Adventures In Chocolate!

The other week, as part of a birthday/christmas present from my friend Gayle, three of us headed into London to take part in a chocolate workshop from My Chocolate. Tucked away in a basement room, at the end of a long corridor, we found ourselves surrounded by jars containing sweet treats, and table that looked like this (look up), not too shabby. 

Our host for the evening was Davies, he guided us through all the practical chocolaty bits and pieces, and told us lots of interesting things about chocolate. The first thing that we made as a group were chocolate martinis. We each had to decorate our glasses with melted chocolate swirls before mixing and shaking up the provided ingredients. 

We were then taken through various pieces of chocolate that had been put out in front of us, discussing textures, flavours, percentage of cacao and countries of origin etc. We were also able to try cacao nibs and some 100% cacao (I think...I could be wrong... you noticed the glasses of Presecco on the table right?).

  

We made our own slabs of chocolate, which we were able to flavour and decorate. I chose cherry and decorated with nuts, as I thought those would be a pretty tasty combination, the white chocolate was purely because I like white chocolate. 

We were given a ganache to pipe out onto our baking sheets, but the nozzle on our table was cut a little big, so they came out more like cute little poos, rather than little piped blobs of cuteness. 

While our little poos were firming up slightly, Davies showed us how to make American chocolate fudge. We were given a slab of the chocolate fudge, and what I believe was Gianduja, to decorate alongside our truffles. What followed included rolling, dipping, sprinkling, rubbing (transfers), and possibly asking for more marshmallows when our table ran out, after dipping them in the ever present bowl of melted chocolate and eating them throughout the night, (how were we supposed to know that we'd need them again later?). 

I was pretty impressed with my selection of chocolates, although it turns out I'm not a fan of crystallised rose petals, (fortunately I only made one of those). 

 Gayle's treats. 

Lydia's treats.

The evening concluded, with us packing our chocolates into boxes and bags, whilst enjoying a chocolate and dessert wine pairing. I didn't think I was a fan of port, but it goes so well with chocolate, it may be my new hobby (yes, you can absolutely have chocolate and port as a hobby). I think we also tried some marsala (but don't hold me to that).

It was a fabulous evening, which I would highly recommend. There was a lot of information to take in, and trying to fit it into just three hours, did feel a little bit rushed. It also may have been a little bit lost on us, as after several glasses of Presecco, we did turn into ever so slightly inebriated giggling young ladies (okay so 'I' may have been giggling slightly more than everyone else). That isn't a complaint though, it was the best fun I've had in ages!