Latest chocolate update...

...I tried the apricot vanilla caramels yesterday and it didn't work out quite right--didn't get hard enough and the caramel was burning--so I may try it again next year with a bit of pectin to harden the caramels. (In other words, treat it as a fruit paste rather than a caramel.) I've never tried a fruit paste before, but no doubt I can find a recipe somewhere...

I tasted some of the molded chocolates this morning, and am only moderately impressed. The flavorings aren't strong enough--next year I will try it again with much stronger flavorings. I had forgotten that molded chocolates have a lot more solid chocolate in them than truffles...oh well, food for thought next time.

I have now made another batch of my vanilla-jasmine tea-orange blossom honey caramels, and am about to embark on chai, green tea, and jasmine tea truffles. (This really *is* the year of tea truffles!) After that it will be a batch of liquor truffles--the two sherries, the port, and a Merlot. And then, dip the caramels, make some cherry-almond clusters, and I'm done for the year! After that it will just be a bunch of packing-up and clearing up and getting 17 boxes of chocolate ready for shipment. (I might make another batch of English toffee, though, just on general principles.)

I love making chocolate...I am serious about it as I am about very few things. Wouldn't want to do it for a living, but I wouldn't mind spending three weeks doing nothing but experimenting with chocolate...

Oh, and it looks like I'll have enough chocolate to finish out this season. I might even have five or six pounds left!

Just got back from the wine shop...

...I had decided that I wanted to try a port truffle, and toddled off to Beltramo's to find a nice port. Now, Beltramo's is the local wine aficionado's treasure house--they KNOW their wines--so I knew I'd be able to find someone to point me in the right direction. And sure enough, their sommelier (or whatever the right name is for it) was most enthusiastic when I told him what I wanted to do..."Ah! Then you want something very fruity, right?" I said yes, and that I'd be willing to pay up to $40 for a good port to mix with chocolate. He assured me that that wouldn't be necessary, as the tawny ports were the expensive ones and I didn't really need or want an aged port, and pointed me at a $18 bottle of Six Grapes port. He also enthusiastically suggested that I try sherry truffles--sherry being another sweet, fortified wine--and pointed me at a creamy Pedro Ximenez Montilla. (Pedro Ximinez is the name of the grape, Montilla is apparently a sherry grown in a different area.) I bought it, and then got adventurous and bought a dry amontillado, which he said was interesting because it was a sweet wine, but with a dry finish and very nutty flavor. So I figure I'll try mixing all three into truffles and seeing what happens. I LOVE trying new things!

I also stopped by Peet's to pick up some green tea for the green tea truffles (if I get around to doing them). They have six or seven kinds of green tea--I eyed them all and considered buying some of each for a green tea taste test, then decided I wouldn't have the time/energy to do that as well as the sherry truffles. One vice at a time. :-)

I also had an inspiration--I want to try apricot-vanilla caramels. The apricot-vanilla-icewine mix was nice in the chocolates, but the chocolate really overpowered the fruit. I bet it would make FANTASTIC chocolate-covered caramels....

And now, back to finishing the molded chocolates.

chocolate frenzy

Whew! It's the day after Thanksgiving, which annually means a chocolate extravaganza. I spent this morning filling chocolate molds, then just finished making four flavors of truffle filling:

--apricot-vanilla with icewine
--roseapple jam (the roseapple is a Hawaiian fruit that tastes like rosewater)
--Armagnac (like Cognac, but stronger flavored and better for chocs IMO)
--roasted banana with icewine

I like to add a little alcohol into my chocolates as it helps the flavor; the icewine was an inspiration of the moment. My brother makes wines, you see, and he'd sent me a bottle of icewine that I'd been saving "for a special occasion". Voila! It turns out to be wonderful icewine, and I plan to share it with Noel tomorrow.

Noel is one of the guys I met through my personals ads--he's a scriptwriter working as a water meter reader while studying for the bar. Very interesting guy--we had a first date last week, and he's coming over tomorrow to help out with chocolates (tomorrow is chocolate truffles, chocolate-covered sour cherry/almond clusters, and maybe chocolate covered cinnamon caramels). He's bringing some wine with him, a nice Merlot, which I may try reducing and adding to truffles. (Yes, I know, I have a one-track mind. :-) )

I'm a little bit concerned because I'm low on chocolate--at this point I'm down to about 20 lbs, which I know sounds like a lot, but when you consider that I used up a good 8 pounds just this morning, isn't much at all. I should have bought more!! But oh well, that's water under the bridge. I won't be able to get more until nearly Christmas (at which point I will restock myself for the year).

I was mortally embarrassed but also quite gratified yesterday at Thanksgiving dinner--I brought some caramels and some toffee as my contribution to the feast, and people LOVED them. I mean, they were RAVING over them, for at least ten or fifteen minutes. I didn't know what to say. But I'm glad they liked them. :-)

Anyway, I made a bunch of molded chocolates--two kinds of hearts, one leaf pattern with a squiggle of white chocolate down the center, one leaf-shaped with gold sparkle over the top (achieved by mixing cocoa butter with edible gold sparkle dust and patting it into the mold before adding the chocolate), one round chocolate with a white chocolate swirl, and one plain round chocolate. They're in these very high-quality chocolate molds that I retrieved from Richard Donnelly--heavyweight, clear plastic that you can whack on the table without the slightest trace of bending. A far cry from the "regular" plastic molds. They really do turn out excellent results.

Oh, and I am COVERED in chocolate. At least this year I had the sense to invest in an apron. So the apron and my arms are covered in chocolate (and I may never get my fingernails clean again), but the rest of me is relatively chocolate-free.

Other flavors on the short list:

--jasmine tea
--green tea
--chai (ginger/cardamom/cinnamon/pepper)
--red wine
--whisky

Maybe other stuff if I get experimental. I had planned to make strawberry truffles, but decided the jam was too sweet...chestnut truffles got nixed after the chestnut puree I bought turned out to be awful. Quince truffles, ditto, though I plan to make my own quince jam next year, and try it with that.

Right now I'm waiting for my flavored ganaches (chocolate-cream-butter mixture) to cool so I can pipe them into the chocolate molds and finish off the molded chocolates. After that I'll unmold them, put them into candy cups, and get some food. Then I'll probably make some jasmine-tea-vanilla-orange-blossom-honey caramels, and/or some cinnamon caramels, in preparation for tomorrow.

Yum!

Well, well, well...

...17 responses so far and the ad's been up for less than 24 hours. Whaddya know?

I'm having coffee with the first guy later this afternoon--will let you know how it goes.

Just posted a personals ad on Craigslist...

...and my goodness! I've already gotten seven responses. Okay, three of them are obviously robots, but four of them are not--and here I thought I'd been very specific! I'm looking for a bisexual, polyamorous, primary partner--I figured there couldn't be *that* many of them out there, but apparently there are. (If you're curious about the personals ad, you can read it for the next seven days here.) I'm planning to wait at least a day to respond to any of them, just to see what happens.

I have also made a batch of rosewater-cardamom-white-chocolate-pistachio fudge, and it is WONDERFUL! It's a traditional Indian/Afghan sweet, although I don't think it's usually done as fudge, and the flavors marry together beautifully. I've also made two batches of English toffee, one with chopped almonds and one with just "plain" chocolate (but with Valrhona chocolate, how can anyone call it "plain"?). Tomorrow I may make a more traditional chocolate fudge, but I'm also planning to go off on a 2-3 hour ride (bicycling) and/or interview another AIDS Lifecycle rider, plus more mundane things like laundry, so I figure I'll just fit in whatever I've got time for and ignore the rest.

Took my cat to the vet because he was getting pretty thin; turns out he has constipation and a heavy heart murmur. They ran X-rays and blood tests and it all looks fine, but they want an ultrasound just to be sure. Thing is, an ultrasound costs $200 and there's only a 50-50 chance they can help with a heart problem anyway, so I may just wait a few weeks to see if clearing out the constipation helps. (Yes, my cat is now getting Metamucil.)

Nothing much else to report for the moment...I have an interview upcoming with Dan Pallota (founder of the AIDS Rides) that I'm very excited about, and am continuing to work on drafts of my book/sample chapters. Other than that it's the same-old, same-old...but these Craigslist responses should be interesting. I haven't dated (besides casual flings) in 3 years.

Got my chocolate molds back!

Today's been a good day...I went down to Donnelly Chocolates and got Richard to give me my molds back, and also bought a couple more toys from him--some chocolate shells for liquor balls (I plan to make some Armagnac liquor balls), and some molds for chocolate pastilles. I am now the proud owner of 14 high-quality plastic chocolate molds--two leaf-patterns, two different kinds of hearts, and some pastilles. I look forward to working with them.

I also got a GREAT interview with a rider, with a detailed description of what happened when she bonked on Day One. Bonking, as you may or may not know, is what happens when a cyclist doesn't eat/drink enough, and winds up as an exhausted, emotional mess. In her case, she got dehydrated. She's stopped riding and is just sitting there, looking out at the ocean, wondering why on earth she came out on the ride, when a Positive Pedaler (HIV+ rider) rides up and asks her if she's OK. She bursts into tears and says, "I hate this, I have no idea why I thought I could do this, I just want to go HOME!" He calms her down and gets her to a medical vehicle, where they get her rehydrated and ready to ride again. (She rides 100+ miles the following day.)

Hmm. That was probably less than enlightening. Readers Digest condensed books tend to be like that. Believe me, the more detailed story was terrific, she told it well, and by the time I'm done dramatizing it, it'll be powerful, too.

She also had a great story about being on the sag wagon--or rather, what it's like to be injured and unable to continue. (Put briefly, it sucks.) Having been there, I know more or less what it's like, but am glad to have found a rider who can describe it articulately.

And I got my 12" white suri, and it's lovely stuff--not the finest fiber I've ever held, but for an over-12" staple, I can overlook a lot. I think it will make fine, strong lace yarn.

I have also won an epic battle with my Suzie Pro, which suddenly started acting up after a long period of being just fine. I had to change brake bands twice (finally wound up with a handspun one) but I have finally got the brake band tension down to something I can live with. Don't ask me why it suddenly started being difficult. It's never done that before.

I have also installed the reptile thermostat, which should keep my lovely Astarte at a nice even 83 degrees (with a slight temperature gradient). I used to have heating pads in strategic areas of the cage, but she would invariably go sit in the very coldest part of the cage, meaning she would be at room temperature--65 to 70 degrees. That's too cold for a tropical boa, so she and Isis used to get respiratory infections. So I put my foot down, paved the cage in heating pads, and installed a thermostat. She's going to be at the right temperature whether she likes it or not, dammit. (I hope she likes it.)

And I rode 20+ miles today. Didn't make very good time, and it was a bit harder than perhaps it should have been, but I went along well and didn't feel particularly tired on finishing. I'm starting to think (maybe, perhaps) of registering for this year's AIDS Ride.

Tien