendous. I would go down the white chocolate with food colouring route.

Ah. I have wilton colour gels! So I'll just use those with white chocolate. Thanks!

I often wonder about american “baking” and the use of crap like this.

I was once sent a “2 ingredient cookie recipe” because the sender knew I baked quite a bit.

Two ingredients- a box of cookie mix and peanut butter.

Once it’s pointed out you notice most US recipes contain “cheat” stuff like packet or shop bought ingredients.

Candy melts are in the same synthetic category and taste nasty.

I used them and not only were they expensive but they tasted odd! I’ve not done it myself but read white chocolate with some added oil makes it easier to use

really I have a US cookbook from the 1970s - my "favourite" recipe is "easy 5 bean soup". Ingredients - one stock cube, water, one tin of 5 bean salad. Mix, heat and serve....

And the amount of modern baking recipes that start with a box of yellow cake mix... (yes, it's actually called that...)

Though in fairness I have a lot of US friends who bake amazing cakes that wouldn't look out of place on GBBO

Don't use 'normal' white chocolate, it's a pain to temper and can react badly with gel colouring, go lumpy etc. Use the white Tesco Cooking Chocolate from the baking isle, ie fake chocolate. Still tastes way nicer than candy melts and way cheaper.

The hobbycraft link that Invisible posted has a little video about candy melts and the selling point seems to be that it is chocolate that can be just melted straight off without tempering.

Sounds a bit like grated cheese to me. Paying for something that is better done yourself!

So if you slowly melt chocolate in the same way and add colour should be same kind of thing.