Wednesday, February 06, 2008

Chocolate Galore

It's been a chocolate night. To start things off, I made almond rochers, which seemed to be one of the favorites from Christmas. I think I have over five dozen of those. I made some caramels yesterday and so I decided to dip them in milk chocolate tonight. You definitely learn by doing and with these I used some textured transfer sheets to impart a texture to the top. It worked OK, but I'll know for next time that I need to push the top of the chocolate down into the transfer sheet. They're sort of unevenly distributed. They look somewhat amateurish, but that's OK. I'm just starting out with this, and I had to do the tempering by hand--very tedious work.

I also made a raspberry port marzipan yesterday, which I think is very tasty. That's ready for me to cut out and dip tomorrow in dark chocolate.. Making marzipan takes its toll on machinery. I thought I might have burned out the motor in my food processor because marzipan is such a sticky, gooey mess. It stopped my food processor dead in its tracks three times. You have to process marzipan for about ten minutes and by the time you're done, it's very hot and very sticky--it simply bogs down the machine. It's still working, so that's the good news since I still need to use it before this auction is through. I need to do one more thing yet tonight, and that's to make my Irish Cream ganache.

If all goes well, tomorrow I'll be making the toffee bark, dipping the marzipan and Irish Cream ganache, and then I'll be done. If I get all of that done, I should have well over 200 chocolates for sampling at the auction.

I'll be sure to send some home though.

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