Making small chocolate balls

Hi All!  I need to make a LOT of small chocolate balls. Say 10mm diam. I had been panning callets but a project I'm working on only has bulk chocolate in blocks.  I only want chocolate in the centers.  I've spent hours seeking moulds on web sites world wide but can't find anything.  Even if I can only make half spheres that would get me started.  There are spheres and half spheres 20mm and up but I really want them smaller.  Any thoughts please?  Thanks!

Couldn't you cut the blocks into the rough sizes you want and then, with gloves, roll it into balls like truffles? Keeping your hands hot might just round the corners to give you a sphere shape? Failing that, do they have to be balls? Can't they be cubes? 

Thanks for the thought @garfoid It MIGHT be a solution.  It would be slow and I need to do runs of around 16Kg at a tine.  I think that each ball will be about .7gm so I think that is around 2,300 balls per batch. Also I will be further processing these with panning and flat edges tend to "double" although if I could cut them into cubes I might work through that.  Appreciate the thought.  Will think about a guitar - had not considered that route.

The only method I can think of is a tumbler style. Putting all the chocolate cubes into a mixer and letting it tumble like a cement mixer. They may stick together so starch could be used, but i'd imagine they'd get round pretty fast and this wouldn't take too long. 

Best of luck! Let us know how it works out? 

Thanks for the thought @garfoid  That's "panning" and where I'm trying to head towards once I have the balls worked out  Let me ponder.  Thanks again.  Colin

If I understand correctly you want to have a solid chocolate  centre for panned product?

Are you going to use the same chocolate for both?

We have tested starting a panned product from a very small chocolate drop (like a small piece used for chocolate chip cookies), if you start building the chocolate up around this "seed" very slowly you will get a round ball and avoid doubles.

Once you have your centre you can do with it whatever you want next: sugar coat, pan with the same or different chocolate etc.

Hi @peter3.  Yes - that is exactly what I wish to do.  I already have a range of "Chocolate Nibbles" and these are created by starting with "callets" of chocolate which are small half-spheres that come from my chocolate supplier.  I pop these into my pan and add a tiny bit of melted chocolate.  The callets then "double" on the flat side and then I can build from there.  They are popular and easy to make.  I do about 60Kg at a batch.  However I want to do something with a completely different chocolate that sadly ONLY comes in 5Kg blocks - not callets. So I'm basically trying to make either callets or balls from the 5Kg blocks to get me started.  On close examination now it is clear to me that the callets are made by depositing but depositors are big and very expensive.  So I wondered about making balls with moulds (molds) but no-one that I can find has small ones.  They all seem to be 20-25mm diam.  Far too large for me.  The "completely different chocolate" is sugar free - so I can't use the callets I use now as they have sugar in them.  I'm a bit stumped.

My one final, final idea is to buy some cheap food grade silicone to make your own mould and pour it over a few dozen marbles/ball bearings of the right size or 3D printed spheres or something like that, glued down. spaced closely and not poured too deep you should be able to get a lot of moulds from around a 2kg silicone mix. 

There are a 2 methods you could use.

Put them half in clay, pour silicone over, remove clay, pour silicone over second half and then fill both halves and then fuse them together once set with some extra chocolate. 

Or just glue to a base and squeeze out them through the small gap/make the gap bigger with a scalpel. 

I won't come up with any more ideas! 

Try Chicago Mold School they have silicone sphere molds all sizes

Thanks Sue!  This looks exactly what I need!  And they have a lovely range of other products too that look really exciting!

Thanks a million!

Colin