Molded candies

Molds are fun! Tonight, each person in our class made a different ganache filling for our candies. We had ginger, Indian spice, bourbon, mocha, tarragon & grapefruit, orange & tangerine, lavender, plain dark chocolate with vanilla, and some caramel from a previous class. Once the ganache is made, you are ready to make candy.

First, you temper your chocolate, then brush the mold with chocolate. Once that has hardened, you pour the mold full of chocolate, and tap it on the table to release any air bubbles. Then immediately turn it back over & empty the chocolate back into your bowl. Leave it turned over until it starts to harden, and then scrape all the excess chocolate off.

Once the shell is completely hardened, pipe in your filling. Let it harden, then pour chocolate over the whole thing to seal the bottom. Once it starts to harden, scrape it off. Now you just wait until the candies are ready to pop out of the mold. Easy, huh?

Aren't these beautiful?

Look at the shine this chocolate has. I am proud of how well-tempered it is!

Truffles are trufflicious

We made the most beeeeautiful truffles tonight! We made several flavors: dark chocolate with cognac, dark choc & orange, milk choc with vanilla, dark choc & cherry...there may have been more.

First, you make a ganache with chocolate and cream. You form this into the round truffle center. Then you dip the truffle twice into chocolate, and roll it in some sort of topping. We used toasted coconut, chopped pecans, powdered sugar, cocoa, shaved chocolate. Or, you could leave them plain. We don't like plain.

Some of the truffles in the big box were made by my classmates.

I made all of the ones in the small box.

These are incredibly silky and creamy. They're every bit as delicious as they look! I want to make truffles every day.

1st chocolate candies

So far in my chocolate class we have been practicing tempering chocolate. Tempering is kind of tricky, and extremely important. It is what gives chocolate a pretty shine and a snap when you break it.

Tonight we made our first candies. We made rochers (sugared almonds covered in chocolate), knackerli (chocolate patties with nuts and dried fruit), pecan clusters, turtles (I made the caramel for these), chocolate-dipped candied citrus peel, and chocolate almonds. Oh, they are so tasty! Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera at school, and our teacher kept the best of the candies, so I got some pix of the candies she let me keep once I got home.


These are some of the knackerli.




Another shape of knackerli.



Here are some of my rochers, and some almonds in the foreground. You can also see some of my turtles in the background.