Serious Chocolate Class #2 - Moulded Pralines & Ganaches

Today was my second chocolate class and we mostly focused on moulded chocolates. First off, I will say that all of these chocolates are so much more delicious than the ones we did last week (and at the time, I thought those were pretty good!)

Likely my favorite of this week's chocolates are these Caramel Passionfruit White Chocolates. I LOVE passionfruit and the addition of the caramel to it makes it heavenly. We got to use a very large fancy new airbrush for these chocolates too which was fun! I will definitely be making these again... and again and again!

These Banana Butter Ganache-Filled White Chocolates are pretty spectacular too though! The design was done by hand with colored cocoa butters. They might be a bit bright for me but once you taste one, you probably wouldn't care what they look like....

I don't like coffee... usually... But these Dark Coffee Ganache Chocolates are really good too, even to me! And the coffee flavor is strong in them! We used black cardamom pods in this recipe to pair with the coffee. I'd only ever used green cardamom and I loved the smoky aroma of the black cardamom.

I'd never heard of an egg ganache before but that's what this one is - an orange-Grand Marnier egg ganache filled dark chocolate! The ganache is very smooth and quite delicious, even if it would have a shorter shelf life than ganaches made with cream and butter.

Last but certainly not least, we made a Soft Fruit Nougatine which had the sides dipped in dark chocolate. The nougatine had ginger, as well a variety of dried fruits and nuts, in it and I have never liked ginger... Here's yet another first for today though - this is to die for! The ginger adds a subtle spicy kick to the nougatine and one piece was not nearly enough. I didn't get to bring much of this home but the good news is that the recipe appeared very easy to make!

These chocolates were from last week but we had to leave them there as they weren't done. These dark chocolates have a layer of raspberry pate de fruit on the bottom topped by a layer of raspberry ganache. They were probably the yummiest of the chocolates we made last week!

Next week we're moving on to chocolate confections like marshmallows, sponge candy, nougat, marzipan and candied almonds... Stay tuned!