Chocolate making just for me!

One of my lovely birthday gifts was a chocolate making workshop.... To do at home! This was perfect for me as I am quite antisocial at times! I took the kit away with me to Kent where we were staying for another birthday adventure and happily spent a good couple of hours on Saturday afternoon creating chocolatey goodness!

The kit itself is beautifully presented and jam packed with everything you'll need for the experience: from the chocolate and decorations to the cookie cutters and baking paper.  There's also a massive instruction sheet which you can hang up in the kitchen to help you along the way. 

First of all, you have to melt all the chocolate: there's dark and milk...and plenty of it!  Once it's melted you start on your first creation: chocolate truffles! You make the ganache by stirring double cream into some of your melted chocolate, it's incredibly decadent and took all my self restraint not to eat it there and then. After that, it's time to practise your piping skills and pop the ganache into the fridge until later, when they're ready to be dipped and decorated. 

One of my favourite parts of the experience was making the tempered chocolate. It involved putting chocolate on your top lip to check the temperature - the chocolate moustache caused a lot of amusement and giggles!

Once your chocolate is the perfect temperature to give it a lovely, shiny finish, you can start coating fudge with chocolate and using edible transfers to decorate. The best bit is, your instructions tell you to eat the leftovers and it was delicious!

You also get to flavour your chocolate and in the kit there are rose and lemongrass waters. I love rose flavouring and have used it in cooking before but I have never thought to use lemongrass with chocolate. It's so fragrant and citrusy! After flavouring your chocolate, it's time to get creative and decorate! You can choose from white chocolate shavings, caramelised hazelnuts and strawberry chocolate curls, which all look beautiful on the chocolates.

We had so much chocolate left over (must have been very restrained and not eaten much chocolate throughout the making process!) so we made extra giant chocolate buttons, chocolate covered strawberries and blueberries and a massive slab of chocolate too! 

The whole experience was so much fun and it was great to be able to do it at home and in my own time. The kit gave you enough guidance to feel confident enough to do it alone but was not super rigid - you could be a bit creative! You make around forty chocolates which you can then package in little cellophane bags and they look so appetising.  I was so impressed with the quality of the kit and the ingredients - it all felt (and tasted) luxuriously delicious.   I would definitely recommend this experience to chocolate lovers for any occasion; you can get the kit from The Chocolate Hedgehog.

Mum's Amazing Elderflower and Lemon Cordial

My Mum makes the most amazing, delicious, summery elderflower cordial.  The elderflower season is very short and they only bloom once a year, so go check those hedges and see if you can find some!  My favourite way to drink the cordial is with a (generous) measure of gin and lemonade.  Perfect for lazy Sunday summer barbecues.  

Recipe

Preparation time : 40 mins

Steeping of flowers : 48 hours

Ingredients

1kg sugar

1.5 litres of boiling water

4 medium lemons, washed

30 large elderflower heads, shake to remove insects

55g citric acid (available from pharmacies or homebrew shops)

Method

Place sugar into a large saucepan or stock pot, pour in water and stir until the sugar has dissolved and leave to cool.

Grate the rinds of the lemons with a fine grater and add to the sugar water.

Slice the lemons into thick slices and add to the water.  Add in the citric acid and stir, then add the elderflower heads and stir. 

Cover with a clean cloth and leave to steep for 48 hours.

Strain through a fine muslin cloth into a bowl.

Pour into sterilised  bottle using a funnel and store in a dark, cool place.   

Easy, so delicious and refreshing!   We have also used the cordial as flavouring for home made ice-cream! 

My Mum did a great job of taking all

the photos too!

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Mexi-cooking: Horchata

I use the term "cooking" very loosely, because no actual cooking was required in making one of my favourite Mexican drinks! Horchata is an agua fresca (cool or fresh water), which is a very popular drink here to cool you down on the sweltering hot days. Agua fresca is water flavoured with whatever your heart so wishes: fruit, hibiscus flower, or like horchata for example, rice milk flavoured with vanilla and cinnamon. Delicious! I decided to try and make this drink because it's something that I will miss when I'm back in England and luckily found it was super easy to make. I followed this recipe, but adjusted it a little to suit my gallstones and lactose intolerant body!

Ingredients

• 1 cup uncooked white long grain rice
• 5 cups of water
• 1 cup of almond milk
• 1/2  tablespoon of vanilla extract
• 1/2 tablespoon of ground cinnamon 
• 1/2 cup of white sugar

Method

1. Put the rice and water into a blender and blend for approximately one minute, until the rice is in small pieces.  
2. Leave the rice and water to stand at room temperature for three hours.
3. Strain the rice water into a jug, discard the rice. 
4. Stir in the almond milk, vanilla extract, cinnamon and sugar.
5. Chill and enjoy!  

So easy!  A simple, delicious and refreshing drink for balmy summer days.  You can also add strawberries to give it a fruity twist or coconut milk instead of almond milk for a tropical treat.  One less thing for me to miss when I'm freezing back in England!

(Apologies for rubbishy photos... Mexican kitchen doesn't make for pretty backgrounds)