How much chocolate do I need?
Quantity planning for truffles, coating and moulding — including the coating losses nobody accounts for and everybody discovers.
If you read nothing else
Weigh one finished piece and multiply — then add a working volume for dipping, which is several times what ends up on the product. That last part is what catches people out.
Work from the piece, not the batch
The reliable method is to make or weigh one finished piece and multiply. A hand-rolled truffle centre is commonly in the region of ten to fifteen grams; a moulded bonbon shell plus filling is usually more.
That gives you the chocolate that ends up in the product. It is not the chocolate you need to buy, which is the mistake almost everyone makes the first time.
Coating losses are the part people miss
Dipping and enrobing require a working volume far larger than the amount that ends up on the pieces, because you need enough depth to submerge and enough mass to hold temperature. A small batch of truffles can easily require several times the coating chocolate that finishes on them.
The excess is not wasted — it is scraped back, re-tempered and reused — but it must be available at the time. Planning a dipping session with only the chocolate that will end up on the product is the single most common quantity error.
Moulding is more efficient, because a shell is cast and the excess poured straight back. Budget a modest overage rather than a multiple.
Ganache ratios and scaling
A ganache is defined by its ratio rather than by a recipe, which is what makes it scalable: two parts dark chocolate to one part cream is a firm piping and rolling consistency, one to one is softer and suits a moulded centre.
So the chain is: decide how many pieces, weigh one centre, multiply, then work backwards through the ratio to the chocolate and cream. The scaling calculator does that arithmetic, and the ganache calculator does the ratio.
Covered in this guide
- Chocolate scaling calculatorThe arithmetic for scaling a batch up or down.
- Ganache ratio calculatorThe ratio calculation for centres.
- Scaling a chocolate recipeWhat does and does not scale linearly in chocolate work.
- Enrobing by handWhere the working-volume requirement comes from.
Sources
- ChocolateHQ editorial synthesis — ChocolateHQ(citation identity confirmed; passage not re-read)