Chocolate Curls vs Shavings: The Difference and How to Make Each

Short answer: chocolate curls are rolled from a thin layer of tempered chocolate: spread it about 2 mm (1/16 in) thick on marble, let it set, then push a knife or metal scraper away from you at a 45° angle so the chocolate rolls up. Chocolate shavings are scraped or peeled straight off a solid bar at room temperature, with a vegetable peeler or a metal scraper. The chocolate's temperature decides the shape: as pastry author Flo Braker puts it, a cool surface gives large shavings, while a slightly warm one curls into long, thin cigarettes.

Your need	What we recommend	Price
Push curls and scrape shavings	Martellato professional chocolate scraper, stainless blade 145 mm	$36.95
Dark couverture for curls and bars to shave	Bassan Sur del Lago 71% dark couverture, 5 kg	$273.00
Check the tempering temperature	Martellato digital thermometer for chocolate 50T001	$29.95
Keep tempered chocolate ready for a day of decorations	Martellato Meltinchoc Digital melter 3.6 L	$1,150.00

Chocolate curls vs shavings: the difference

Curls start from a thin layer of chocolate that you spread and let set; shavings start from a solid bar. Everything else follows from that.

	Chocolate curls (cigarettes, copeaux)	Chocolate shavings
Starting point	Tempered chocolate spread about 2 mm (1/16 in) thick on marble, granite or smooth hardwood	A solid bar or block
Tool	Long knife, palette knife or metal scraper, pushed away from you at 45°	Vegetable peeler, or a metal pastry scraper pulled toward you
State of the chocolate	Set but not hard; Bo Friberg gives a room at about 20°C (68°F) as ideal	Room temperature; a cool surface gives large shavings, a slightly warm one long thin cigarettes
Shape you get	Rolled cylinders, as long as the strip is wide	Flakes and shavings of varying size

Want more decoration ideas for a whole cake? See our guide on how to make chocolate garnish for cake.

How to make chocolate curls

To make chocolate curls, spread a thin strip of tempered chocolate, let it set, and push a blade through it at 45° so each slice rolls up. This is the method Bo Friberg teaches in The Professional Pastry Chef:

1. Pour a strip of tempered chocolate onto marble or a perfectly smooth hardwood surface and spread it about 2 mm (1/16 in) thick, or as thin as you can while still covering the surface. Make the strip a little wider than the length you want for the curls.
2. As soon as the chocolate has set, trim both long edges with a knife so the strip is exactly as wide as the finished curls.
3. Hold a long knife or palette knife at a 45° angle to the surface and push it away from you, cutting off about 2.5 cm (1 in) of the strip at a time so it curls.

William Curley (Couture Chocolate) makes the same copeaux with a metal scraper: he spreads a thin layer of tempered chocolate on marble or granite with a stepped palette knife, lets it almost set, pushes the scraper at an angle to form thin cigar shapes, then leaves them a few minutes on the surface before lifting them off with the scraper.

Friberg's notes on temperature:

• A room at about 20°C (68°F) is ideal; the further the room is from that, in either direction, the harder the chocolate is to work.
• Too soft: the chocolate smears and sticks to the knife instead of curling. Wait a few seconds for it to set further; if the room or the surface is too warm, place a chilled sheet pan on top for a moment.
• Too hard: the chocolate breaks when you try to curl it. Soften it with a hair dryer, being careful with tempered chocolate, or, if it is spread thin, rub your hand over the top as you work down the strip.

A straight, rigid blade makes the work easier; Friberg prefers a long slicing knife to a chef's knife because its width is uniform. Our Martellato chocolate scraper has a short, rigid stainless-steel blade (145 × 80 mm) and a handle that encloses it completely.

View the Martellato professional chocolate scraper → $36.95 CAD

How to shave chocolate for garnish

To shave chocolate, work on a solid bar at room temperature and draw a peeler or a metal scraper down its side; the bar's surface temperature decides whether you get flakes or thin rolls.

With a vegetable peeler

Ricardo Cuisine's method: hold the bar in one hand, press the peeler deep into the chocolate with the other, and slide it down the side of the bar. Keep the bar at room temperature.

With a metal scraper

Flo Braker (The Simple Art of Perfect Baking) sets the bar in front of her, perpendicular to the edge of the counter, with one end braced against her body. Grip a metal pastry scraper firmly in both hands, tilt the blade toward you almost parallel to the bar, and scrape down the bar, pulling toward yourself.

• Cool surface: large shavings.
• Slightly warm surface: the chocolate curls into long, thin cigarettes.

Make your own bar to shave

To shave, you need a block. Bassan's 71% couverture, for example, comes as pistoles (15 mm and 28 mm) and baker's sticks, not as a thick bar. Temper it and mould a bar in a tablet mould, and you have a block made from the chocolate you actually serve.

View chocolate bar and tablet moulds →

Curls and shavings: quick fixes

Problem	Cause	Fix
Chocolate smears and sticks to the blade	Too soft	Wait a few seconds; cool the surface with a chilled sheet pan (Friberg)
Chocolate breaks instead of curling	Too hard	Warm briefly with a hair dryer, carefully if tempered, or with your hand on a thin layer (Friberg)
You get flakes but wanted rolls	Bar surface too cool	Let the surface warm slightly; it then curls into thin cigarettes (Braker)
You get rolls but wanted shavings	Bar surface slightly warm	Work on a cooler surface for large shavings (Braker)

Which chocolate to use

For curls, use real chocolate that you temper, or a coating chocolate. Curley insists that the chocolate must be tempered for all decorations; Friberg also accepts melted coating chocolate for curls. The difference matters: couverture is high-quality chocolate with extra cocoa butter, and its sheen and firm snap come from that cocoa butter combined with proper tempering, while compound coating replaces the cocoa butter with another hard fat and needs no tempering (BCcampus).

• Bassan Sur del Lago 71%: dark couverture made in Canada from Venezuelan Trinitario cacao with ancestral Criollo lineage. Bassan's data: melt at 50°C (122°F) maximum, temper to 30–32°C (86–90°F), let it crystallise at 16–18°C (61–64°F).
• FCH 55% Venezuela: dark chocolate from fermented Venezuelan Trinitario cacao, 10 kg box. Its curve: melt 45–50°C (113–122°F), crystallisation 28–29°C (82–84°F), tempering 31–32°C (88–90°F).

• View Bassan Sur del Lago 71%, 5 kg → $273.00 CAD
• View FCH 55% Venezuela, 10 kg → $299.00 CAD

New to tempering? Start with how to temper chocolate.

How to store chocolate curls and shavings

Store them like any pure chocolate product: cool, dry and sealed. BCcampus gives 18–20°C (64–68°F) at 60% relative humidity as the ideal for chocolate, protected from odours and humidity, in sealed containers; the refrigerator is not the ideal place. Bassan recommends 16–20°C (61–68°F) below 50% relative humidity for its couverture and warns that temperature swings cause bloom.

White or grey marks on stored decorations? Learn to tell chocolate bloom from mould.

Other chocolate decorations from the same tempered chocolate

If you need many identical pieces, combs give you shapes in one movement. Martellato's stainless-steel decorating combs, designed by pastry chef Frank Haasnoot, make 8 decorations at a time: leaves 60 mm high with the Leaf Comb, feathers 80 mm high with the large Feather Comb.

• View the Martellato Leaf Comb → $105.50 CAD
• View the Martellato Feather Comb, large → $113.99 CAD

View all decorating combs and scrapers →

How AI can help your production

Ask an AI assistant to turn your decoration plan into a prep list: how many curls or how much shaved chocolate each cake or plated dessert needs, how much couverture to temper for the day, and in which order to make the pieces. Give it your room and chocolate temperatures each morning and ask it to keep a simple log next to the results, so you can see which conditions give your best curls. Use it to write a one-page procedure for new staff from the steps above.

AI organises the information; tasting and the final decision stay with your chef.

Chocolate decoration tools and couverture at Zucchero Canada

We are an authorized distributor of Martellato and carry Bassan couverture, which ships across Canada from Calgary. Each product has its own job in decoration work:

• Curls and shavings: the Martellato professional chocolate scraper, with a rigid 145 mm stainless-steel blade.
• Tempering and holding: the Martellato digital thermometer, and the Meltinchoc Digital melter, which holds dark chocolate at 31°C (88°F) after seeding with its preset program.
• Repeat shapes: Martellato decorating combs by Frank Haasnoot.
• The chocolate itself: Bassan Sur del Lago 71% and FCH 55%, both from Venezuelan cacao.

View the Meltinchoc Digital 3.6 L → $1,150.00 CAD

Supplying a pastry shop, hotel or caterer? Contact our team for volume pricing on couverture and tools, or call 587-774-8873 (toll free 877-741-8251).

Chocolate scrapers & combs | Chocolate decorations | Dark couverture | Chocolate garnish for cake | Best chocolate for melting

This article is for information only. Every business is different: draw your own conclusions based on your own expectations, budget and goals, and talk to qualified experts before you decide or invest.

Sources: B. Friberg, The Professional Pastry Chef, "Chocolate Curls (Cigarettes)" and "Chocolate Curls Using Tempered or Coating Chocolate"; W. Curley, Couture Chocolate (2011), chocolate shavings (copeaux); F. Braker, The Simple Art of Perfect Baking (1984), "Large Chocolate Shavings or Long Cigarettes"; Ricardo Cuisine, "4 ways the vegetable peeler can bring elegance to a recipe"; BC Cook Articulation Committee, Understanding Ingredients for the Canadian Baker (BCcampus), §7.3, §7.4 and §7.8; Martellato Digital Meltinchoc handbook; Bassan Chocolate and FCH product data; Martellato product data.