Chocolate!!!!!1

I’m sure that many of you know that I’m a glutton for punishment and a cheap ass. So with the GF and my wedding date in the next few months, we decided to look around for “favors” for guests. Now I’ve always been the type of guy to say “I did you the favor of inviting you…”, and that’s what a typical guy would say. Now I know that it’s customary to give something to the guests, so the GF and I went looking for chocolates to give to people. (Here’s where my inner cheap ass comes out). I look at the price tag for chocolates for guests and I aboot shat myself. I thought that there has to be a better (and by better I mean cheaper) way to do this. So, I did some research and bought a couple of chocolate molds. Now many of you know that I have a second job at the Melting Pot in Pasadena, so I’m no stranger to chocolate or a double boiler. I think “how hard can this be?” I could practice with the chocolate at the MP for free and perfect my technique.

Not so fast… I made my first batch last night and I was impressed (at first). You know how it is. Your kid comes home from the hospital and he’s crying and some junk. But you just revel in your creation. “I made this!”, and you’re really proud of your creation. Not that I’m equating making chocolates to giving birth, but after a bit of time with your creation, you start to think of the little things that could be a little better.

/cutting to the chase
The chocolates ended up tasting like solid hot-cocoa, overly sweet and not very chocolaty. The chocolates had the look, feel and shape of chocolate, but not the flavor of chocolate.
Since I have some time to prepare to make world class chocolates for the wedding, I’m considering this round a “W”. The next round needs to be quite a bit better though.
So I’m asking you LGK Food Court faithful if you have ever used chocolate molds.

Well… have you?
How did it turn out?
What tricks do you have?
What type of chocolate works best? (i.e. quality, flavor, consistency) I want to use Valrona (sp?) to make the chocolates.
What type of mold did you use? Plastic or silicon?

I’ve done research online to figure out how to make it, but I think I was a little off. I melted the chocolate (without a thermometer), let it cool down (again without a thermometer) and then I poured it into the molds. I did use a double boiler though.

My plan is to make a box of chocolates each of our 60 guests. In this box will be four chocolates. Three will be molded and filled wonderful goodness, and one will be a hand formed truffle (probably champagne). If all goes well I’ll bring some of the experiments to the LGK ice games. If it doesn’t, I’ll be buying the chocolates.

So, how say you?

You're ambitious, Daxx. I've got nothing to offer here except for good luck wishes and a short story about chocolate.

When I got married, we randomly walked into a Godiva and saw they had a drawing. We filled out a card and basically won a whole bunch of favors for free. We didn't spend a dime in that store.

Free chocolate is good chocolate.

haha, i didn't think there were any little things that could be better when i took my kid home from the hospital...

i also didn't have favors at my wedding and i'm pretty sure no one noticed. no one cares as long as they have a good time. that is mighty ambitious. i thought it was mostly girls who occupied themselves with favors. i guess i was wrong. i have nothing to offer but good luck!

***UPDATE***
I bought a digital thermometer, plastic scraper and some much better chocolate over the weekend. I'm going to give it another shot on Friday night. We'll see how things turn out.

I don't know about you guys, but this stuff doesn't look that tough to do. Melt some chocolate in a mold and eat it. No biggie.

It does sound ambitious! Salt one of the varieties, salted chocolate/caramel=win.

Chocolate Tempering - How to Temper Chocolate - Tempered Chocolate

Send a box to me.

Oh....and good luck!