Explore things tagged 'darkchocolate'

bakeaholic says...

Nov 09, 2009

Homemade chocolates in three easy steps. Also, my love of Legos.

I spent many hours agonizing over wedding favors, but eventually I decided on homemade chocolates because I wanted something practical that also catered to food allergies. I thought about premade chocolates to save time, but every prepackaged bag had the dreaded words: "contains traces of peanuts." Every. Single. One. So I made them myself.

My mom didn't think anyone would want chocolates. She was wrong.

In fact, people ate them so quickly, I never saw the beautiful arrangement my caterer created. By the time I came inside, a few people were fighting each other for the last of the dark chocolate. (The white and milk were long gone). I even had a cousin ask me if I was able to sell wholesale. When my photographer sent me these pictures, I thought to myself, "So that's what it looked like!"

Here's how I made them: Ghirardelli baking chips and ice cube trays. Since we only had 45 guests, I only bought one bag of each type of chocolate. It made about 30 pieces of each.

Lego Ice Cube Tray. $7.99 at shop.lego.com. This item sells out all the time so if it's in stock, buy it NOW. Most people already know that my husband and I are huge lego fans. We receive the lego catalog and I still have my childhood lego collection. Of course, it's not in open sight all the time. We are adults, after all.

Cool Jewels Ice Cub Tray. $12.95 at Amazon. This popular item is sold at several other online retailers as well, but I linked to Amazon because the smaller retailers always sell out. I originally bought it at CB2 for $9.95.

A truffle mold. $1.99 at Michael's. Here is a similar one from Amazon.

Ghirardelli Classic White Chocolate Baking Chips. $2.79 at Super Stop & Shop or Wegman's.

Ghirardelli Milk Chocolate Baking Chips. $2.79 at Super Stop & Shop or Wegman's.

Ghirardelli 60% Cacao Bittersweet Chocolate Baking Chips. $2.79 at Super Stop & Shop or Wegman's.

1. Melt the baking chips in the microwave or using a double broiler. If you're using a microwave, zap for 30 seconds, stir some, then zap for another 30 seconds. If using a double broiler, it should only take 2-3 minutes since the baking chips melt much faster than regular chips.

2. Spray a spoon with non-stick cooking spray and scoop the melted chocolate into the trays. Do not overload! Top off as even as possible.

3. Put the trays in the freezer. The chocolates should be ready in under an hour.

If you're doing this for a larger group of people (more than 50), save your sanity and buy more than one ice cube tray of each. Toxel compiled a list of 20 unusual ice cube trays. Both of mine are on the list; I also LOVE the Tetris one. If I had known about it before, I would have made Tetris chocolates also.

EDIT: In case you were wondering, the boxes contained more chocolates. These were for people to take home.

Click here to download:

Homemade_chocolates._Also_my_l.zip (874 KB)

Filed under: dark chocolate

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aliceayel says...

Nov 03, 2009

Dark chocolate and hazelnut torte.

The other day I had hazelnuts and chocolate so I decided to follow this recipe but I made a few changes ;)

First you need about 140g hazelnuts. I didn't toast them but I finely chopped them in a food processor.

I then added 140g self-raising flour and 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda (and I completely forgot to add 140g sugar!).

I whisked 3 egg whites until stiff, then I quickly stirred 140g butter melted, 75ml milk and the 3 egg yolks into the dry ingredients.
When the mixture was smooth, I stirred in one-third of the egg whites, then I gently folded in the rest. My son wanted to give me a hand :)

I poured the mixture into a tin, and baked it for 40-50 mins until the cake was golden and springy to touch.

Whilst the cake was baking, I prepared the dark chocolate filling. I microwaved 100g dark chocolate with a bit of water and 1 tbsp clear honey and mixed it well to obtain a smooth consistency.
When the cake was out of the oven and had cooled down a bit, I splitted the sponge in half. I gently spooned the chocolate filling over the first half.

To finish, I put the other half of the cake back on top to obtain this delicious torte (even without sugar!).

Filed under: dark chocolate

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beardpapa says...

Oct 17, 2009

The Fondant au Chocolat

Since this is the first store in the Midwest and still a relatively new concept in the United States in general, I thought it might be a smart idea to start explaining some of our peripheral baked products. Two years ago I could have written about these particular products in one short blog post, but the Beard Papa patisserie chefs have worked hard these past few years to bring over more of the Japanese product line (there is a lot involved in adjusting the recipes to bake right in a new environment where the humidity, temperature and ingredients are not exactly the same). A week ago Eddy introduced a new addition to our product line in the Paris-Brest. Today, I'll focus on explaining the chocolaty goodness known as the Beard Papa's Fondant au Chocolat!

The Fondant au Chocolat is our special version of the chocolate lava cake, or sometimes referred to as a chocolate souffle. This delicate cake is one of the most difficult things to make at our store. Like all of our products, the fondant is made 100% from scratch. We combine Callebaut dark belgian chocolate, Plugra european butter, egg whites, cocoa and other secret ingredients and hand mix it all to perfection. Making the fondant batter requires great care -- if you hand mix the ingredients too quickly, air will get into the batter, will bubble up and the end result will be exploded fondants when baked (no joke - they look like exploded muffins!). Also, if the batter is mixed incorrectly, when baked the cake does not have a molten lava core, but instead is more of a brownie.

After we hand mix the ingredients for about two hours or so, we make a sugar cookie base. We neatly press the sugar cookie dough on our baking pans and carefully place our circular fondant molds/rings on the cookie itself. We then bake the cookie with the molds until the cookie turns golden brown. Once the cookie cools down to room temperature, we pour in our famous fondant batter and carefully bake these. Once the surface of the fondant starts to harden, they are ready to be taken out. The result is a delicate dark chocolaty molten lava cake ready to be eaten straight out of the oven with a hand scoop of vanilla bean ice cream!

If you decide to take it to go, no worries there! You can heat it up in the microwave or oven and enjoy the same molten goodness.

I wasn't a chocolate lover until I had the fondant for the first time. It is simply amazing and worthy of being the cream puffs running mate.

Filed under: dark chocolate

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Balls says...

Aug 22, 2009

tees wedding favors party themed balls

Golf Wedding Themes

The traditional white wedding theme is out, in favor of unique and unusual wedding themes. One such example of a popular wedding theme for modern weddings is a golf wedding theme. If you are planning on a golf wedding theme, then you should know that there are a myriad of...

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