Good Friday Projects

The joy of having a day off and messing about in the kitchen would be unparalleled if it wasn't for all the tidying up it creates... Despite that I've had a great time making Easter treats today. There are marzipan rabbits inspired by a picture on facebook - all you do is roll the marzipan into balls, pinch them out into an egg shape whilst flattening the base, snip out ear shapes with some scissors and lightly toast under the grill. The taste great (if you like marzipan).

I also thought it might be fun to try and make my own Easter eggs and get a bit more practice in with handling chocolate which is something I continue to struggle with - basically because it calls for quite a bit more patience than I possess in the general run of things. I think the eggs have been reasonably successful, I covered them in gold lustre to cover up finger prints and other unsightly blemishes, but it's going to take a lot more practice before I'm properly competent at this kind of thing and I really need to work out how to stick the halves of things together in a satisfactory manner - that and how to coat the inside of the moulds reasonably evenly. 

I also made some Gin and Tonic truffles (recipe from Hope and Greenwood's 'Miss Hope's Chocolate Box') which were going to go inside the eggs until I realised that would be pushing my luck/competence. This is the second lot of truffles I've made - first time round I was very heavy handed with the gin which gave the truffles one hell of a kick (great in an actual gin and tonic, disconcerting in a chocolate) second time round I restrained myself somewhat with generally pleasing results. 

I was a bit doubtful about 'Miss Hope's Chocolate Box' at first but find I keep going back to it for inspiration and instruction. What I particularly like about it this recipe is that the quantities are fairly modest - perfect for experimenting with when your not quite sure how much of a mess you'll make and don't want to overdo the calorie intake either. 

Chocolates!

It’s bonfire night and seven years to the day since I got the keys for my flat – to celebrate I’m listening to (but sadly can’t see any) fireworks go off somewhere in the distance and feeling sorry for myself because my back aches – oh how it aches, seven years ago I was more resilient and better off... Ah the rewards of home ownership. One thing I wouldn’t swap though is having my own kitchen in which to make as much mess as I like and with no consideration of anybody else’s needs. It is the best thing about living alone, which truthfully I don’t much care for, but god knows I would hate to share a kitchen again.

My last really quite messy experiment was of a suitably celebratory nature for an anniversary – I have finally braved the mysteries of tempering and made my own chocolates (not chocolate, that was made by Green and Black’s and very nice it was too). This is something I’ve wanted to have a go at for years but it’s always looked quite difficult (or at least fiddly) and the gubbins to do a good job (chocolate thermometer, moulds, maybe a marble slab, a suitable brush, a scraper thing if you’re going to use a slab, dipping forks, and of course ingredients) well by the time you’ve collected them the smartest offering from Charbonnel et Walker or Rococo begin to look like real bargains. Or so I thought.

 ‘Miss Hope’s Chocolate Box’ suggested some handy shortcuts and after a long time procrastinating over the price of moulds and a thermometer online I found satisfactory but cheaper equipment in a kitchen shop. (I was delighted, and so were they – both items had been flying off the shelves). The end result is that I made the salted caramel sea shells I’ve been dreaming about since I first read the book. It was a bit fiddly, you have to work quickly and it’ll take a bit of practice to get the chocolate shells a uniform and satisfactory thickness but it turned out not to be too hard or to take as long as I thought so I plan to make lots more...

Miss Hope’s Chocolate Box

I’ve been flirting with the idea of making my own chocolates since 2003 when Chantal Coady’s ‘Real Chocolate’ came out. I didn’t buy it, and didn’t start making my own but I browsed enough to realise that you need quite a lot of kit (marble slab, dipping forks, chocolate scrappers, moulds, a thermometer...) and most likely a steady hand and lots of patience. I did buy ‘Chocolate – The Definitive Guide’ by Sarah Jayne-Stanes (published by Grub Street which was inducement enough) it has excellent truffle recipes and more instructions regarding kit, I made the truffles but dipping them is tricky without the little fork things, and messy, so we ended up eating lots of truffle insides. The procrastination continued but now Hope and Greenwood have released ‘Miss Hope’s Chocolate Box’ and I’m determined that this will be the year I do it.

I really liked ‘Life is Sweet’ and have very high hopes for this sequel. There are a couple of disclaimers - I  sometimes find the jolly hockey sticks with extra camp approach a little distracting (although more often than not it makes me laugh and heaven knows there are more than enough cook books out there that take themselves far to seriously), and as already indicated there are a lot of things you need for some of these chocolates with couverture (for making nice shiny chocolate shells) which seems to be indispensable for the more advanced recipes - it's also expensive and not the sort of thing you can buy just anywhere. A degree of preparation is needed and  in the last two weeks I have managed to spend quite a lot of time online looking at moulds and wondering if an ordinary thermometer is very different in its range from a chocolate one, washed and scrubbed the dust off the marble slab that came from somewhere or other that I forget and has sat in the kitchen for the last six and a half years doing nothing, got a bit carried away by the idea of edible floral transfers; and bought precisely nothing, although I’m very close to some sea shell moulds, I really am. I think I might need some latex gloves too. Hobbies are expensive.

Despite the threat of financial outlay including the very real likelihood that making chocolates will be considerably more expensive than buying even the very best handmade designer labelled offerings this is still something I really want to have a crack at. If I had the patience and time the pear and chestnut truffles would be one of the first things on the list. There are lots of fudges that I will make, and an earl grey mousse that’s a definite as well. Fig and Cassis truffles look very do-able and are probably a Christmas present just waiting to happen, the praline is another present begging to happen, but the one I really, really, want to make? Salted caramel sea shells. They sound amazing and if I can pull it off look amazing. I would feel so clever, I would look so clever, people would be impressed, and I would probably eat too many of them and feel a bit sick. So you see I have to do it, possibly just as soon as I get paid.

The list of stockists at the back is excellent and altogether this is a nice, useful, and above all inspiring book. I know from ‘Life is Sweet’ that the instructions are reliable and the results good so anyone with a birthday coming up can hope for the best.