Chocopalooza, Day Two

Two friends came by today, and together we finished five flavors:

Clockwise from top left, they are:

• Cherry-rum
• Goat cheese & honey
• Vanilla latte
• Rosemary quince
• Black currant Cointreau

The cherry rum and black currant Cointreau came out beautifully, as did the vanilla latte.   The rosemary quince is heavier on rosemary and shorter on quince flavor than I would have liked, but still tastes excellent.  I don’t really like the goat cheese and honey – the goat cheese flavor is mostly indistinguishable and it has a slightly gritty texture from the curdled bits of goat cheese (I boiled it to sterilize it).  It tastes good, mind you, but mostly it tastes like honey, not goat cheese.  I may drop it if I run out of space.

I’m a bit worried that the chocolates will come out looking boring since virtually all of them will be monochromatic (the printing is all gold); next year, I think I’ll have some more custom transfer sheets printed up, this time in red.  That ought to jazz things up nicely, and red is the  traditional Chinese color for celebration + a classic Christmas color, so quite appropriate to the occasion.

In addition to the five chocolates shown here, my friends and I mixed up four flavors to start off with tomorrow: saffron, three-chili (ancho, guajillo, chipotle chilies), pink peppercorn-Buddha’s hand citron-yuzu, and cardamom-ginger-rosewater.  That leaves only three flavors: jasmine tea, Irish coffee, kaffir lime-lemongrass-ginger-coconut.  It’s entirely conceivable that we could finish all of those tomorrow, leaving me a free day on Saturday!  (Sunday is the chocolate-packing party.)  If so, the first thing I’ll do after cleaning up the kitchen is hightail it outside, to dye the 12 panels for my next muslin.