The liquid chocolate is first tempered. Tempering ensures the formation of the right type of cocoa butter crystals so that the chocolate will harden into shiny, hard, stable shapes. Only after tempering can chocolate be poured into molds.
During cooling, chocolate becomes hard so that it comes out of the molds perfectly shaped and ready for packing. The chocolate for the coins has the form of circular disks, 'blanks', without any image.
The (cold) chocolate disks are brought into the coin wrapping machines which will wrap the coins with aluminum foil and, at the same time, press the image into the coin, on both faces. This is obtained by means of a machine tool which we call the engraved punch tool which has the mirror-image of the chocolate coin image.
It is not necessary, as many may think, to heat the chocolate to get the image into it, because the pressure allows the chocolate to shape into the image instantly. Although this may seem an easy process, it requires quite some knowhow to produce a quality image into chocolate coins
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