Candy - Chocolate Creams

I've made candy twice before.  My father used to make English toffee just about every winter around Christmas.  He'd make a big batch where he lived in Indiana, and we would eat half of it on the road between there and Perham, MN, where my grandparents lived.  The rest wouldn't last very long once we arrived.  Ohgoditwasgood.  I have made it twice.  The first time, my roommate rescued the recipe (good thing too, since I was bringing it to my future in-laws for Christmas), since I had not heated the toffee enough.  The second time, I nailed it.  Did I mention that this toffee is good?  My sweet tooth probably caused me to eat 75% of that batch of toffee.  It wasn't my fault at all; my teeth made me do it, I swear.

So I was excited to get to the candy section of the cook book.  Whether the recipe I chose turned out or not, it would, at the very least, be sweet.  Oh, and chocolate.  How can a person not like working with chocolate.  Who knows, perhaps this could lead to something greater.

Who wouldn't want a chocolate river and pleasure boat?  I'd be singing Pure Imagination non-stop.

Preparation

This was another fairly simple recipe.  Mix stuff, coat in chocolate, chill.  Piece of cake... er, candy. 

I wonder why there isn't a name after this recipe.

Unfortunately, there is something of a problem right away.  The recipe calls for syrup.  It is probably safe to assume that its not calling for maple syrup.  The question is whether it is calling for corn syrup, or chocolate syrup. Considering the fact that some of the other recipes are clearly referring to chocolate syrup when they mention syrup, that is the choice I made.  First the mixing.

Let's not make a powdered sugar cloud.

This does not bode well.

Mixing the filling was easy enough, but it became clear very quickly that this was not going to make for easy assembly.  The filling was very soft and sticky.  There wasn't remotely going to be a chance that I could make balls out of this.  I didn't want to alter the recipe, so I stuck it in the refrigerator to chill for a while.  It works for cookie dough and pie crust, why not for candy filling?

Next, melting the chocolate.  The recipe calls for a double boiler to melt the chocolate.  That's probably the safest way to do it, as I've had chocolate seize up when I tried to melt it in the microwave in the past.  As directed by the recipe, I went out and  bought some Hershey's chocolate bars.  When I'm craving sweets, Hershey's bars will work in a pinch.  They also work fairly well for s'mores.  Given a choice though, if I'm just going to be eating chocolate or cooking chocolate this is usually one of the last chocolates I'd reach for. I'm not a chocolate snob, as I'm perfectly happy to pick up a Snickers or Twix bar, but Hershey just doesn't make very good chocolate for eating by itself.  In chocolate reviews, if Hershey's milk chocolate is mentioned at all, it does not fare well.  More often than not, it isn't taken seriously enough to even show up in reviews.  

You can almost see the waxiness in the chocolate.

It does melt smoothly, though.

Once the chocolate was melted, I took the filling out of the refrigerator only to find that it was still difficult to form into balls.  I did my best... for a while.  I sort of made balls and dipped half a dozen of them in the melted chocolate before I gave up and scooped small portions of the filling and put it directly on the pan.  Then I spooned some of the melted chocolate over them.  The result was less than appealing.

Sort of okay-looking balls on the left.  Squishy messes on the right.

Spooning melted chocolate on soft sticky chocolate filling was not the easiest process.  The hot chocolate warmed and partly melted the filling.  It was sticky mess.  I did not have high hopes for the result.

The final product.  *sigh*

Reaction

If you don't have very high expectations, you can't be too disappointed, right?  Not always.  If these chocolate creams were a living animal, they would be a good example of evolution developing defense mechanisms.  Looking at them, nobody would want to eat them.  They're probably poisonous.

I don't have a typical set of reactions from my family 'cause honestly, they weren't very good.  Sarah looked at them and passed.  I made these last weekend, and there are still half a dozen that are uneaten.  They are not good.  They sort of taste like chocolate, and they're almost too messy to make it worth it.  The chocolate is grainy, the taste is only vaguely chocolaty.  They're deceiving too.  I know exactly what is in them, but the light color of the "filling" makes you think you think you're getting a peanut butter filling, or a caramel filling.  But no, it is just a sweet, sticky mess.

Sarah finally had one a couple days ago.  She had one bite, and put the rest back.  She complained that the candy was grainy and just didn't taste good.  "Life's too short to eat bad chocolate,"  she said.  "Even if this is the only chocolate around?," I ask.  "Definitely."

Bonus Reaction:  I subjected volunteers in the IB Sports, Exercise, and Health Science class to the chocolates.  In exchange for sugar, they gave me their written reactions.

"While the appearance resembled something less than delightful, this chocolate (which didn't poison me) was quite good and I enjoyed it very much."  Clearly, this kid has never had good chocolate before.  I'll chalk this reaction up to a unrefined palate.

"The first thought I had is that it tastes and feels like fudge, very sweet, yet rich chocolate taste.  Like dark taste.  If I could buy this, I would."  These students must be abusing intoxicating substances during school.

"It is very sweet and by far one of the best homemade chocolate that I've ever had."

I sense a business opportunity here.  Make cheap, bad chocolate, tell teenagers that it is homemade, and charge them lots of money for it.

In this case, I don't disagree.

Next time: Vegetables!