Warning: If the thought of doing a large project twice because it didn't turn out right the first time or the thought of wasting chocolate disturbs you, please skip this post. ;)My friend K and I needed to make favors for a school fund-raising evening. The event had a coffee theme to it and we wanted something cute and clever. So, a while back, we came up with the idea of chocolate-covered spoons that we could do ourselves - dip them in melted chocolate, drizzle with white chocolate, cover the end with plastic and a ribbon with a little tag saying: See what's stirring at... So cute, clever, and even inexpensive to do! Of course, we'd never done them before, but simple instructions were all over the internet - piece of cake (I should change that to piece of chocolate!).
We began the spoons 2 weeks ahead of the event (patting ourselves on the back for not doing it at the last minute). The dipping & drizzling was easy and the rest of it wasn't too bad. We each took half to finish up. They looked wonderful! "Job well done!" We said to each other.
After a few days, I noticed that some spoons were developing spots. K's were, also. Back to the internet we went - could storage or temperature be the problem? We discovered that the spots were "blooms" and occur when chocolate gets too hot in the melting process. Surely most of the spoons would still look OK for the event? Wrong!! The blooming took over all the spoons and they looked like we had made them 6 months ago and shoved somewhere in the garage until now. Back to the drawing board! Tried candy melts on a few (following melting directions EXACTLY) and they looked worse - not sure why. Came to the conclusion to just do them all over again with chocolate chips (melting carefully) as before and do it at the last minute so they would definitely look OK. To save $ of having to buy supplies again...here it is...we untied the ribbons and washed the ugly chocolate off of all the spoons! Sigh... (Thought about licking the chocolate off.)
K and I each did some spoons on our own (trying not to mutter under our breath...trying to be cheerful servants...wondering what the Lord was teaching us). The morning of the event, we were finishing the last of the spoons and realized that lots of them already looked bad!! We had done something wrong again! (We later got advice that chocolate for dipping should be melted with a double-boiler, not in the microwave - too uneven.) Talk about frustrating! We just used the ones that looked OK and it ended up that we had plenty (thank you, Lord!). The event was a success and lots of fun.
Morals of the story?: ...Do not be wise in your own eyes...By pride comes nothing but strife...Measure twice, cut once...Ugly chocolate still tastes good...
Do you have a moral to add??
I don't have a moral for your story, but I loved the story. Esp the part about untying the ribbons and washing the ugly chocolate -- starting completely over -- Geez!
ReplyDeleteI was recently helping a friend prepare for a big dinner party. We were making carmelized bacon. You roll bacon in brown sugar, place on parchment paper on cookie sheets, and bake.
Well, the first batch smoked up the house horribly -- not only the "cooking bacon" smell, but the "burning sugar" smell. The bacon tasted wonderful, but was too smoky to prepare. So we decided not to do a second batch. We decided we'd chop our freshly carmelized bacon into "bacon bits" and put it in our lovely salad.
First, it needed to cool. We put the bacon strips on paper towels. Big mistake. The paper towels stuck to the candied bacon strips. I picked most of the paper off, but still large hunks of paper were stuck to the bacon. Hmmm, what to do? We WASHED the bacon strips. Basically washed the burnt sugar and pesky paper off each strip.
What were we left with? Bacon.
;-) MK
LOL I can completely relate! I hope the dinner party turned out well...no doubt with a few chuckles between you and your friend as the salad course came out. :)
ReplyDeleteWow, I'm really sorry I ever missed this post. I didn't know you back then. I'm kind of disappointed and my view of you is a bit cloudy now! I don't know if I'll be able to get past this..........................okay I'm past it! I'm glad you learned a lesson.
ReplyDeleteBig Spotty Chocolate Hug to you my friend.
Oh wow! That does sound terrible! Glad you had enough anyway. This is why I have never tried anything with melting chocolate. Sounds way too complicated. Me & complicated in the kitchen do not mix :o)
ReplyDelete