It’s turning into a chocolate Christmas!
Despite the hot weather, I’ve been tempering bowls of chocolate daily, and little boxes and bags of wrapped goodies are starting to litter the living room (the coolest room in the house).
Above is our first attempt at a chocolate house. Moulding the pieces was easy enough, but having enough tempered chocolate at the right temperature to glue it all together was tricky. As was handling the pieces without them melting in our 30°C kitchen! In the end it took both of us to assemble the finished cottage – a little rustic perhaps, and I’m not sure the roof was watertight, but it was eaten before it passed building inspection! This was a trial run – we’re going to try to make one for Christmas day as well. For any Aussies interested in giving this a go, the mould was only a few dollars (you need to buy two) from Roberts Confectionary online.
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Some other chocolate happenings in our kitchen include…
Ginger chocolate – crystallised Buderim ginger coated in a dark (about 65%) Belgian chocolate blend…
A dark chocolate wreath…
…and some musical notes – Big Boy plays the french horn and Small Man the trumpet, so finding a chocolate mould with both instruments on it was very exciting!
A dozen golden tickets are wrapped and waiting to be given away!
I’ve filled Turkish bowls with treats – don’t they look festive?
Our newest chocolate for the season are these little fruitcake truffles, made by blitzing fruit cake and glacé fruit in the food processor and then mixing the crumbs with melted dark chocolate and dark rum. These were shaped into balls, then dipped in dark chocolate…
And my find of the season – treasure no less – are these French glacé orange rind strips, a new item from Harkola. At $15 a kilo, it’s quite expensive compared to mixed peel, but massively better. It’s also perfect for dipping into dark chocolate!
Fig Jam and Lime Cordial 