Oh Fudge

Due to the lack of space and the horrible heat and humidity (plus the fact it's taken me ages to get sushi boxes - they arrive next week) I've decided to experiment with fudge.
Quite a few failures but among them one success (yey!).
Today so far I've managed to make caramel and greasy fudge(not yey!) and am having a brief break before I soldier on, heartened by the successful dark chocolate fudge I made yesterday. Although not heartened by the 2kilos of fudge frosting I made the day before :(
I will report later....

Well, this is later.
One lot in the bin, and two vanilla caramels.
Not a roaring success.

Have made a chocolate mousse and ice cream to console myself.

Will continue tomorrow.

I Miss You

Tomorrow it will be seven years since my dad died. I still can't beleive he's gone, I miss him so much it hurts.

My dad was many things; to name just a few: he was a good man, he was kind, incredibly clever, wise and a bit of a nutter. In a good way.

He was also an inventor, he invented loads of stuff. He was like a combination of Albert Einstein (mainly in looks) and Maguiver.

Since I've started making my own chocolate I miss him even more, he'd be having a fantastic time thinking up recipes and how to do stuff.
I'm positive that with a paperclip, rubber band and a piece of string he could make me not only the best melter on earth but any peice of equipment I could want.

Ok, maybe I'm exaggerating.
He'd probably need two paperclips and some strong glue.

Update

I havn't posted recently because there isn't really much interesting to report.
Still working on the chocolate sushi, the sugar free chocolate and some other ideas I have.
The weather is hot and humid so not conducive to chocolate making and as I am still working in the house I'm limited by space and therefore the type of work I can do.
Sigh.
Hopefully in the not too distant future I'll be able to move into a little unit built on to the house and then be able to work properly.

Mrs Beeton I am, I am

Today I've been baking. Lots.
The Husband can't have any carbohydrates apart from corn, which is a really big pain in the bum.
So today decided to spoil him and made gluten and sugar free cinammon biscuits (cookies if you are american) and almond and vanilla. They came out rather nice actually.
I also made cheese and olive muffins, they are still in the oven so don't know if they will be edible. Cross fingers etc etc.

Here is a picture of some gluten free tatlets I made him, they look rather 'rustic' but tasted great:




I'm still working on the sushi, it's coming along nicely and if all goes well should be finished this week.

こんにちは、再び

Yet another frustrating busy day with little to show for my efforts.
Decided to continue with the sushi and so began with the easy task of making the chocolate clay for the nori. I've done it before so no probs and thus made a big batch of over a kilo. Except that because I am an utter idiot I did it form memory and therefore wrong and buggered it up. Took over an hour of struggling to try to fix it, don't know if I've managed, will find out tomorrow (it needs to rest in fridge 24 hours).
So after wallowing in misery and self pity for a while I pulled myself together and continued.

Am taking a little break from cutting sticky dried fruit for the salmon, messy business I can assure you, and trying to find something that would look like pickled ginger.
Tomorrow am hoping I'll be more successful, plan to roll out the clay and make the nori sheets; make pistachio gianduja for the avocado and the white chocolate rice as the, well, rice.

Oh, the dying spider tracks in the title means Hello Again in Japanese.

The Wolfman Teaches A Valuable Lesson

Last night I decided to take the evening off and watch a film with The Husband.
Once I had rejected the cartoons and violent ones we were left with Wolfman.
It started off ok, if a bit slow but by the second hour of not a lot hapenning I was wishing someone would shoot me with a silver bullet.

I have decided that there is a lesson in this and that by neglecting my work I have been punished for my indolence.

No rest for the wicked....

Konnichiwa

It's been a very busy week. Busy and frustrating.

For most of the week I've had 9 hour long days with little to show for my efforts than a huge mess and a sore body. Experimenting with unfamiliar materials and methods can be a thankless, difficult and occasionally soul destroying task.

Still waiting for an ingredient I ordered for making the sugar free chocolate so havn't been able to make any which is very annoying.

I made sugar free pecan nut paste for gijanduya: too runny, and hazelnut gijanduya: not firm enough (will re melt it and add more chocolate in case you are interested).

The second part of the week I made 60+ marshmallow chocolate and sweets lollies for a bat mitzva gift (photos will hopefully be added later) and making chocolate sushi.
Yes, you read correctly, chocolate sushi. You can stop gagging, it is chocolate made to look like sushi, not chocolate and fish (bleuch).

This is something I started playing with about 2 years ago and have been thinking of a way to do it that it isn't too time consuming (and therefore too expensive for sale), doesn't look like a five year old made it, includes rice (crispy rice) and tastes good, even great.
I'm not there yet but have made a few different types and some are looking good (photos later). While working on it have some other ideas but of course they requier materials I don't have and will have to wait until they arrive (sometime next week I hope).

For now I'm feeling more positive which is a good thing.

Sayonara

Nuts

What a day. I'm knackered.

Apart from Mummy and Housewife duties I also managed some cooking and baking but most importantly I decided Today is the day to make a pecan nut paste to be made into Gianduja (for those of you who don't know what this is, it is traditionally made from hazelnut paste mixed with chocolate and tempered, yummy in the extreme).
The reason I'm doing pecan is because I have nearly 8 kilos of pecans from our 4 pecan trees, the fridge and freezer are full of them and I can't take it any more.

Gianduja is one of my favorite things, it is usually (but not always) made from a ready paste of caramelised hazelnuts and while heavenly is of course full of sugar which is why I decided to make my own.
The small trial batch was fantastic, I was so happy and had to stop myself from eating it all with a spoon.
Was just getting ready to make a big batch when The Husband asked if the nuts are supposed to be green and furry.
Oh, um, no, gah, spit, spit.
Sooo, in the bin that batch went, and the nuts. It's most annoying because they were in the fridge and wern't supposed to go green and furry so quickly.
It also annoyed me that I'd just eaten a lot of manky nuts, despite the fact they tasted great.
Sigh.
Onwards and upwards.
Dug some (non furry) nuts out of the freezer and have got a 3 kilo batch in the Santha.
What a trial to get it there though. The kitchen looks like a bomb has hit it, I nearly broke the Santha when I dropped the blade from the small food processor it it, I burned myself, cut myself, dropped about half a kilo of expensive ingredients on the floor and have got nuts everywhere (this mainly due to the fact I had the Santha going without the lid).
The flavour is good but it needs to be smoother, havn't got a clue how many hours it'll need to be in the machine.

The really weird thing though, the mouldy batch tasted a lot better :(

Happy Bunnies

It's hot and humid today and I'm having a horrible time.
The trial recipe for the milk chocolate finally worked, so decided to make a 3 kilo batch.
After about 3 hours the Santha started making awful noises so rushed over and saw a volcanic eruption. Claggy chocolate was oozing out from under the lid.
My tentative conclusion is that maybe there was too high a percentage of dry ingredients but I reckon that the main problem is the weather.
I've put the air conditioning on, left the lid off the Santha and directed a fan at it. I also added some more liquid ingredients (cocoa liqor and cocoa butter). I'm hoping it will work but it means a step back as I can't regard it as a successful large batch formula.
The best case scenario is that I will be able to use it for ganache.
This puts me severely off schedule as I had planned to have completed experiments on dark, milk and white this week.

To make the day even worse, I went out to order business cards and came back with a half dead heron which I now have to take to the vet and pay to have it put down.

And the kids are fighting over a bucket, they are surrounded with hundreds of expensive educational toys and are fighting over a bucket.

A happy bunny I am not.

You Rock!

Alchemist John Rocks!!!!

Despite being well packed when my Santha arrived the base was badly cracked (to be fair it originated in India, traveled around there for a bit, then hit Italy and England before it arrived in Israel and then to me).
I contacted John and after several emails and some photos (of the Santha's cracked base not me in my undies), he said that he'd look into it for me.
And here it is!! My new base :) No hassle, or begging and I wasn't charged. Now that is what I call excellent service and customer care.

I'm paranoid about buying things over the internet from people I don't know, especially when they are expensive but I would buy from him again and recommend him 1000000%.
And it gets better, as well as selling some great stuff on his site (www.chocolatealchemy.com) for making chocolate (ingredients,machines and moulds), there are very interesting and informative articles and also recipes.
I was going to explain to you about all the different aspects of chocolate making but I won't, as John does it better.

Now I'm off to check on my new base, I hope it's alright as parcel man was so panic stricken when he saw my four lunatic dogs throwing themselves at the fence that he chucked it over the gate and ran off.

Update: I knew you would be worrying so just wanted to tell you that my base is fine. Phew, that's a relief eh?

Patience Is....

Patience is just one of the many virtues that I do not possess.
I hate waiting for things, anything. If I want something, I want it now.
This is especially problematic for me at the moment as I have to wait for deliveries; ingredients or machinery for example.
I also have to wait for ages and ages for the chocolate. First while it is being ground in the Santha and then I have to wait at least 24 hours after Ive tempered it to see how it tastes, as the flavours change and develop over time.
In fact the advice is to let the chocolate mature for 3 months. Well I doubt that will happen (unless I drop some behind the fridge and it lives there unmolested for a while).

At first I thought the grinding machine was just to , well, grind stuff. But when it come to chocolate it isn't. Apart from grinding the particles of the sugar, milk powder (if used) and the cocoa liqor until it reaches a lovely smooth consistency,it also allows the flavours of the cocoa liqor to mellow out.
Sort of like a metaphorical doobie.

Newtons Apple

It's been a funny sort of day. Not a chocolate making day. Would have been nice and peaceful without the Santha noise in the background except that The Empress spent most of the day complaining vociferously about how we are rubbish servants and her needs were not being met in a satisfactory manner.

The dark chocolate that I took out yesterday is nice but a little thin tasting so have desided it will be great for dipping truffles etc but not eating.
Sooo back to the drawing board on that one.

I took the opportunity of not making chocolate to make a Swiss apple tart that I have been promising Mother I would make for a while now (no cooking or oven based stuff allowed when chocolate is being made).
It came out really good. I would post a picture but after I took it out of the oven I dropped it, then we ate what I could salvage. Ho hum.

With the spare bits of pastry I made pinwheel biscuits with pecan nuts (from the garden) and some of yesterdays dark chocolate. They came out ok but not sweet enough so I sandwiched them with dulche de leche.

So Husband wouldn't feel left out (he can't eat gluten or most carbs) I made fancy shmancy baked apples (filled them with dried fruit, nuts, honey and cinammon then poured a honey syrup over them).
All without sugar of course.

Just made a virgin pina colada and it is cooling in the freezer, Ill give it a whisk every so often until it's thickened a bit.
Well it was a virgin colada until it got shtupped by some malibu.
Could't resist.

Best Laid Plans

Thanks to an aging pinscher with a urinary infection and a short school day I got only half of what I had planned done.
I didn't manage to temper the black chocolate in the morning, or do any of the fun things I had planned to do with it.
Although on the plus side I did manage to put the batch of dark chocolate in the santha which so far is looking good.

Being covered in chocolate used to be a fantasy, now it's a work accident.

Sorry..

Sorry guys. No interesting post today I'm afraid.

It's gone 10pm and I've just taken 3 kilos of the latest batch of milk chocolate out of the Santha, am hoping that this is The One. It tastes really good but I need to see how it tastes when it's tempered and aged a bit.

I've prepared the ingredients for 3 kilos of dark chocolate which I will put in the machine tomorrow.

My plan for the morning is to put the dark chocolate ingredients in the Santha and temper the milk; some I'll make into bars for using later and some I'll use for experiments.

So now I'm going to do some (more) research.

No rest for the wicked...

Life is Like a Box of Chocolates

Indeed it is.
Danger, injury and even death is a constant threat as one navigates ones way through the dangerous world of chocolate.

At least that is the impression I get when I read the disclaimers companies are forced to display on the packaging of their products.
Warning: may contain nuts (even on nut bars!!!), gluten, wheat, soy, milk or body parts of the lesser spotted vermilion gecko.
Ok, well, maybe not the last one but I feel I've made my point.

I'm thinking that one should also add: do not shove up your nose; do not leave the chocolate on the floor in case you slip on its lovely melty goodness and break your neck; do not leave it uncovered as it will attract bugs and you may then consume them inadvertently resulting in an allergic reaction.
Do not eat the packaging; do not shove the packaging up your nose or the nose of anybody else.

I would like to take this opportunity to mention that this blog is written in an environment that contains the following: nuts, wheat, soy, milk, eggs, chocolate, children, dust, bugs, air and other allergens.

If you are sensitive to any of the above, please stop reading immediately and contact your doctor or allergist.
If you do continue reading, I take no responsibility for any adverse reactions you may experience.

Spin Me Right Round Baby

After about a week my Santha arrived. Oh the excitement.
I can't believe I thought I could make decent chocolate without it, it really is a great piece of equipment (and a lovely deep red colour too).
I've made a few batches of chocolate in it and it really does do 'what it says on the box' which is grinding the dry ingredients into microscopic microscopicity and conching (more details about conching later).
However,to be completely honest if I didn't have to make my own chocolate I wouldn't.I'm not saying that people don't or wont find it fun or interesting. Perhaps because I have to do it and don't really chose to is the problem. I'd much rather be spending my time and efforts making pretty and impressive looking truffles and filled chocolates than struggling with new, complicated and untested formulas using 'weird' ingredients, some of which I've never even heard of until recently.
I'm sounding ungrateful I know but I'm not. It's wonderful and amazing that I can buy some ingredients and a machine that doesn't take up the whole of the kitchen and actually make chocolate at home. How cool is that?!?

You may be wondering why the title of the post is "Spin Me Right Round Baby".
I thought it would be better than "Grind Me All Day Baby"

Flytta

My husband couldn't get it up today.
He tried for ages. I offered to help but he wanted to do it by himself.
He did manage it in the end but it took him a while and he was muttering the whole time.
He should have used a mattress but couldn't be bothered, so he used a towel.
So now I am the proud owner of a fully functioning Flytta trolley table. It's shiny and it's got lockable wheels and I can't wait to use it as it means I now have a table that I can put directly underneath the air conditioning and actually temper chocolate properly. It will be living in my lounge until I get my workshop finished.

The Empress really likes it too, as you can see from the photo.



You didn't think I was referring to.....?
Oh, shame on you.

Which Thingy?

I've got my formula worked out so now I just need to find the thingy that will turn the ingredients into chocolate.
At first I thought I could bung all the ingredients in a bowl, melt them together and with some vigorous stirring that would be it. But it isn't and I can't.
Well, I can but it would be gritty and nasty.
Hmmm. So that means I'll need a Thingy to make it smooth.
What thingy can I use? Mortar and pestle? Yeah right, you try it. Spice grinder? Ditto. Blender? No.

Luckily for me (and thousands of others) there is a fantastic website called www.egullet.com, it's just brilliant and has loads of information about all sorts of culinary delights from to ganache gonads and lots more.
There is a great thread there about making chocolate from bean to bar (which is basically grinding cocoa beans, adding cocoa butter and sugar and also milk powder if it is milk chocolate - and ending up with a bar of eating chocolate) and the Thingy used to grind and conche the chocolate is a machine called The Santha Wet Grinder.



I looked up where I could get this marvel and found www.chocolatealchemy.com which is another fantastic site.The guy who runs the site is known as Alchemist John and he is amazing, he knows tons of stuff and is willing to share it; he is really patient even when bombarded with stupid questions (not from me of course) and is nice too.

So I pried my credit card out of my purse, dusted it off, took a deep breath, bought it and waited.....

Just a Spoonfull Of Sugar

I have decided to make my own chocolate!
I'm not referring to truffles, filled chocolates and the like (those will come later) but the actual chocolate itself!
Mucho exciting, daring and rather insane.
So all I have to do now is find out what the exact ingredients are that make up a bar of chocolate then what sweeteners are available, then invent my own formula and then bung it in a thingy and I'll get lovely, yummy and healthy chocolate that I'll have made All By Myself.
Easy peasy, or at worst very challenging.
Ha! Pah! HA!
A good deal of the really useful articles are written for scientists and use really long words
Most of the sweeteners I've never heard of. And I can only pronounce a few of them. Too many raise the blood sugar level far too much and are too high in calories.
Some would be suitable but when used in quantities high enough to provide the desired level of sweetness keep a person far too regular.
Then there are the ones that might cause the next generation to have extra limbs, cause blindness or kill your dog (won't be using those in case you are wondering).
There are also some great ones but they are only sold in quantities of 50k plus or only available outside a tiny fishing village situated at the very top of a mountain in China.
So after months and months and hours and hours of research, I think I've worked out a formula that won't be disgusting.
So now what?

The Idea

My mum is Swiss and therefore needs chocolate in the same way she needs oxygen. She also has a problem with high blood sugar as does my husband (thanks to the several gallons of coke he used to consume per day). So about 2 years ago I decided to try my hand at making sugar free truffles (This is The Idea I mentioned yesterday).

While I don't wish to toot my own horn, pat myself on the back or pull my own cord, they were rather fab; luckily others thought so too and i started getting lots of requests to make them. Even people who didn't need to eat sugar free chocolates wanted them as they liked them so much.I was using 'no sugar added' chocolate but found that I got very distressed internal organs and my blood sugar level spiked and I felt awful (a result of 'dumping syndrome' which is a side effect of gastric bypass surgery). But if it's got no sugar in it what caused this reaction?
So me being a questioning sort and a loyal fan of google, I did research and discovered that the reason for this is Maltitol.

In brief, Maltitol is a widely used sugar substitute from the family of sugar alcohols (Sorbitol, Xylitol, Lactitol, Erythritol etc etc) it isn't actually alcohol as we know it (if you wasnt to know more about this then I recommend www.wikipedia.com).
Despite raising blood sugar quite a bit (although less than sucrose/regular sugar), products containing maltitol have the approval of the diabetic association.

Maltitol is used in a huge variety of products, I think that it is so popular with manufactures of confectionery and baked goods because it both tastes and behaves in a similar way as sucrose does (taste and texture to name two)and is relatively inexpensive. The problem for the consumer is that it is high in calories, raises the blood sugar and keeps us really, really, REALLY regular.

So why is it so widely accepted and used by us, the public?
Because we don't know how bad it is for us and there isn't really an alternative.

Fear not dear reader, I've got An Idea and I'm not afraid to use it.

Beginning at the End

As you have discovered, I have decided that it is time to write a blog. All the cool kids are doing it and I want in.
It's also a good time to begin as something ended recently. A few months ago I bit the (chocolate ha, ha) bullet and booked a chocolatier course, or to the uninitiated, a 'chocolate making person' course. It was good, it was fun and interesting.
I met some great people and now, sadly it is over.
I've been making chocolate for about 20 years and eating it for, well, basically since I discovered hand to mouth coordination.
In fact, I love chocolate so much I had to have gastric bypass surgery so that I wouldn't have to widen the doorways and reinforce the floors.
But life without chocolate would be sad indeed.
So I came up with An Idea

Disclaimer

I am not a nutritionist, a doctor, or an incredibly clever person.
The information, statements or opinions I make in this blog are either things I've read, or completely made up.
If there is something that you feel is incorrect or offensive then please say so; if I feel that it is incorrect or offensive I will delete it :)
Do not sue me; I have nothing for you to take, complete waste of time and effort.
I am sharing a journey with you; I hope you will find it interesting, amusing and maybe even informative.
Of course, life changing, fabulous, witty, fantastic, worthy of praise and international acclaim would all be an added bonus.
Oh, it may contain nuts.