Mother's Day chocolates

I made homemade chocolates for the first time for Christmas last year, and I thought it would be fun to make more for Mother's Day and mail some to Mom-in-Law and Mum-in-Law, since we didn't plan far enough in advance to send them any for Christmas.

I decided to make the process easier this time by making the ganache fillings farther in advance (and making plenty extra) since they have to be frozen anyway. I made the following flavors:


plain milk chocolate
milk chocolate coconut
milk chocolate strawberry
milk chocolate cardamom
milk chocolate earl grey
milk chocolate jasmine
milk chocolate chai
milk chocolate buttermilk
milk chocolate hazelnut
milk chocolate balsamic
milk chocolate lemon
milk chocolate rum

white chocolate strawberry
white chocolate raspberry
white chocolate chai

plain dark chocolate
dark chocolate buttermilk
dark chocolate raspberry

dark chocolate balsamic

It was an interesting experiment. I learned many things. The biggest being that I still am not tempering my chocolate correctly, as it develops little spots that make it look like aliens with the plague. I also learned that white chocolate ganache is marvelously easy to handle if you skimp just a touch on the cream. White chocolate ganache that is creamier, though, makes pleasantly gooey fillings, even though it's nearly impossible to freeze sufficiently or to handle when dipping. Ditto on the rum ganache. (The white chocolate raspberry and milk chocolate rums came looking rather monstrous. They were also the tastiest chocolates by far.) Milk ganache without enough cream refused to be molded. The earl grey came out nicely; the jasmine and chai were a bit strong for my taste. (All three were done two bags to half a cup cream.) The cardamom was pleasant (ten pods to half a cup cream, nuked repeatedly for brief bursts). Buttermilk was nice in milk chocolate but not in dark. Balsamic came out tasting too sweet. (What my husband learned from this process: Balsamic vinegar is not for drinking.) The lemon milk chocolate was very nice. The coconut remains one of my favorites. Imitation strawberry flavoring is horrid; strained, pureed raspberries are wonderful.

I apologize for not including recipes; I just sort of throw these together, so some of the consistencies are a bit off, and I have no idea how much of anything is going in. I'm going to start keeping track, though, so someday when I have things figured out, I'll post proportions.

This one was my favorite. I think it looks like a gargoyle.