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Below are the 5 most recent journal entries recorded in avatrix's LiveJournal:

    Saturday, December 19th, 2009
    1:27 pm
    Chocolate winners!
    Winners have been drawn using random.org. Winners are Chixor, @Avantgame, Gupfee, Thajinx, Catch_twentytwo & letunaman. Please send me your mailing address by email (avatrix at gmail), or comment here (comments will be hidden/screened).
    Wednesday, December 16th, 2009
    2:53 pm
    Chocolates, 2009
    As many of you know, every fall/winter season I focus my culinary creativity and get to work making candy! I love to share what I make, but many of my friends live far away, so I also give you a chance to "win" a sampler box. I'll get to the "rules" in a moment; first, take a look at what I've made.

    Toucans w/ passion fruit ganache:
    Toucans w/ passion fruit ganache (outside)

    Inside:
    Toucans w/ passion fruit ganache (inside)

    Triple Layered Gianduja:
    Triple Gianduja

    "Sleeping Beauties"
    Caramel with chocolate nougat

    Grand Marnier Cordials:
    Starch Molded Liquor Cordials


    The Toucans are white chocolate, painted with orange cocoa butter. Inside is a passion fruit ganache, which gives them a tart contrast to the sweet white chocolate.

    Gianduja is chocolate blended with nuts--the nuts are toasted and then ground to release their oils before blending. This confection has a layer of white chocolate w/almonds, milk chocolate w/almonds, and dark chocolate w/hazelnuts.

    The "Sleeping Beauties" have a layer of buttered, chewy caramel, a layer of chocolate nougat, and are dipped in dark chocolate. Similar to a Milky Way bar, but I think my are superior. :-)

    Finally, the Grand Marnier Cordials were my attempt to learn to make liquor filled chocolates. The technique involves making an impression in a bed of dried starch and filling it with the sugar-liquor syrup. The syrup forms a shell with a liquid center, allowing them to be dipped. This was pretty tricky--the first attempt involved bottle shaped molds which were too small. They broke easily and didn't have much liquid inside. The rest of the syrup was used in free form designs made with a knife handle (big thanks to Destra for that) which worked much better. Still, I have fewer than 30 as a result.

    The Lottery!

    As I mentioned, I give away sample boxes every year. Entry into "the lottery" is free. My condition is that I have to know who you are, either in person or online. I'm really just disqualifying strangers who find my post, bots, etc. Also, you need to be in the U.S. or Canada--it's too expensive for me to ship overseas.

    I'll take the list of everyone who enters, remove those folks who are getting boxes from me anyway (I make these as a small-something to give to family and local friends) and use a random number generator to pick the winners. If you've won before, you can enter again this year.

    To enter, comment on this post, or send me a DM or @reply on Twitter (@Avatrix) saying so. If you win, you will have to send me your mailing address so that I can send you the chocolates. As much as I'd love to give away dozens of boxes, I'm limited by the cost of shipping each one, the cost of ingredients, and an actual limited number of candies. Destra is still hunting for a job, so it limits our finances. (Every year, several people offer to pay for the shipping. I'm still unsure what to do with that, as once someone pays anything for my work, I feel a higher level of obligation on what I deliver. I'll consider it, but haven't made a decision yet).

    What you can win is a box sampler of four candies. Normally it's one of each, but this year I'll be giving out two of the gianduja pieces, as there aren't enough of the liquor cordials. If you win, I'm interested in hearing how the arrive when I ship them. I've tried different boxes and packaging every year to protect the candies, but it's never quite right--so feedback on that is the most useful to me.

    Current Mood: accomplished
    Saturday, December 13th, 2008
    3:23 pm
    and the Envelope please...
    I decided that I would pick seven winners this year. There were 63 entries, so you had better than one in ten odds.
    The fine pseudo random integer generator at Random.org chose:

    [info]incyr
    [info]entelein
    @Andrhia
    @AOWWaterborn
    [info]jadesfire55
    [info]soi
    [info]retrovertigo

    Comments are screened, so you can leave your address here, or e-mail it to me. My username AT gmail. I hope to mail them out on Tuesday.

    Current Mood: accomplished
    Tuesday, December 9th, 2008
    10:15 am
    4th Chocolate Lottery
    Yes friends, it's that time. I have completed my holiday candy making, and as usual I will be giving you a chance to try it out for yourselves! Rules are below, but first take a look at what's at stake...

    Ginger-Crunch
    A square chocolate; the ganache is mixed with crushed up ginger caramel. Dipped in milk chocolate. (Callebaut)
    Chocolate with Ginger Crunch

    Raspberry-Wasabi Pâte de Fruit
    A square chocolate; a layer of chocolate ganache, and a layer of raspberry pâte de fruit, with a pinch of wasabi. Dipped in Valrhona Manjari dark chocolate.
    Raspberry-Wasabi pâte de fruit with ganache

    S'Mores Bite
    Homemade marshmallow squares fixed atop homemade graham crackers, then dipped in semi-sweet chocolate (mix of Valrhona and Callebaut)
    S'mores Bites

    Salted Caramel
    Molded chocolate (Valrhona Manjari), filled with a white chocolate salted caramel. Two photos, outside and cracked open.
    Chocolate Bonbon with Salted Caramel (whole)
    salted caramel2
    The rules )

    Current Mood: content
    Sunday, December 7th, 2008
    8:35 pm
    Salted Caramel Hot Chocolate
    (Breaking the norm, I have made this post public so that my friends on Twitter without LJ accounts can read this recipe.)

    So many people started talking about Starbuck's Salted Caramel Hot Chocolate (SCHC) this fall, that I decided I had to try it for myself, and attempt to recreate the recipe. I have a lot of experience in working with chocolate, and I spent a lot of time working with caramel this calendar year, so it seemed like a great project for my time.

    My goal was to create as simple/easy a recipe as possible, one that would be easy to replicate by any of you that want to try. It isn't exactly what you'll find at Starbuck's, but it's very tasty still. A little less sweet, but you can crank it up by adding more caramel. There is a lot of text here, because I added many notes--but this isn't that hard to do yourself!

    Salted caramel hot chocolate
    Recipe follows )

    Current Mood: content
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