My cake obession has taken a back seat this month. Now that Christmas is near I have been in the kitchen making a different kind of treat. This past week I have made 6 lbs of fudge, 4 lbs of golden carmels, and dozens of homemade chocolates.
My Mom started the tradition of making chocolates at Christmas time. One year she wanted to make them, so she took and class and has over the years become an expert on the subject. Every year as a child I loved watching the process, and enjoyed eating the mistakes. There aren't very many mistakes now, my Mom is a master at it. Now that I am older I enjoy the work of making them, just as much as eating them, to me it means that it really is Christmas time. Making chocolates is not for the faint of heart. There is no easy melting of chocolate chips, no quick pre-made dough to work with. It takes hours of prep work, and hours of dipping. The results are absolutely heavenly though.
Days before the big dipping day centers are made. Our families traditional center flavors are peanut butter, orange, and raspberry. They are made, rolled, and kept cool until the day of dipping.
My sons were able to help me this year which added to the fun of this tradition.
Early in the morning of the dipping day you start to shave chocolate. High quality baking chocolate, sold only at candy stores. Some years we have made up to 1500 chocolates, using 20 lbs of chocolate, other years we have only made a few hundred, using only 5 or so pounds. The shavings will then be melted in a crockpot, on the LOWEST setting, otherwise you end up with burnt chocolate.
It takes several hours for the chocolate to melt this way, but it really is the only way to get a nice consistancy.
Next you need to turn on Christmas music. I don't think it is even possible to make these without the music to set the mood. Then you open all your windows! Cold tempatures help the chocolate set up properly, we dress warm with several layers and open our home to 40 degree weather.
Once the chocolate is melted we place about two cups into a mixer. The chocolate has to be tempered now, moved around a bit. This insures the chocolate will set up beautifully, without any air bubbles or cloudiness. Cups and cups of chocolate are added during the process of dipping. The fun part of making these with family is that we use the same crockpot, same mixer, trays, etc every year. Now, these pieces of equipment carry so many memories.
Centers go into the mixer one at a time, get covered in chocolate.
Using a nifty tool we place the centers on a wax lined tray. Quickly toppings are added, if any, to identify different flavors. For example, chopped peanuts are placed on peanut butter centers, orange sprinkles on orange centers, etc.
Once centers are dipped, we may my favorite chocolates, haystacks! We pour a few cups of toasted unsweetened coconut straight into the mixer and mix it with more tempered chocolate. Then using spoons, we fill paper cups full of this mixture.
They are so good, you can never eat just one of these.
The centers are then finished (once they are set up and hardened) by putting them in lovely little cups.
The children are happy to help with the clean up.
They lick clean all the utensils used during the day.
Now that our chocolates are made, it really feels like Christmas is here.
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