Life has gotten in the way of the blog. Well, life and Bejeweled Blitz. Prepare to be bombarded with 5 weeks of cakes and candy!
First, we finish up the Sacher Torte.
Glazing the cake with apricot simple syrup, and then a layer of ganache.
Creating embellishments with tempered chocolate.
Caraibe Torte, another chocolate sponge cake.
Dobos Torte, a sponge cake with chocolate and caramel.
And now for truffles, bon bons and toffee.
Truffles and bon bons start with flavored ganache, then molded to the shape you want. Ganache can "break" easily, especially milk and white chocolate ganache. I had a lot of broken ganache in two weeks.
A true truffle starts as a blob, then is rolled into a ball and dipped in chocolate.
My first truffles! Lemon ganache.
Ganache may also be piped into little logs, and then dipped.
Blood orange logs.
Poodle curls sprinkled on black currant truffles.
It's a bit easier to make molded chocolate. The ganache is still temperamental, though.
Some chocolate molds have false bottoms to allow the use of trasfer sheets.
The leaves on the far right are lemon-mint bon bons.
Cinnamon bon bons, my favorite.
Passion fruit vanilla bon bons with airbrushed color.
Chocolate peanut butter bon bons.
And now toffee, dipped in chocolate.
Then cashew brittle.
I was feeling discouraged during the chocolate candies weeks. I messed up tempering chocolate and several ganaches, and made a mess of a birthday cake. I had to prove that dropping one career and going back to school for another was worth it. Raspberries and cream cookies did the trick.
