From chocolate lovers to enthusiasts or even someone who fancies a piece now and again but loves a good afternoon out, we went to an experience this weekend I thought you’d all love to hear about.
Last weekend Alex and I spent a fun afternoon in the Ibis Hotel in Euston at a chocolate workshop through Red Letter Days, learning about and making the delicious stuff we call chocolate.
Along with 24 others, we spent the beginning of the session with Becca (the session teacher – she was great, really informative and friendly) telling us all about where chocolate comes from, the health benefits of a good dark chocolate and the problems with the chocolate growing industry at present – did you know less and less farmers are growing cocoa due to the price they are paid? Sad news and something that needs to change.
We then spent the rest of the session being taught how to make some delicious dark truffles and were set up to make our own in our pairs.
These tasty truffles would make an awesome Christmas present. Here’s how we made them:
We started by making a thick chocolate ganache from mixing one part long-life whipping cream and two parts melted chocolate. It soon turns into a thick, stiff chocolate mixture. Note: you have to mix it right from when you start to pour as otherwise it can go grainy.
Alex giving it a good stir…making himself a useful partner
The ganache thickening up…
Next it goes into a piping bag to be kneaded – our body temperature is warm enough to warm the ganache slightly and make a good consistency to pipe onto trays and harden slightly.
We learnt the best way to coat our truffles, putting on plastic gloves, dipping them in tempered chocolate and rubbing over the palms before rolling truffles balls through the hands and popping in a tray of topping to be covered. Again, you need to be quick with this as the tempered chocolate sets quickly so you could end up with half covered truffles – great team work is the key, or choosing a partner you trust to cover your truffles at speed :P
My truffles covered in toppings….yummm!
Plain truffles drizzled in white chocolate
We topped ours with crushed nuts, cocoa powder, icing sugar and coconut. We also left a few plain, just covered in tempered chocolate so we could drizzle with white chocolate.
Look how fab they looked:
We then packaged and got to take home. I love wrapping and packing – makes everything so pretty!
Yes, I’m definitely an elf in another life
Overall we had such a fun afternoon, learning and creating, and to take so manydelicious truffles home to share with family and friends was great!
We thought it was a great experience for all, from friends to family or even dates! More information on the Red Letter Days Chocolate Workshops can be found here : http://bit.ly/1LCeIRZ, where you can also book.
With Christmas on the horizon, this might make a fab Christmas present for a chocolate lover at heart!
Chloe xx
*I was invited to go along to review the Chocolate Workshop from Red Letter Days. All views my own.
