All home made...

I've been making chocolate and I promised on my last post that there'd be photos. Well there are, but I underestimated how difficult it is to take photographs whilst my hands are full!

I had wanted you to drool enjoy an online chocolate experience but instead, you may have to make do with just licking your lips a little.... no girding of loins necessary just yet. The full monty will have to wait for another day.

So, without further ado...

Milk chocolate melted to 42 degrees C

Cooling nicely ....

This is as cool as it needs to go before bringing the temperature back to about 29 degrees. This is called 'tempering' the chocolate. There are several methods - including putting it all on a marble slab - I'd love to try this but don't have a large marble slab....one day....so I 'seed' the hot chocolate with cold which helps to speed up the tempering process.

I tried very hard to capture a reading of 29 degrees, but every time I got there, I had to put the thermometer down, pick up the camera, point, focus....and by then, the coolness of the ambient temperature meant my reading had dropped...but this is a good temperature to work with the chocolate.

The milk chocolate was then poured into a tray - nice and thin - and sprinkled with a mixture of dried sour cherries, raisins, caramelised almonds and salted pistachios. The combination of sweet, sour, salty, chewy and crunchy is absolutely wonderful!

Next task - add the secret ingredient to the rest of the milk chocolate - popping candy!! This makes the chocolate pop in your mouth as you eat it...mind-blowing!

This was when it got rather tricky and I needed at least three hands...

Mind blowing popping dinosaurs....

and snails!

Chocolate bark, packed and ready to go.

And I also did a tray of white chocolate - this time sprinkled with intense-flavoured freeze-dried raspberry, the sour cherries and caramelised almonds. This is a lovely combination too as the fruit cuts through the sweetness of the chocolate.

I made dark chocolate too but, having found the photography fiddly and not a little risky, I didn't take any 'action shots'! I made the fruit and nut bark, some chocolate gingers and some after dinner mints.

Later on, the children found one of my Snakes and Ladders game that I use for teaching English. In fact, this is one that Romy made when she came to help me one day. And so they had a game of that. Only we had no counters, so they used a chickpea, a pinto bean and a white bean! Resourceful bunch they are!

Market day dawned rather frosty!!

Ruy volunteered to get up early and come and help. See, even our frost remover is 'home made' - it's a milk bottle top!

Yes, it was minus 6 degrees - and it wasn't 9.09am, it was 8.09am - we haven't put the clock back in the car! (Oh, it's dusty too, isn't it... I'll have a word in the right ear about that!)

Despite the cold, the sky was blue and La Mota looked spectacular in the morning sunshine.

The market was in car park of a bar just off the road between Alcala la Real and Alcaudete - and there was a pleasing number of other cars there.

However, I didn't get round to taking photos....but Ruy took a couple of me setting my stall out.

In the literal sense.











And we were able to nip in and get ourselves some nice toast with tomato and olive oil (absolutely delicious) and some coffee.

And Ruy had a bit of chocolate from time to time too....

And guess what! By 11 o'clock, I had to move everything around and stand in a strategic, shadow-casting shape as the sun had begun to melt my chocolates! Nothing too serious though. We had a good laugh, lots of chatting to fellow stall-holders and in the end, I discovered I had sold quite a bit of chocolate.

Just another week or so before the next market...which is the CHRISTMAS market!! So I shall be making chocolate Christmas trees, I think!