Chocolate

if you melt chocolate, you have to temper it so that it is nice and shiny and snappy and not all swirly and soggy. it means you have to heat it high enough, cool it low enough, and reheat it enough to use without getting it hot enough to take it back out of temper. it means there are lots of thermometers out and chocolate pretty much everywhere (like my cuticles . . . for about a week).



this is the first big bunch of chocolate i tempered, but i tempered A LOT more.



this is a chocolate fruitcake. it tasted fine. it was pretty much a regular fruitcake with cocoa in it.


the leaves stuck on the glaze were made by tempering white and dark chocolate then piping the white chocolate on lemon leaves, dipping the leaves in dark chocolate, letting the chocolate set, then peeling the real leaves off.



there were a lot of leaves on that 6 inch cake.