Valentine's Chocolate (Attempt 1)

In Japan there are two types of chocolate women give men on Valentine's Day: honmei choco for the one they love, and giri chocolate (obligation!) for everyone else.

Honmei chocolate should be high-quality, or even better - home made!  Sak loves chocolate, so I thought maybe instead of buying him candy this year I would make some!

Unfortunately there were surprisingly few sites I could find in English that dealt with making chocolate candy.  Rather than "melt a bar down and stick it in a mold" or "grind your own beans" - I was looking for something that involved taking baking chocolate and turning it into a chocolate bar?  A chocolatier I am not.

Anyway, with Penga-Sis over for the weekend, we decided to just wing it and see what happened.

First, we melted down some Ghiradelli 60% chocolate chips. If all else failed, Sak would easily eat these straight out of the bag.  To melt, we put a ceramic bowl atop a boiling pot of water as a make-shift double boiler.

Then we added a little sweetened condensed milk to taste.  About a teaspoon only since Sak doesn't like his chocolate too sweet.

Then we poured it into a heart mold I got from Daiso.

Since there was still a bit left over, we also poured some into cookie cutters (parchment paper underneath).

And into an ice cube tray (we added peanut butter too).

Then we let it cool at room temperature for a few hours.

Unfortunately, I had forgotten one important thing.  How do we get the chocolate out of the mold?

It was seriously stuck in there. Never coming out. Ugh.

Thus attempt #1 was a fail, and the only chocolates that even sort-of came out were the cookie cutter pieces.

But even they are kind of lumpy looking!

So do I add some sort of grease to the molds? That sounds kind of greasy... Or do I buy a silicone or plastic mold that can bend?

Have you "made" chocolate before? Do you have any tips?