Feb 15th, 2023 Wednesday Cloudy
Ever since I learned about Valentine’s day (from an English textbook in elementary school), I have the association that “Valentine’s day = chocolate”. I find it so sweet and romantic to prepare a chocolaty present for the person you love, and sharing a beautiful night together.
That being said, making handmade chocolate dessert of any kind was unheard of in my home country, at least when I was growing up. I also did not have a “Valentine” to buy chocolate for. As a result, it was just a tiny dream of mine that some day, I will be able to really “pour my love” into the chocolate I craft and gift it to my sweetheart.
As it turns out, while the dream has come true to a certain extent, when combined with my obsession of never making the same dessert twice (it would be boring, isn’t it?) and the fact that I have been with my husband for over ten years, it has become increasingly difficult to find a novel chocolaty idea each year. The “low-hanging fruits” like brownies have been depleted long ago, and I need to charter into more challenging waters.
Hence I started TRYING to temper chocolate five years ago, after watching a video on how to make liquor-centered chocolate truffles. It looked so easy and neat on youtube!
NOT when I was doing it. I did not even know exactly what went wrong – maybe I heated the chocolate too much? Maybe the chocolate I used was not good-quality so they could not be tempered? I had no idea. All I knew was, after I transferred the melted but obviously not tempered brown liquid into the heart-shaped mold, it did not set within minutes. Frustrated, I wanted to clean it out of the mold to start over, only to realize that the cocoa butter had separated from the rest of the mass and it was a HUGE mess. It was the last time that I saw that heart-shaped mold.
Because of that failure, tempering chocolate grew to be my confectionery nightmare. Somehow I just cannot get it. Begrudgingly, I have stayed away from it for a while.
This year, I saw a cute recipe of dark chocolate honey fig truffles, so tempting (and again so seemingly simple) that I decided to give it another try – tempering dark chocolate was part of the procedure. Of course, over-ambitious as I usually am: I want the truffles to be heart-shaped so another heart-shaped mold came into play.
The results…well, you see that unsightly thing in the picture? ? ?
Just as I was pouting, my husband came back home (he was sent to the grocery store to avoid interfering in the kitchen while I worked on my “surprise”) with a bouquet, a dessert pie, and a nice chocolate bar. I felt that I did not deserve any of them.
“Why pouty face, my love?” asked he. I pointed to my suppose-to-be hearts – I could not even get them out of the mold!!
“They look tasty! I’m sure we can get them out if we freeze them a little bit.” said he with a big smile and a hug. “I love you ?”
Aww, my sweet Valentine – I am so glad I have you by my side ?
In the end, he did manage to get most of the chocolate hearts out – even though they did not look nearly as picture-perfect, they tasted gorgeous. And those unruly flowers in the bouquet are happily decorating our dining room now.
If you love the right person, every day is Valentine’s day.