Edible dentures: chocolate is the new golden stone

I know we all love using peach die stone for our casts, but as of today chocolate is definitely my new favorite flavor of stone. I’ve pulled out all my nerdy stops for this one – even down to taking an alginate impression on myself in the backup lab during lunch. Ever since I published my post on Tooth Cupcakes, I’ve continued to get an outpouring of love from readers in the dental field. It seems that the people who’ve made it their career to fight off caries also have a serious obsession with feeding S. mutans in the form of baked goods. I’ve embraced this fact and created another sugary treat that should definitely appeal to your sweet tooth, and also put those hard-earned lab skills to good use!

Although I kept things simple and tried to avoid jargon on the tutorial I gave on my main blog, I’m giving you the full play-by-play here so you as dentists-in-training can make your very own chocolate mold specific to your teeth.  Give this a try with your friends and see who can make the best set of chocolate chompers – it sure beats setting denture teeth!

How to make your own set of chocolate teeth:

• Have a friend take an alginate impression of your mouth, or just do it yourself.
• Pour up the impression in stone (I used blue mounting stone because I was in a rush, but I recommend using golden stone since my maxillary incisal edges ended up crumbling off).
• Create a suckdown/Vacuform of your cast and cut it slightly apical to the papillae.
• You’ll need to get some white and pink candy melts (unfortunately you’ll have to forgo you’re B1 shade preference here and settle for “vanilla”).  I buy mine at a craft store, but they’re also available online.
• Melt the white candy melts in 30 second intervals in the microwave until completely smooth, mixing well between each round.
• Transfer the melted white candy to a piping bag (or ziploc bag) and snip off a small piece of one corner of the bag.  Squeeze enough candy into each tooth to fill them up to the gingival line.  You can use a toothpick to enhance the gingival margins or to remove excess.
• Let the white chocolate set for at least 10 minutes.  Then melt the pink candy melts and fill up the rest of the molds.
• Also with the melted pink candy melts create 2 patties on a piece of wax paper.  Invert the molds onto the patties and let them sit until the chocolate is completely set – about 20 minutes to be safe.
• Gently separate the suckdown from the chocolate.  Touch up any voids with extra melted chocolate and use a sharp knife to trim the bases.
• Show off your pours and then eat them!

Erica Knee, Connecticut ’13, author of www.EricaSweetTooth.com