On the slate for today was mixing up nine flavors of chocolate bonbon centers – four to be dipped in white chocolate, five in dark chocolate. They were:
- passionfruit caramel with ginger rum vanilla ganache
- cherry jelly with kirsch white chocolate ganache
- raspberry jelly with lemon white chocolate ganache
- strawberry balsamic vinegar
- vanilla latte (coffee with white chocolate ganache)
- apricot honey
- prune, port, cinnamon, honey
- fig and cognac
- egg nog (vanilla, nutmeg, rum)
I’m pleased to say that, with help from my friend Susan (who comes by every year to assist), I not only mixed up all nine flavors, but finished dipping three of them – exactly on schedule! Susan also dipped the candied citrus peels in chocolate, though unfortunately two batches (Meyer lemon and bergamot) will need to be redone, as they came out streaky. (The chocolate was out of temper.)
We did have a few mishaps along the way, though, including a visit from Fritz the Flying Kitten! We had just poured a frame full of apricot-honey butter ganache, after which I decided to prep some dark chocolate in the tempering machine. So I melted about half a gallon of chocolate, and was pouring the chocolate into the machine, when I saw….
….an adorable black kitten, crouching on the chair, about to fling himself onto the table.
I did the only thing I could do: cry out, “No, Fritz!! No!!” (Actually moving to stop him would have resulted in spilling a half-gallon of melted chocolate onto the floor!)
Of course, that had about the effect you’d expect (none whatsoever), and I watched in horror as, in slow-motion, he thought about it, crouched, and FLEW onto the table – straight into the freshly poured frame of apricot ganache.
Fortunately at that point Susan (who had been in the adjacent room) arrived, and got him off the table. Equally fortunately, the apricot ganache was white-chocolate based, so no worries about toxicity (dark chocolate is toxic to cats). I found him and wiped off his paws, and that was the end of the Flying Kitten Incident. Thankfully, he has shown no interest in the table since – perhaps he’s learned his lesson?
Anyway, despite kitten “help”, we had a good day, and I’m very much looking forward to tomorrow. I don’t have photos of beautiful chocolates yet – those will come tomorrow morning, once I remove the transfer sheets and trim away the excess colored cocoa butter – but I will leave you with this video of Fritz and Tigress playing “Who’s Messing With My Tail?” on the cat tree.
