Chocolate, chocolate everywhere

Today Allen, a friend who wanted to learn about chocolate, came over to help me work the stuff.  We used about 12 lbs of chocolate and dipped the following in chocolate:

• dried apricots
• candied ginger
• dried pears
• cherry-almond clusters (sour cherries+ almonds)
• candied bergamot peel
• orange spice caramels
• jasmine vanilla orange blossom caramels
• English toffee (with and without ground almonds on top)

We tempered two 7-lb batches of chocolate and there’s still some left in the bowl.  I’ll use a bunch more of it next week, when I do truffles and molded chocolates.

The silicone chocolate molds, by the way, came out GREAT!  I was really worried about the quality, but they seem to be coming out with fantastic detail.   I only cast some solid chocolates this time since I was still experimenting with the concept, but for the next round I’m going to make bonbons and hope they turn out.  If they do, I’ll definitely be including them in my chocolate boxes.  Button-chocolates are way cool.

The only disappointment was that the coconut fudge didn’t come out hard enough for chocolate dipping.  I’m headed out to a restaurant supply house now in search of a “real” candy thermometer.  Enough @#! with inaccurate temperature measurements.