Chocolate dipping fools!

Yesterday I got together with my friend Chef Tess for a total chocolate fest! Stephanie and I were fast friends in culinary school, had lost touch and were recently reunited. It's been so fun catching up and sharing in our mutal obsession with all things culinary - especially all things chocolate!

We started out dipping some salted caramels that I had made earlier. Salt? In the caramels? Yep! A perfectly divine combination...

If I'm a sucker for all things chocolate, truffles have to be at the top of the list of what I like. The smooth, silky, creamy centers that melt in your mouth after you break open the thin chocolate shell... Keeping with the caramel theme, these were milk chocolate caramel truffles.

What's a chocolate dipping day without cheesecake lollipops - one of my all time favorites?

I'd share more of what we did, but I'm feeling a bit snackely and might need to do a bit more product sampling. Can you blame me?

In the meantime, you can see more pictures here or on Chef Tess's Blog.

It's All About the Chocolate!

A couple of weeks ago, I finally got around to doing some recipe testing from the chocolate class I took with my friend Natalie in Portland back in April. These were some chocolate caramel truffles I made. I had never heard of incorporating caramel into the truffle filling, so this was something new for me. I made the first batch according to their recipe which uses A'peels instead of actual chocolate. I was pleasantly surprised at how much I liked them - for not being real chocolate, that is. The texture was great, and it was one of the easiest truffle fillings I've ever worked with. The nice thing is that this gave me a chance to try out my chocolate transfer sheets.

Since then I've made several batches using Ghirardelli milk chocolate, and the flavor is amazing. I find that the Ghirardelli milk has caramel overtones anyhow - though not as much as Lindt - so it worked nicely. The first time, I used blocks of chocolate that I purchased at Trader Joe's. After that I tried a batch with chocolate chips which are cheaper and more convenient. The chocolate chips actually made the filling easier to work with than the chocolate blocks - because the texture is closer to the A'peels in the original recipe. Unfortunately, because of the lower melting point in the cocoa butter, the truffles made with real chocolate don't stand up to the cutting and dipping required to use the transfer sheets effectively so I went back to rolling them. Honestly, the people I've share them with haven't minded at all! Someday, when I grow up to be a real chocolatier, I'll have a guitar and it'll be worth more recipe testing to get consistencies better.

Mmmm, mmmmm good!