Chocolate Candies

We continued this week's foray into the world of chocolate with a class dedicated to chocolate bonbons. I started drooling just looking at the recipe list. Chef H made a whopping 7 types of candies within 2 hours. That man is a machine! Luckily, we only had to churn out 5 types during our 5 hour workshop.

It wasn't too arduous a class. The biggest difficulty I encountered was trying to keep both my white and dark chocolate tempered. And then the filling of the chocolate molds proved a little trickier than expected. Those things are ridiculously heavy - you have to balance a thick plastic mold filled to the brim with chocolate in one hand while tapping the living daylights out of it with a spatula. The cherry on top of it all was the appearance of a cameraman to shoot some promotional footage for the school. He arrived just in time to see my struggle to dip candies in lumpy chocolate. I got so flustered I spilled white chocolate all across the floor. Not my finest moment in practical class. That's for sure.

The assortment of chocolates we made in class were absolutely divine. In front are Palets Or - coffee truffle filling flattened into discs and dipped in dark chocolate. The next are filled with hazelnut praline and crunchy feuilletine. My personal favourite are the green ones - white chocolate filled with pistachio and cinnamon cream. The squares are chocolate caramels that are chewy and completely melt in your mouth. The last are coffee marzipan squares partially dipped in chocolate.

I brought everything in to the office after class, as I could not trust myself in such close quarters with so much chocolate. I think I would gain 10 pounds this weekend alone! They were a great hit and it looks like I'll be getting a few orders in for Christmas. Have to get working on an order list very soon.