Finished seven flavors of molded chocolates today:
- caramel-cinnamon
- muscat grape-ginger
- Armagnac
- MacAllan 12 whisky
- caramelized banana
- jasmine tea
- rose geranium-honey
I have two flavors left to make up as truffles tomorrow:
- rum raisin (raisins soaked in dark rum)
- goat cheese and honey (surprisingly, it works!)
I’m sad to say that the truffle truffles didn’t work out – there wasn’t enough truffle flavor, it got overwhelmed by the chocolate. Next year I’ll try them again, and double or triple the amount of truffle I use. I’ve done it successfully in the past, and they’re quite good.
I’m very pleased with how the molded chocolates are coming along – they’re releasing cleanly, and look very good outside of some problems with air bubbles. The air bubbles don’t perturb me because they’re more or less inevitable if you don’t have a special vibrating belt to shake out the air bubbles. By and large, the molded chocolates are looking very, very good, especially compared to last year when I had to discard nearly half of them for cosmetic reasons.
I forgot to mention that I have finished dyeing the silk and cashmere for my next project, which will be an advancing twill floral pattern from a 2001 Handwoven magazine. I’m using 1/14 cashmere, dyed black, and a 2/28 silk warp dyed in magenta, purple, and two shades of green. I’m going to sett it at 43 ends per inch, so it’ll definitely be finely woven. I plan to start winding the warp as soon as I have all the chocolates complete, boxed up and shipped, and have had a chance to clean up the apartment somewhat from the chocolate madness.
Tomorrow Julie and Jon are coming by, either to help me dip chocolates, or to help me pack chocolates for shipping, depending on where I am in the process. I hope they’ll also take some of the excess chocolates home – I’m making about 30 1-lb boxes of chocolate, but I’m betting I have at least double that. I think I’ll try weighing the candies tomorrow to get an idea of just how much I’ve made over the past four weeks.
