Last week was a choc-a-holics dream!

And I realised I definitely do not qualify as a choc-a-holic, because, just 2 days into the week, I was already fed up of chocolates :-p.

So what exactly did we do this week which would have sent most choc-a-holics into raptures? Well, we started by making various chocolate fillings to be used as the filling for moulded chocalates, and for dipping chocolates as well. Yes, yes, I can hear you all saying Huh? What's that?

DIPPED chocolates:
Well, dipped chocolate is when you let the filling set FIRST, in a mould of its own - usually just a rectangular metal frame, placed on a parchment paper which already has a thin sheet of tempered chocolate spread on it, the filling then being poured on the thin sheet of chocolate, within the boundaries of the metal frame. As seen in the picture below:



And once the filling is set, you cut it into whatever shapes you want and then DIP each piece into properly tempered chocolate - so since I did COFFEE flavoured filling (which I made REALLY strong), and the other filling was DARK chocolate, we used milk chocolate for the coating. Check these out:

1) This is the coffee flavoured chocolate filling, dipped in milk chocolate.


2) This is the dark chocolate truffle filling, dipped in milk chocolate.


By the time we finished dipping each chocolate individually, we had gotten reasonably good at doing the dipping well!

MOULDED chocolates:
Moulded chocolate is when you get a chocolate mould (can be plastic, or silicon), and pour properly tempered chocolate into the moulds and then immediately (before the chocolate sets completely) turn it upside down and knock out all the excess chocolate, leaving just a coating of chocolate in the mould. You let that set properly (overnight is good), and then the next day you can pipe the chocolate filling into the set moulds. If the filling is a firm one, then you can immediately pour properly tempered chocolate over the whole lot, scrape off the extra chocolate with a scraper, leaving the mould now firmly sealed with chocolate, and you let it set for a couple of hours at least. Once the whole thing is properly set, you can unmould the chocolates. If the chocolate has been properly tempered in the first place, it will just pop out of the mould really easily. Here are the three different designs of moulded chocolates my team made:

1) First a smear of dark chocolate was painted into the mould. Then milk chocolate was poured in to form the rest of the chocolate shell. The filling was piped in, then it was sealed with more milk chocolate. Unmoulded very easily too :-)


2) First a little bit of gold dust was dusted in, and then tempered dark chocolate was poured into the mould to form the chocolate shell. The filling was piped in, then it was sealed with more dark chocolate. Also unmoulded very easily!


3) This one also had gold dust, then milk chocolate was poured in. The layer of milk chocolate ended up being too thin, so I poured in a second layer, this time dark chocolate, before I piped in the COFFEE flavoured chocolate filling :-), then sealed it with dark chocolate. Again, this one unmoulded very easily too.


You can also use edible paints and colours to paint the inside of the chocolate moulds in interesting ways, so that the end result will be a really funky looking chocolate. Check these out:



FLOWERS and SHOWPIECE:
In addition to doing all the above, we also learnt how to make and colour chocolate FLOWERS, and then we designed and made a chocolate showpiece (one showpiece per team) which made use of the flowers we made.

1) The flower petals are made individually from white chocolate - just dip a spatula into the choc and gently "wipe" it onto a piece of parchment paper. Do a whole row of them, then before the choc sets, place the parchment paper with the choc on it, over a curved surface, to give the petal a CURVE to it. Then a base is formed from melted chocolate, and each petal is pressed gently into the choc and the flower is then built as multiple layers of choc petals in circles. This is the flower I made:


2) And this has now been sprayed with yellow colour


3) And now highlighted with orange colour, to give a lovely vivid colour.


And lastly, we had to make a chocolate showpiece, using the flowers we made. Each individual piece of the showpiece had to be moulded by us - using plastic strips set into the shapes we wanted and then filled with liquid chocolate. Each piece then had to be joined, and the whole thing embellished with the flowers and highlight pieces also made from chocolate:

1) These were the key pieces for the main body of our showpiece:


2) And here they are, all assembled and joined into the main body of the showpiece:


3) Work in progress: Embellishments being added!


4) And here is the final piece, all embellished, with the flowers added:


And, Yes, I am sick of chocolates for now!!

Till next time, have a great day, every day>