Yep. That’s 63 pounds of chocolates we’re talking about, in 33 varieties. Packed into 42 1-lb boxes, with a bunch left over. Friends, family, and sponsors are gonna be happy this week. (At least, they better be. Or else.)
The final list of flavors:
Dried fruits dipped in chocolate:
- apricots
- ginger
- candied bergamot peel
- pear (did not make it into the boxes, no room for it)
- macadamia nuts
- cherry-almond clusters
Fudges:
- Lavender lemon
- Maple
- Chocolate ginger
- Chocolate macadamia nut
- Coconut almond, dipped in chocolate
- Coconut tequila lime
- Coffee cinnamon
Bonbons/truffles/fruit gels:
- Armagnac
- Green tea (Peet’s “Snow Leopard”)
- Jasmine tea
- Pear gel with Poire William liqueur ganache
- Apricot gel with lavender ganache
- Xocopili (curry spice chocolate from Valrhona)
- Lemongrass
- goat cheese + honey
- Satsuma mandarin orange marmalade
- caramel
- caramelized banana
- rose geranium
- fennel-basil
- coffee w/milk chocolate
- blue chanterelle mushroom
- cinnamon pistachio white chocolate
Caramels/toffee:
- orange spice caramels
- jasmine tea/orange blossom honey/vanilla caramels
- English toffee w/o nuts
- English toffee w/nuts
plus the dragon and “name” chocolates.
Jon and Julie (two friends of mine) came by this afternoon to help pack boxes – four solid hours of labor later, the candies were packed away into candy boxes, and Jon and Julie carted off a nice bagful of “spare” chocolates. I still have ten or fifteen pounds of candy sitting around, which I will invite some vultures, er, I mean friends, to come by and cart off tomorrow night. And that will finish it for chocolates for the year.
I still need to write my sponsorship thank-you notes, my “please sponsor me” notes, and holiday letters to people. Not to mention packing up the chocolates and mailing them. It ain’t over yet…I’m guessing the chocolates may not make it out the door until Tuesday, what with everything I still have to do. But that’s what tomorrow is for!
And now, off to bed. I have a phone interview first thing tomorrow morning, so I need to be up early to prep for that. After that, it’s chocolate aftermath.
Quote for today:
“It looks like a chocolate bomb went off here!”
-Mike, walking into the kitchen
yummmmmm …. wish I lived close enough to be considered a “vulture”! Looking forward to my chocolate experiments.
Wow! I don’t care if I’m living in the world’s chocolate capital; your batch this year sounds unbeatable. Do you suppose a box would make it across the Atlantic?
Arrived! Made for a fine chocolate orgy on a Monday morning. Favorite flavors: basil fennel, lemongrass, coffee, coconut almond, and caramelized banana. But, really, they could all pass for favorites…
Merci beaucoup!