Christmas chocolates

Recipe

• Any good-quality chocolate. I used semi-sweet.

• Fillings of your choice. I used marzipan, nutella, and chocolate coffee beans.

• Glitter sprinkles

Tempered over a bain-marie:

• melted to 120 F

• seeded to 84 F

• gently warmed to 90 F

How it turned out

The glitter worked well as a topping. The silicone molds popped the chocolates out very easily.

But while they tasted great, they weren't tempered. If not stored in the fridge, they get a bit soft and melty.

What I learned

Tempering chocolate is hard. I'm going to have to do more research on the chocolate temperatures to make sure I was in the right range. And if I was, I may look to invest in a better digital thermometer for baking.

Making chocolate taste good is easy. It's quite forgiving in terms of flavours. I ran out of semi-sweet chocolate, so used milk chocolate. This happy accident made two-tone chocolates, which looked and tasted great.

Silicone molds are the way to go. My mom used to use plastic chocolate molds, and I'd watch her try and bang some of the more stubborn chocolates out. I never had this problem with the silicone - they pop out very easily.

Avoid bubbles. To avoid air bubbles ruining the design of your chocolate, use a very fine tipped piping bag for the melted chocolate, and really work to get it into all the details. When you're done filling your chocolates, give your molds a few solid bangs on the counter to try and pop any remaining bubbles.