These DIY Chocolate Candy Googly Eyes are super easy to make and are a great alternative to the store-bought candy googly eye sprinkles for all your festive desserts. They are made with dairy-free white and dark chocolate chips and are easy to customize to any size googly eyes you’d like!

As we head into the holiday season, I thought it would be fun to add a recipe for homemade, do-it-yourself googly eyes made from white chocolate and dark chocolate! These googly eyes are so fun to add to your cute desserts and treats, and are very simple to make using minimal ingredients and tools! 👀

Why I Prefer Making My Own

Buying googly eyes at the store is super convenient, but making your own at home is actually very simple and I find them to be superior to store-bought candy eyes.

They’re chocolate instead of hard candy. In my opinion, adding hard candy googly eyes is cute but not very palatable. I find in certain desserts, the texture of the candy eyes isn’t complimentary to the dessert. For example, I’d rather have chocolate eye sprinkles on my soft and fudgy Halloween Brownies rather than just a random candy crunch. These chocolate candy eyes are a lot softer, and a touch of chocolate in any dessert never hurts 😉 .

By making your own at home, you are able to determine what ingredients go into these candy eyes, leaving out weird ingredients and food dyes that are often found in candy eye sprinkles (yes, there’s dye even though they’re just black and white!)

You can make any size eyes you want! When you make your own homemade candy eyes, it’s so easy to make whatever size you’d like that will look best on the dessert your making!

Ingredients

Dairy-free white chocolate. There are a few different brands that make dairy-free white chocolate, but my favorite is Enjoy Life Foods Mini White Chocolate Chips.

Mini dairy-free chocolate chips. Enjoy Life Foods also makes mini dairy-free cocoa chocolate chips! The size of the mini chocolate chips is perfect for the pupils of the candy eyes.

Dark chocolate chips. If you choose to make some bigger eyes, using regular-sized dark chocolate chips (dairy-free!) will work better than the minis.

Coconut oil. You will need 1 teaspoon of coconut oil to melt with the white chocolate. This ensures the white chocolate is smooth and creamy, and allows the chocolate to squeeze out of the bottle easier.

Instructions

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Melt the white chocolate chips using the double broiler method, whisking the chocolate until it’s smooth. Pour the melted white chocolate into a squeeze bottle.

Squeeze the melted chocolate onto the parchment paper, creating the desired size circles you’d like for the eyes.

After you make all of the eyes from the white chocolate, place the cocoa chocolate chips upside down into the center of the melted white chocolate (the pointed tip of the chocolate chip should be placed into the melted white chocolate first).

Allow the chocolate to harden at room temperature or to speed it up, you can place the baking sheet into the refrigerator or freezer.

Carefully pop off each candy eye and place them into an air tight container, preferably in a single layer, or separated by parchment paper to keep them looking nice. Use them on all your favorite festive desserts and holiday treats!

You can keep them stored in an airtight container in your pantry or in the refrigerator/freezer.

Tools

Squeeze bottle. I used a mini squeeze bottle to create the eyes and it was extremely helpful. I suppose you could also use a piping bag with a fine tip, but using the squeeze bottle was foolproof!

Funnel. Using a funnel to pour the melted white chocolate into the squeeze bottle is helpful.

Tweezers. Tweezers are helpful for placing the mini chocolate chips in the center of the eyes as the pupils. Culinary tweezers would be ideal to use, but any tweezers would be helpful.

Double broiler. Having a double broiler pan set is helpful for this recipe, but isn’t mandatory. I actually just used a small saucepan and glass bowl to melt the white chocolate chips.

Tips

Using the double broiler method to melt the white chocolate chips worked much better for this recipe rather than melting the white chocolate chips in the microwave. I am assuming because the white chocolate chips are dairy-free, when melted in the microwave, the melted chocolate tends to be lumpy and not as smooth and creamy and you want it to be. In my experience, it’s much better to melt the white chocolate chips in a small bowl over a pot of steaming/boiling water or use a double broiler pot.

Pipe the white circles first, then add the pupils. You don’t want the white chocolate to harden in the squeeze bottle before you have a chance to pipe the eyes, so I do all of those first and then go back to add the pupils.

If the white chocolate is too hard to squeeze out of the bottle you can re-melt the white chocolate in the squeeze bottle under some hot water or in the double broiler water.

Make sure you make the eyes thick enough so that the pupils push down into the whites of the eyes enough. Chocolate chips have those little pointy tips on them, so you want to make sure those can push far enough down into the white chocolate so they don’t fall off, and they look more like eyes that way.

Work relatively quickly to be able to place the pupils in the melted white chocolate before it sets up. You don’t necessarily need to rush, but work at a good pace or the white chocolate will set up before you have a chance to add the mini chocolate chip pupils.

If you want to make very small eyes, that is possible, however you may need to melt the dark chocolate chips too, and then dot the melted dark chocolate onto the white chocolate with a toothpick.

Wait until the dessert is completely cool if using these googly eyes on a dessert item that is baked, like brownies for instance. Otherwise, because they are chocolate, they will melt! You can always fasten them on the dessert with a bit of melted chocolate if need be.

How To Use Googly Eyes

You can use these Chocolate Candy Googly Eyes in any recipe where you’d normally add candy eyes. They make great spooky eyes for Halloween, or cute eyes in animal-themed treats for Easter or Christmas!

Recipes Using Googly Eyes!

Let me know what you think about this easy DIY recipe down below in the comments section as well as giving it a five rating ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ so that others can discover these easy, dairy-free Chocolate Candy Googly Eyes! I’d love to see how you’re using them, so be sure to tag me on Instagram, Facebook, or Pinterest if you make them!