Notes: What started out as a Valentine's idea turned into a much bigger project in the end. This chocolate was one of three that I made for Dr. S, and we ended up serving them at a games night we hosted on Saturday.
To make the shells, I tempered white chocolate and added quite a bit of liquid red food colouring to get a pink hue. Only the chocolate looked like it seized and I was worried that it was too thick to properly coat the mold. I ended up adding a decent quantity of melted cocoa butter to thin the mixture somewhat. The white chocolate I was using (Callebaut couverture chips) was difficult to work with and had an unpleasant smell to boot. Sigh, I suppose you get what you pay for.
For the filling, I finely diced candied ginger, then let it air dry. Fresh ginger is used to infuse the cream and it does a terrific job of quickly flavouring the liquid. This book calls for invert sugar in a lot of the fillings, and I happen to have some on hand, but it's awkward to work with. I used a trick I learned from baking class, dipping my hand in water before picking up blobs of liquid sugar. The completed ginger ganache was quite runny, making it tricky to fill the molds cleanly as the ganache often dripped freely from the paper cone.
When it came time to unmold the chocolates, these lips weren't coming out. This wasn't a surprise to me, because I've never had much success tempering and working with white chocolate. Using a wooden spoon, I banged and whacked the sturdy polycarbonate mold until splinters started flying and I realized that I had destroyed my utensil! After an hour in the freezer, all the chocolates eventually popped out. I immediately saw that my tempering was off: there were grainy blotches all over the surface. Aside from the appearance though, the chocolates were delicious. A bold gingery flavour, with the surprise of a few bits of candied ginger in the centre.
To better my technique, I think I need to carefully study the directions for making molded chocolate given in Peter Greweling's book. He has a lot of tips that I'm not following. For example, prewarming the mold, and letting the chocolate sit for a while after filling the mold to develop a thicker shell. Practise makes perfect.
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