Whew!

By rough estimate, I made over 800 bonbons today.   4 trays of 6 chocolate molds with an average of 25 bonbons per mold, plus a bunch of chocolate covered macadamia nuts, plus
some chocolate covered pear-gel-and-pear-ganache bonbons.  Still doesn’t feel like I accomplished much for 13 hours of intense labor, but then I also put most of the chocolates away in boxes, and ran out to the candy shop to buy some more gift boxes, so that ate up some time.

Hmm.  I guess I also mixed up 12 types of ganache and made an excellent batch of orange marmalade.  Okay, I suppose that’s a pretty good workday.

At any rate, I have now finished everything except:

• second batches of coffee, jasmine tea, pistachio-cinnamon, and three other flavors (these are ones where I didn’t have enough chocolate molds of a particular type and so have to do it in two rounds)
• chocolate covered coconut almond fudge (“high class Almond Joy”)
• figuring out what (if anything) to do with the quince paste – I may wind up just eating it myself 🙂

I have also decided that this year, for Christmas, my miscellaneous family are going to get marmalades.  I really like the satsuma mandarin orange marmalade I made for the marmalade flavored truffles – orangey and zingy and just a little bit bitter to balance out the sweetness.  Must play more with marmalades.

Wish I could write more coherently about the fantastic flavors of the truffles (my favorite for this year is the coffee – coffee mixed with milk chocolate in a milk chocolate shell produces a very nice vanilla-y mocha – wonderful!), but I’m way too tired.

Off to bed!  Tomorrow, I finish, pack, and box up the chocolates.  Then I call in the vultures to collect the leftovers…Monday I ship.  Tuesday I’ll clean up the apartment and sleep.