Lotsa Choccy

You could be forgiven for thinking I've been lazy in the approach to Christmas since I've been so quiet on the blog.  It's true that I haven't been baking recently, but that's only because I've instead been experimenting with making chocolates.

It's taken a few attempts to get the fillings right but I finally got there in time for Christmas, and gave myself the mammoth task of making enough to give to all my family.

It would have been easy to opt for standard truffles rolled in cocoa powder, or even peppermint creams, but I've never been someone to go for the easy option.  So I took inspiration from the Double Chocolate Salted Caramel Cupcakes, and decided to make chocolates filled with soft, salted caramel.  This idea just kept growing, and eventually what I produced (in various batches along the way) was:

• Soft butter caramel
• Salted caramel (soft caramel with cracked sea salt)
• Banoffee (soft caramel with mashed banana)
• Peanut caramel (soft caramel with crushed roasted peanuts)
• Pistachio cream (whipped cream, lightly sweetened, with crushed pistachios)
• Maple & pecan cream (whipped cream with crushed toasted pecans and maple syrup)
• Ginger cream (whipped cream with finely chopped preserved ginger and ginger syrup)
• Gin fizz (whipped cream, lightly sweetened, with gin and lemon zest, finished with a dusting of sherbert for the 'fizz')

And here they are:


A small selection of the caramels and pistachio cream


I do have a small problem now when it comes to chocolates.  Others just won't do!  They're nice, but they're not my own recipes made to my taste with my favourite flavours.  They don't make me produce that little moan of pleasure when I bite down.  For someone who needs to get back to a healthy diet and lifestyle, knowing there are leftover fillings in the freezer and plenty of special chocolate ready for filling moulds is a dangerous thing!

Oh, so very dangerous....

Ah, but now we come to the joint creation of the richest yule log in the world, made by my sister and me.  We decided in our infinite wisdom to make a nice dessert from one of our new baking books that Santa brought.  We settled on a Buche de Noel from Paul Hollywood's 'How to Bake'.  However me being me, I couldn't resist playing with the recipe, and instead of coating it with the chocolate buttercream that was suggested we instead went for a chocolate ganache.  It was filled with raspberries and (instead of whipped cream) extra thick cream with brandy.

Buche de Noel, aka the richest yule log in the world.  Ever.

In my defense one of my nieces doesn't like buttercream, so it wasn't all my fault.  However as nice as this cake was (and still is), it doesn't change the fact that it has the ability to melt fillings from ten paces.  Perhaps next time I'll just stick with the buttercream.  Oh, or I'll use milk instead of 70% chocolate.  Yeah, that might do the trick.

Lebkuchen will be next.  Oh yes!