Christmas chocolates

   This year for Christmas I decided I wanted to make candy, in particular filled chocolates, for gifts. We made candy one year for Christmas for my grandparents, and I remembered having fun with it. Besides, ever since making the caramel sauce I'd been salivating over the idea of making my own salty caramel-filled chocolates. Most of the ones you buy from the store are really just dipped chewy caramels. They're good, but I prefer chocolates filled with soft caramel that oozes out when you bite into it. Also, Maki introduced me to Amazon Student free 2-day shipping, which is sure to bring me financial ruin this year. The chocolate molds were at least cheap.
   The caramels were a definite, and Dennis's mother suggested peanut brittle. I also really wanted to make some cream-filled chocolates like the kind you get in assorted boxes. Although these are often called buttercreams, they're usually filled with some sort of fondant instead, since it's less perishable. I had all sorts of grand ideas about many many flavors of creams, and maybe chocolate covered cherries, and pistachio butter cups (totally going to do that at some point), but ultimately settled on six different fillings, plus the peanut brittle and a truffle that I intended to roll in cocoa powder.
   I made the fillings first. I made chocolate ganache and flavored half with almond extract and half with Grand Marnier. With the caramel, I used slightly less cream in an attempt to get it just a little firmer than the sauce usually is. For the fondant, I tried one recipe that is essentially just poured fondant - sugar, water and corn syrup - and one that uses cream in place of the water. The cream fondant had a very pronounced dairy flavor. I ultimately decided that it really would only work with vanilla extract. I split the plain fondant in half and added orange zest and extract to one, and red food coloring and raspberry extract to the other. I also made a maple syrup fondant that gave me a lot of grief. I'll add notes to the recipe hopefully making it less annoying.
   Fillings done, I turned to tempering chocolate. I wanted to use tempered chocolate because it's nicer looking and has a better texture, but mostly because I was paranoid about getting the candies out of the molds, and tempered chocolate shrinks more as it cools. It's also a tremendous pain in the ass (although not particularly difficult) to do. The process goes like this: chop up dark chocolate into small pieces and place in a microwave-safe bowl. Blast in ten-second increments, stirring after each, until the chocolate reaches 120 F. Set the bowl in another bowl that contains cold water, and stir until the temperature reaches 84 F. Then take the bowl out of the cold water and stick it in yet a third bowl, this time containing hot water. Stir again until temperature just reaches 89 F. Your chocolate is now tempered.
   That mess out of the way, I spooned some chocolate into each of the molds, dropped the molds on the table to get chocolate into every corner, then flipped them over a cooling rack/cookie sheet combo to let the excess drip out. Had I been more careful about keeping the fillings out of the cookie sheets, I could have remelted the drips, but honestly, this process is tedious, and the thought of reclaiming drips of chocolate wore me out. Note the distinct lack of pictures as I got into the mold-filling process.
   Once the chocolate is firm enough not to slump back down in the molds, but before it's completely hard, scrape off any high bits around the edge of the mold with a small knife. This will make your life easier, trust me. Also at this time, check for any missed spots on the walls of the molds. You could put the molds into the freezer to cool them quickly, but this might ruin the temper of the chocolate. I just waited for them to dry. Once dried, I filled them with my flavored fillings (the caramel and truffle were soft enough to spoon in, but the fondant hand to be rolled into balls and pressed into the molds), then got to tempering more chocolate for the bottoms (tedium!). I did put the caramels in the freezer to firm up the filling, since by that point the chocolate shell had aready dried. Applying the bottoms of the candies was actually more challenging than I'd have thought - a) if you've overfilled the chocolates, the filling kind of oozes out when you try to get the bottom flat and b) it's difficult to get the bottom flat both when the chocolate is melted, as it tends to pull out when you scrape it, and when hardened, as the candy has a tendency to pop out of the mold as you're trying to shave off the high spots (this is why it's a good idea to trim them before you fill them). All I can say by way of advice is to practice, and not overfill the candies.
   Once again, wait until your candies are hard, then with a paring knife, try to knock off the inevitable ragged edges. Once you're satisfied, or frustrated, flip the mold over onto your cooling rack, twisting or pressing on the mold as necessary to pop the candies out (but be gentle, so as not to break them). Try to avoid both handling the candies and getting little chocolate shavings on them - they'll look better that way. Also try to do all of your scraping of them while they're still in the molds for the same reason. Just leave them alone once they're out. I got better at this as I went on - my later batches were better-looking than my first ones.
 
   No getting around it - this is an all-weekend project. The fillings each took 1/2 hour to an hour. One round of molded, filled candies (about 20) took me about three hours from tempering the chocolate to unmolding them. Between each round, there's about an hour's worth of cleaning up chocolate drippings, washing off your spatulae/thermometers/limited number of spoons, refreshing the cold and hot water bowls and putting away of finished chocolates so your boyfriend doesn't eat them all. Oh, and count on using a lot of dishes and dish towels.
Some notes on specific candies:

• It's especially important not to overfill the caramels, since this sauce is so oozy. But hot damn, they're good. While the first application of chocolate is still slightly tacky, sprinkle a few grains of sea salt along the inside of the mold for extra salty goodness.
• Both fondants are very sweet, and so are best used in molds that are relatively shallow. They're overwhelming in the deeper truffle molds.
• The cream fondant was good, but I don't know that it was good enough to justify a second batch. Additionally, I was definitely worried about leaving it out too long, what with all of that cream. I think I'd just make more of the plain fondant next time.
• The fondants are all firm enough to roll into balls and dip into the chocolate, as long as you work fast. Plus, if you then roll them in chopped nuts, you don't even have to temper the chocolate. This is very messy, but it's much faster. I did this with the maple creams - that stuff is so sweet that it really needed something like roasted almonds to counterbalance all that sugar.
• If the truffle filling has cooled completely, you can zap it in the microwave or stir it over your hot water bowl to get it soft enough to spoon again. Or, you can do as Maki does and shape it/coat it by hand.
• Do not try to pipe your leftover truffle filling into little Hershey's kiss shapes. It will look like poo. Do what Maki does with her truffles if you get tired of filling molds.
• Even with all of the sugar in everything I made, I still kept the candies refrigerated until I gave them away. Many of the fillings had cream and/or butter, and I didn't want to take any spoilage risks. If you're eating/giving them away the same day, though, I wouldn't worry.

   Ultimately, this was a real project, and by the end of it the smell of chocolate made me slightly sick. But! The results were great and people really liked them. I think I'll do it again next year for Christmas. It's undoubtedly cheaper than buying fancy chocolates, but the cost does add up - you go through the chocolate pretty quick. I think it would definitely be more fun as a group project too, and more molds would really help speed up the process. I wasted a lot of time cooling my heels while the chocolate hardened.