7 Best Candy Melts Ranked
Candy melts are sugar and oil candies used to coat various kinds of treats, such as pops, truffles, pretzels, and many more. The sugar gives the treat a nice sweet-tasting topcoat, while the oil helps the sugar spread and cover the treat. Among all brands available, it is hard to know which candy melts are the best.
This is because candy melts can be all white or very colorful, and depending on the effect you want to achieve, there are flavored candy melts. Still, the flavored candy melts aren’t made of other ingredients than the classic ones; they just contain flavor extracts. For example, the chocolate candy melts contain chocolate flavoring, not actual chocolate.
As a big fan of candy melts and the magic they do, in the following text, I will rank the best candy melts I’ve tried.
List of the Best Candy Melts
Candy Melts Brand | Pros | Cons |
---|---|---|
Wilton Dark Cocoa Candy Melts | Great taste and easy to work with. | Can melt in the bag and cause difficulty while melting. |
Wilton Strawberry Candy Melts | Taste like strawberry candy. Great color. | Can be a struggle to melt them properly. |
Merckens Coating Melting Wafers | Great taste and texture. Real chocolate taste. Good for topping and chocolate molds. | Could get thick while melting. |
Ghirardelli Melting Wafers, Dark Chocolate | Great for different types of treats, easy to melt and work with. | You can’t add color because the melt is too dark. Better as dipping chocolate than as a topping. |
Wilton Orange Candy Melts | Great to work with and very decorative. | Expressive vanilla flavor, which will dominate the treat. |
Wilton Blue Candy Melt | Light blue color is easy to combine with other colors. Melts nicely without a mess. | The color is lighter than described. |
Wilton Craft Supplies-Multicolored | Great color and taste. | The red candies may be harder to melt and sticky. Order with caution. |
Wilton Dark Cocoa Candy Melts
Wilton Dark Cocoa Candy Melts are great dark cocoa-flavored candy melts and my personal favorites. These are perfect for chocolate treats and whatever treats you like. You can use them to top your cookies, pop cakes, pancakes, waffles, etc.
They provide an excellent value for their price and come as a six-pack set. Being that they have a long shelf life, one order of these can supply with candy melts for a long time. The downside is that they can melt in the bag, but the good news is they contain instructions on what to do if this happens.
Generally speaking, Wilton has a wide variety of candy melts with various flavors and colors. But, when someone asks me which candy melts are the tastiest, I always say Wilton Dark Cocoa Candy Melts and Wilton Strawberry Candy Melts.
Wilton Strawberry Candy Melts
Wilton Strawberry Candy Melts will make your treats taste like strawberries mixed with candy and joy. They are what they seem to be, fruity, sweet, and aesthetically appealing. Great to have fun while baking around the spring holidays.
Still, these candy melts have a downside. Because of the added color and flavoring, the melting could become messy, and you may not be able to melt them properly. However, you can resolve this by melting them slowly and not too many at a time.
Merckens Coating Melting Wafers
Merckens Coating Melting Wafers are white chocolate candy melts you can use to coat your treats and make mold chocolate. They are very easy to melt and aren’t messy at all. They are white, meaning you can add color to them and go wild with your creativity.
However, they can get too thick if you melt them too fast, so melt them slowly. They have been known to melt just right in the microwave.
Ghirardelli Melting Wafers, Dark Chocolate
Great as a dipping chocolate, Ghirardelli Candy Melts are definitely worth trying. It is chocolate flavored, which means it will do an excellent job for chocolate-covered strawberries or another chocolate-tasting delicacy. It melts great, isn’t messy at all, and is very easy to use. The downside is that you can’t add color to it.
Wilton Orange Candy Melts
The name may be misleading, as Wilton Orange Candy Melts are not orange-flavored candy melts but vanilla. The bright orange color is purely decorative, and it does a great job if you want to brighten up your treats. These melts have expressive vanilla flavor, which is great, but it does take over.
So if you aren’t a big fan of vanilla, you should go another way.
Wilton Blue Candy Melt
Wilton Blue Candy Melts are very easy to work with, make no mess while melting, and have a beautiful blue color. The upside is that the blue isn’t that strong, so you can add color to make your treats more cheerful. So, if you are expecting an intense blue color, you will be disappointed, as it is milder than described on the package.
Wilton Craft Supplies-Multicolored
Although last on the list, Multi-colored Candy Melts are definitely worth trying. Voted as an Amazon bestseller, they melt very easily, and the coloring is genuine as described. This melt will definitely be a good choice for a colorful dessert story.
However, you could be wrong ordering these, as they may have been sitting in the warehouse for a long time. Also, the red candies have been known to be harder than the rest of them. Still, talking from experience, I would recommend them.
The upside is that these candy melts are pretty cheap, and the downsides are fixable.
Note that Wilton candy melts aren’t tempered. While chocolate needs tempering so that it doesn’t harden before time, candy melts don’t need to be tempered. Given that they are made of sugar and oil, they have an entirely different structure than chocolate.
The purpose of candy melts is to be melted, and the primary purpose of chocolate is to be eaten as is. Therefore the candy melts require fewer procedures to melt successfully.
Which Candy Melts Are Best for Melting?
Generally speaking, the smaller the chips, the easier they will melt. Another thing making the chips easier to melt is the fat content. The fattier they are, the easier it is to melt them.
Which Candy Melts Are Best for Pops?
The best candy melts for pops are Wilton’s candy melts. They come in different colors and with different flavorings. There are, of course, other brands on the market, but Wilton candy melts are best known for this.
Is It Better to Use Candy Melts or Chocolate for Cake Pops?
Candy melts seal the moisture of the cake pops, giving you a nice and soft pop. Therefore candy melts are better to use for cake pops.
Still, if anything can substitute for candy melts, it’s chocolate. However, chocolate contains less oil compared to candy melts.
So if you decide to substitute candy melts for chocolate, make sure you add oil.
Which Candy Melts Are Best for Strawberries?
For strawberries, you need dipping chocolate. So any candy chocolate-flavored candy melt will do the trick, as long as it melts without getting sticky. Here, we mentioned Ghirardelli Melting Wafers as a good example for dipping chocolate, so it would definitely be a good choice.