I am a chocoholic, and I have always wanted to try making homemade chocolates, so I was pretty pleased with this month's Daring Baker's Challenge.
The August 2011 Daring Bakers’ Challenge was hosted by Lisa of Parsley, Sage, Desserts and Line Drive and Mandy of What the Fruitcake?!. These two sugar mavens challenged us to make sinfully delicious candies! This was a special challenge for the Daring Bakers because the good folks at http://www.chocoley.com offered an amazing prize for the winner of the most creative and delicious candy!
My first choice was to make filled chocolates using tempered chocolate. I made the passionfruit caramel given in the recipe sheet to fill my chocolates, but it was too runny to work, even though I tried. Here is the first batch of chocolates I tried- the shells are just solid chocolate, but the handbag and shoe are simply hollow shells that I had tried to fill with the runny passionfruit caramel:
I salvaged as much chocolate as I could (it was Green and Blacks 70% - not cheap here!), and made another round of filled chocolates, this time using my homemade lemon curd:
I was happy with the gloss on my tempered chocolate. However, wanting to experiment a little, I brushed my chocolates with lustre dust and edible glitter:
I don't think I liked the look of them as much after that! Of course, they still tasted good.
My other candy choice was the orange pate de fruits, again using the recipe provided in the Daring Bakers recipe sheet:
These were disappointing because they didn't set as firmly as I would have liked, and they were uber-sweet, even for a lolly lover like me. I think I would try a different recipe if I made them again.
Thanks to Mandy and Lisa for hosting us this month, and finally giving me the motivation to make homemade chocolates. Now I know how easy it is, I will make these again. To see a kaleidoscope of different candies and chocolates, view the slideshow on The Daring Kitchen website.
Today's song: You've Got To Hide Your Love Away by The Beatles, in honour of Brian Epstein, who passed away on this day in 1967.
