This is one that I completely forgot to take photos of while making it... and almost forgot to take photos after making it as well... It was only a week or two after christmas that I remembered I had these stashed in the cupboard (the rejects from the batch!) and was able to get a photo of them... You'll also spot some yellow chocolate stars with the other Christmas 2013 desserts that I'll post about (e.g. Gingerbread boxes).
Anyway I wanted to try making some themed chocolates, so I bought some chocolate moulds on eBay that had holly, wreaths, Santa heads, boots, stars, bells, snowmen, candy canes and a Santa. I figured, how hard can it be to make some pretty chocolates? Just melt the chocolate, put some colouring in and then put it into the moulds in layers... easy... right?
Well, I wasn't completely wrong. Turns out you've got to also think about things like how to get the coloured chocolate into the right places in the mould and exactly what colouring to use...
So as the hot cross buns start hitting the stores, here are the 4 key learnings from my first attempt at chocolate moulds - 'just' in time for Easter ;-)
Lesson Number One:
First thing is first. Realise that white chocolate is in fact not white. This is why I have purple and white chocolates in the photo and not pink. I had already realised that it would be impossible to get red without going to a cake shop and buying red colouring specifically (I couldn't be bothered to pack up Jnr Pink and go to a cake shop just for red colouring....), so I had accepted that pink was the best I could do and figured it would look christmassy enough when paired with green and/or white. Well. Turns out when you try to make pink using a cream coloured base, it goes purple. So there you go, lesson number one.
Use sauce bottles for the different colours of chocolate. It only took about 3 seconds for me to realise that using a spoon to drizzle the chocolate into the moulds in the right spot wasn't going to work. Luckily, for some reason I have accumulated a few sauce bottles over the years and discovered that these come in very handy. I had three on the go, with green, purple and yellow colouring.
Lesson Number Three:
Chocolate does not stay melted. I know, I know, Captain Obvious here, right? Well it just didn't occur to me that while I was filling the moulds, the chocolate inside the sauce bottles not being used would start to resolidify. At this point I found it rather handy to turn the oven onto 50 degrees Celcius, or 'Warm', and place the bottles inside while they were not in use. This served to keep the chocolate nice and liquidy.
Lesson Number Four:
Take photos of all the cool chocolates you make if you plan on blogging about it later... Doh!
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