Hello
Paul made a huge amount of chocolates this year as Christmas presents, they are much more complicated to do than I ever knew, so much work, but they really were very good, tasty and pretty as well.
![assorted assorted](https://jamfancy.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/assorted.jpg)
![squarechocs squarechocs](https://jamfancy.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/squarechocs.jpg)
We looked everywhere for white boxes with plastic windows, but had to settle on this for the packaging in the end
![chocs and bag chocs and bag](https://jamfancy.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/chocs-and-bag.jpg)
![packaged packaged](https://jamfancy.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/packaged.jpg)
There are two different types here, the filled and the ones that are dipped and then you put a transfer on the top. It all starts with melting, then tempering the chocolate, this forms a particular kind of crystal in the chocolate so that when it hardens it will be nice and shiney with a crisp bite to it.
![thechocolate thechocolate](https://jamfancy.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/thechocolate.jpg)
![tempering1 tempering1](https://jamfancy.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/tempering1.jpg)
Tempering involves a lot of shoving about of the chocolate with spatulas, it looks quite fun
![tempering2 tempering2](https://jamfancy.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/tempering2.jpg)
For the moulded chocolates you then fill up the moulds and tap them out, should have seen all the chocolate all over the place! Then after a day they are ready for filling, these were caramel. He did raspberry ganache, passionfruit ganache and an orange cointreau as well
![filling filling](https://jamfancy.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/filling.jpg)
![filled filled](https://jamfancy.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/filled.jpg)
Somehow we missed out pictures of the dipping ones, they are solidish centres that you fill a square of plastic with, let them set, cut them into squares and dip. The fillings were lovely, based on a hazelnut praline, all crispy caramel with delicious hazelnuts, we still have a tub of it that I keep dipping into. The transfers are amazing, you press on a little square of pattern after you have the dipped chocolate, then next day peel them off and voila!
I completely missed out on getting my share of these too as I was home on Christmas day babysitting our cat as he had just had surgery on his ear. Paul was in such a panic to get all the food in the car that morning not a spare was left!