Treats for Warmer Days

Whether it was just that I was done with red and green chocolate for another year, or was craving a different type of sprinkle, but I felt these little treats were just the thing for a January day. I feel I'm looking forward to Summer days with campfires, roasting marshmallows and eating your body weight in s'mores. I am aware, however that these days are still a ways away, so perhaps these are just my little positive thoughts to warmer days.

 

 

 

I had fun using my marshmallow-flavoured chocolate, which together with the dark chocolate layer, was sandwiched between sprinklings of graham cracker crumbs!

 

Daisy, Daisy, Give me Your Answer, Do!

Admit it, there are people singing that song right now!

This was a lovely little order that allowed me to stretch my piping skills. All too often I do decorations with fondant, or in the case of cake pops I work with candies and melted chocolates. It's fun to create designs with icing though. You can use different colours of icing and different shaped tips with pipe out the most wonderful different streams of icing. In this particular case I used the different tips to make daisies!

The client also wanted to chocolates to hand out at the office as well and luckily I had just the mould. Very Spring-like!

 

Tea-Time Choccies for Madeleine

It's nice to have a treat every now and again, but especially on your birthday. I made these choccies  to celebrate the birthday of one of my colleagues who always looks after me, so it was only right that I get her a little something to look after her on her special day.

My best friend gave me the mould that I used, and I had a lot of fun just seeing all the detail in the mould itself. The tea-cups, the jam jars, so sweet! I went another step further and made my first chocolate filling. I went with a chocolate-peanut butter filling, and decided it was dangerous to make this too often for I was likely to eat the whole thing before it made its way into the chocolates... not the best as you hand a friend a box of chocolates and say "Here, I made you some chocolates! They were meant to have a lovely filling, but it didn't quite make it in. It was really good, though!" Nonetheless, I felt they added that extra bit of "special" to the sweets and I'm glad they worked.

Definitely going to experiment with more fillings.... this could a very fruitful experiment!

 

Delectable Daleks

I grew up watching the British SciFi classic Dr. Who. My parents would tape episodes from PBS, and we watched them all the time. My sister can still name you the director, location, the Doctor's assistant, and the date it was filmed for any episode you name her. Put it this way, not many pet cats get chased down the hall by a 1/8 size remote control Dalek... do they? My sister's cats do, that's normal behaviour in her house.

Given my Sister's love, nay obsession with this cult classic, how could I pass up the chance to make her Christmas gift match this love. On my Mother's last trip to England she acquired for me a "Doctor Who chocolate mould" with various popular characters and icons such as: the Tardis, K-9, a Sontaran, a Cyberman, a Weeping Angel, and a Dalek. I am now somewhat realising that this whole last paragraph will read to most of you like the teacher in Peanuts, but stay with me folks. (Fun fact about the webpage for the Tardis: at the top there is a warning saying that this article may be too technical for some readers.... :P) So with my surprisingly well suited chocolate colours (I think I'll re-name my dark blue chocolate "Tardis Blue") I set about making the most unique box of chocolates I've seen.

I made her open them in front of me so I could see her reaction... she squealed!

A Dalek...

A Tardis...

A Sontaran...

A Cyberman...

A Weeping Angel...

..and K-9...

Feliz Cumpleaños John!!

At those mile-stone events and important moments in one's life some people mark them by celebrating with champagne, a toast, a big meal, or a special cigar. However, with the latter, my friend thought this might send the wrong message when celebrating the birth of his son just before Christmas. Instead, he opted for an edible version of the rolled treats, chocolate cigars! A much...healthier...version?? I guess it depends on how many cigars people eat in order to celebrate.

I loved how they turned out, and I had fun doing something different with chocolate.

Welcome little Baby John!