Pistachio and vanilla white chocolates

This weekend we decided to make some chocolates because we haven’t made anything in a while (except for Dad’s idea to make caramel that he burnt!). We put vanilla in our chocolates to make them unique. The vanilla flavour came from the real seeds from a vanilla pod (make sure to avoid any woody bits). Our latest innovation was to put crushed or chopped pistachios at the bottom of the moulds so that there would be pistachio at the top of the chocolates.

Ingredients:

200g of good quality white chocolate
1 vanilla pod
Handful of pistachio nuts.

Making the chocolates:

First, we broke up the white chocolate. Then we chopped up the pistachio nuts (with a mix of small, medium chunky bits and a bit of pistachio dust). Finally, I deseeded the vanilla pod.

Then I heated the chocolate using a glass bowl over some boiling hot water in a pan. The chocolate was heated up to 45 – 50 degrees. Put the chopped pistachios into the moulds – not too much. Take the white chocolate off the heat; it should be 30 degrees. We used ice in a bowl to cool it down.

The finished product:

What do you think about my final product? Just for decoration and a bit of pizazz, I put the leftover pistachio around the plate for decoration. They tasted great! Just saying – I’m not bragging! The whole family loved them. Take a look:

Comment if you try them and they turn out well. If they didn’t, don’t worry – try again next time and hopefully you will get it right.

My Kitchen Kit

This Christmas I got this great collection of baking and chocolate-making kit.

One of my favourites was the magic sparkles (top right). I have also got gold leaf – real gold!

I have a range of silicone moulds which are easy to use for chocolate making.

I also have two new baking and cooking books that I highly recommend! I really like Tilly Ramsey because she inspires young cooks. Her television show is really great: with fun family jokes and recipes anybody could make.

In future blogs I will be talking more about the rest of my kit that I will be using in my recipes.

Freya :0)

Christmas Chocolates

This Christmas I made chocolates for my family. Take a look at the finished product!

The chocolate making process:

First, chop up the chocolate into rough pieces (a 100g bar of good quality white and milk chocolate – Menier chocolate patissier), then put them into a bowl over a pan of simmering water. Make sure the bowl is not touching the water. Give it a stir, but not too much.
Heat the chocolate to 50 to 55 degrees Celsius. You’ll need a thermometer.
When it gets to the temperature, take the bowl off the heat – keep stirring until it gets down to 30 – 32 degrees.
Put the chocolates into silicone moulds. Flatten with a spatula. There are lots of different moulds available, but I chose stars and flowers. Make sure the moulds are deep if you want to put nuts in. I chose pistachios and hazelnuts as they were small enough. You don’t need to put in nuts – it is your opinion.
Chill the chocolate in the fridge. Keep checking until they are nice and hard and don’t feel soft.
Finally, pop out the chocolates from the silicone moulds. Then you spray or colour the chocolates with glitter. The pink colour is a glitter spray that goes well with the white chocolate, whereas the gold glitter went well with the milk chocolate (I had to dab on the gold glitter).
I had ten of each chocolates.

I hope you enjoy making them if you get the chance.

Freya :0)