Long time no see

I better start this blog of with an apology to my number one reader. Sorry Mum. It has indeed been a while since I last posted and there is much to catch up on, pictures to see etc, but I promise, I'm on it. So far in the story, we had reached the part where the mousse-y module came to an end and the chocolate work was about to begin, so lets start from there.

Two weeks ago, my week began and ended with these little delights:

Our lessons were spent making a variety of chocolates that could be used as nice petit fours, or scoffed in greedy handfuls, whichever tickles your fancy. We made: white chocolate truffles, filled with raspberry and Malibu ganache, dark chocolate truffles filled with milk chocolate and cointreau, caramel cups loaded with Baileys and, my favourite, the heavenly Malakoff. Although all the chocolates were delicious, the Malakoff stands out as a bit special, filled with sliced almonds, praline and pistachios. We worked as a team again to ensure we had bundles of chocolates to take home.

The only chocolates we had to make individually were these hand moulded gems which may just pop up in our superior exam next term.

The main challenge faced is making sure the chocolate is well tempered but also warm enough so that it doesn't set the instant you use it. One more tap and a bit less chocolate dripping off my fingers and I'd score myself well on these.

The next task of the lesson was to make a chocolate centre piece. School gave us some templates to choose from, or the option of bringing in out own. I opted for the latter, choosing to make a chocolate Totoro. For those of you unlucky enough not to have come across this guy, he is a cartoon character from a Studio Ghibli film. He is also very popular in the novelty baking world. A quick google image search for "totoro cake" will prove this. I've been quite keen to get on the totoro patisserie ladder for a while now, so this was the perfect opportunity.  I was quite pleased with the way his cute chocolatey expression turned out. 

All in all, despite having thoroughly stained aprons, this was a brilliant week resulting in enough goodies to share about with the masses. I even had excess chocolate left over to try take on the big boys at Lindt and make a chocolate Bunny, after all, Easters on its way