34 pounds, 12 ounces (and counting!)

I finished the salted lavender caramels, the jasmine-honey-vanilla caramels, and the coconut almond fudge yesterday, and put them away this morning. I weighed everything first, of course! and am pleased to say that I have finished 34.6 pounds of chocolates so far – 28.8 pounds of first-quality chocolates and 5.8 pounds of “seconds” – chocolates with cosmetic blemishes that will nonetheless be happily devoured by my coworkers and friends. Nothing wasted!

And the transfer sheets are coming out nothing short of gorgeous. Here are the salted lavender caramels and the jasmine caramels – a cat and a rat, for your viewing pleasure:

I’m very pleased with them, and I think I will do this in the future. It is a little fiddly because the excess cocoa butter around the edges needs to be cleaned off by hand (you can see a bit of the excess on the left-hand side of the red chocolate), but it looks wonderful!

And the coconut almond fudge, which is like an Almond Joy but so much better that there’s really no comparison:

Here’s a tray of the jasmine caramels, before the chocolate transfer sheets have been removed:

And, finally, B. is fleeing the chocolate carnage today, heading out to visit his sister in Paris while I make chocolates in the fort. Of course, he needed a cat to help him pack, and Tigress happily volunteered.

Fritz hung out on the bed, but declined to help his sister harass the human:

We’ve had them for just over a month now, and it’s astonishing how fast they’ve grown! They’ve gained half their original body weight since we adopted them, and they’re starting to look like young cats, rather than tiny bundles of fluff. And Fritz is definitely “growing into” those giant ears. 🙂