So chocolate season is over for the year – there are maybe four or five pounds left, which I will feed to my coworkers.  And that is IT!  I am much relieved.  I think next year I’ll scale down a little more – even 65 lbs was a stretch for me, probably because I tried doing too many flavors of truffles.  (The ganache-centered bonbons have to be made in the three days before Thanksgiving, the others can be done a week or two before.)  I think I’m also going to change the size of the candy box I use to something that will fit inside a flat-rate Priority Mail box – which could save me 50% of packing and shipping costs, and require less shipping material to boot!  But other than that, I’m satisfied with this year’s efforts.

Yesterday was mostly recovering from several 12-to-14 hour days of obsessive chocolatiering, and cleaning up the worst of the chocolate carnage.  The rest of this week will likely be at least partly cleaning, and then I’ll turn my attention to weaving.  (I haven’t yet received the patterns from Sharon, my sewing coach, so I can’t work on muslins just yet.)  I have the 27-yard warp (that’s 21.5 MILES of fine silk thread!) beamed on and ready to thread, just need to thread it, sley it, tie on, and get on to WEAVING!

I still have a lot of prep work to do before the packing crew arrives, so I won’t write more right now – gotta run and get these inserts printed!!

But what to eliminate?  They all taste so good!  True, the violet syrup got largely drowned out by the white chocolate, but the flavor was rescued with the help of a little lime zest, and now tastes divine.  The strawberry-balsamic vinegar is heavenly, as it was last year, and can’t possibly be left out.  If I get rid of that incredibly fragrant white guava, my mother will never speak to me again.  Armagnac is a possibility, but I’m very fond of that blend…not the orange spice…the mint-lime has such beautiful texture…

Truly, it’s a dilemma that would make any girl throw up her hands in despair.  There are two I can eliminate relatively easily – the chestnut-honey-cinnamon-rum tastes mostly of honey and cinnamon, not what I was after, and the passionfruit caramel doesn’t taste distinctly of either.  But the remaining 19 flavors of truffle are all excellent, and I really don’t know what I’m going to do about that.  Perhaps I could eliminate the chocolate macadamia fudge, but I  know at least two people who told me it was their favorite item in last year’s box.

Obviously I need bigger candy boxes next year.  LOL!

Well, it’s a problem I’ll mull over later.  I think what I will do is keep two flavors “in reserve” – put them on the inserts but not pack them into most of the boxes.  That way, if I run out of one kind of chocolates (and I know I will run out of some of them), I can add the “reserve” types in, so there will be no duplicate flavors in any of the boxes.

Meanwhile, I have twelve flavors to go, so I better get to work!  Susan, the woman who helped me last weekend, is coming by this morning to help out some more, which gives me hope – I might actually be able to get all these dipped in time for the chocolate-packing party tomorrow!

I’m hoping tomorrow’s session goes faster, although with 12 flavors to cut and dip, it’s going to be another long day.  I intend to put in a solid 14 hours (16 hours is unrealistic) and am hoping to finish up everything by bedtime.  But if a flavor or two gets lost along the wayside, I won’t panic.  The chocolates are larger than usual this year, because my new ganache cutters (like cookie cutters, but smaller) cut centers larger than I would normally, so I don’t think I’m actually going to get 28 flavors into a single box.  Hence, if some flavor doesn’t get made, it won’t be a tragedy.  I will, of course, do my favorite flavors first, so I can be sure they’ll get done.  Being the chef does have its privileges. 

Off to bed!  Tomorrow,  the final day of chocolatiering!

I have altered my plans somewhat.  I botched the first set of dark chocolate molds, and have consequently lost my patience with the whole affair.  So I am not going to use molds at all this year.  Instead, I’m going to make all the truffles as dipped chocolates, and use a variety of shapes and chocolate transfer sheets to distinguish them.  This makes hash out of my carefully prepared schedule (sic transit gloria mundi), so I’m “winging it” from here on out.

The main change this makes to my plans is that I now have to prepare my centers a day in advance, because it takes about half a day for them to get firm enough to cut.  So I am focusing, for now, on mixing up tomorrow’s flavors, about seven of them.  Then I will cut and dip the seven flavors I mixed up yesterday.  Friday I will dip the prepared centers from today, and then mix up seven more flavors to be dipped on Saturday.  Saturday I will dip the remaining chocolates and then run out on several errands, like buying ribbons for the boxes, Christmas cards to send with chocolates.  Then Sunday morning I’ll take photos and put together my chocolates “index” (the insert that goes with the boxes and explains what flavor is what), and get together with friends to pack the boxes up for shipment.  I’m really looking forward to the next few days!  It promises to be an adrenaline thrill and very chocolatey, and what more could a girl ask for?

And now, the centers have probably “set” enough for me to move them to trays, so I’m going to scurry off and do the next three batches.  Then I get to start dipping, hooray!

Photos later today, once the first batch get dipped…