Brown Sugar Molded Chocolate Sharks

I recently saw this post over on the Rise & Shine blog on how to make chocolate molds using brown sugar. I thought it would be fun to try out some chocolate sharks for Shark Week! This is a great way to try out molding your own chocolates because it's really inexpensive (you don't need to buy any molds, only brown sugar!).

To try this at home you will need:

Brown sugar (I used light brown sugar)
a container to hold your sugar
3-D objects to make your mold with (I used plastic sharks)
chocolate (if you want something more colorful, you could test out some colored candy melts)
a microwave safe container to melt your chocolate in

Start by packing your brown sugar evenly into a clean container. Then firmly press your 3-D objects into the sugar, about half way up the object, to create your mold.

Next, chop up your chocolate and put it in your microwave safe dish. Microwave the chocolate at 20 second intervals, stirring between each interval, until the chocolate is melted and smooth (for me this took about 1 minute for a 1/2 cup of chopped chocolate). Once your chocolate is melted, carefully pour it into your mold. I tapped mine on the counter to get rid of air bubbles and make sure the chocolate got down into the "fin" areas of my mold. If you have little helpers, you may want to get small squeeze bottles they can use to get the chocolate into the molds without too much mess.

I was unfortunate in the weather, as it was quite hot the day I did my chocolate molds (room temp was about 90 degrees, ick). As a result, I put my poured chocolates into the freezer to set up and this caused extra brown sugar to stick to the chocolate when I took them out of the mold. If you do this in cooler weather, the chocolate should harden back up on the counter just fine and remove much more cleanly. Either way, this is definitely a fun little craft, I'm thinking about using those alphabet shaped magnets to make some letters for a birthday cake sometime!

Dark Chocolate Peppermint Truffles

Oh, hello there! Guess who remembered she writes a blog? Yeah, I've been MIA for a few reasons and now I'm back for more crafty fun. First I thought I'd beg your forgiveness by sharing these yummy truffles with you. Am I forgiven? Excellent.

Not only did the holidays get me bogged down, I also changed up my work life by quitting one job to go Full Time at the other! Yay! I'm super happy about it, but I have had to adjust to a new schedule, which now allows me to actually see my husband more than a few minutes each day while we are both awake. Don't worry too much, I have lots of crafty projects I am working on that I will share with you soon. Now, on to the truffles.

These are super easy, to make them all you need is:

1 pound of dark chocolate
1 cup heavy cream (you can substitute full fat coconut milk for the vegans in the house)
1 teaspoon peppermint extract
1/2 cup crushed peppermint sticks (I prefer the soft peppermint sticks, but you could use candy canes as well)

Start by chopping up your chocolate into small pieces, you want them to be as small and as uniform in size as possible so they melt evenly. Once the chocolate is all chopped up, pour it into a heat safe bowl.

Next, heat your cream in a small saucepan on the stove top. Stir continuously to prevent scorching. Your cream should be all ready to go once small bubbles start forming around the edges of the pan, we aren't bringing this to a boil, just getting it nice and hot.

Add your teaspoon of peppermint extract to the chocolate, then pour all of your cream on top. Don't stir yet, just let it all hang out for about 3-5 minutes. Then, go ahead and stir slowly and watch all the chocolate and cream melt together into yummy truffle goodness. If you have some small chunks that don't melt all the way, you can pop this in the microwave for 10 second intervals and stir after each one until your mixture is nice and smooth.

Let this stand for about an hour, then scoop out small balls of chocolate and place on a parchment lined cookie sheet. If your truffles need to firm up more before dipping them in crushed peppermint candy, refrigerate them for about 10 minutes. Otherwise, you can start dipping them right away and place them in the refrigerator to set up afterward.
Keep them in an air tight container in the refrigerator and they last a couple weeks (well, if they actually stay in there that long). If you plan to server these at a get together, I generally take them out of the fridge an hour ahead of time and serve them room temperature. SO GOOD!

With Valentine's Day on the way, I have another remix on these you could try: Instead of peppermint extract add a couple Tablespoons of Amaretto and then roll these in sliced almonds! You can also mix up your chocolate flavors: dark, milk, bittersweet, just make sure you have a pound of chocolate (chocolate chips will taste fine if it's all you have, but the stabilizers in them will make your final chocolate mixture a little grainy looking, so go forthe big chocolate blocks if you can).

Friday Food Craft: Gumdrops

This is an extra sweet and sugar filled food craft! I was inspired by a post about a month ago on Bakerella and really wanted to try my hand at making my own gumdrops. Since I wasn't making them for a crowd and didn't want to be too tempted, I halved the recipe on her site. Also, I decided to spice it up by using ice cube trays from IKEA to mold my gum drops into fancy, single piece candies rather than cut all of mine up. I took her advice and sprayed my ice cub trays with cooking spray. I recommend this, these guys are sticky!

I think the added cute factor of having shaped gumdrops is really nice as well, and now is a great time to check out clearance ice cube trays (if you can find the silicone ones, i think they'd be easier to pop your gumdrops out of, but mine worked just fine as well and were only 2 dollars each). Also, if you want smaller gumdrops you don't need to fill each ice cube slot all the way, you will still get the basic shape without the volume.

On to the recipe! (Mine filled 3 ice cube trays from IKEA)

2 Tablespoons (about 3 packets) of unflavored gelatin
1/2 cup cold water
3/4 cup boiling water
2 cups sugar

1/4 teaspoon flavored extract per flavor (I made 3 flavors)
Food coloring to achieve desired color (about 1-3 drops per flavor)

Extra sugar for coating

Start by dissolving your gelatin in 1/2 cup cold water. Allow to set for about 5 minutes, while boiling some water. Add 3/4 cup boiling water, 2 cups sugar and stir until dissolved.

In a large pot (this stuff bubbles up quite a bit) bring to a slow boil and allow to cook for 20-25 minutes while stirring constantly. You may want to enlist the help of someone as this is a lot of stirring and you don't want your sugar to burn.

Separate your mixture into 3 containers, add your flavoring and coloring and refrigerate to set. I used a Pyrex measuring glass to mix mine in and then poured into my ice cube trays. If you use a square pan or baking dish and then cut your gumdrops once they have set, you can mix your colors and flavors right in the pan.

Refrigerate overnight. Remove from trays (or baking dish--then cut into desired size pieces). Cover with sugar, and now the hard part: allow these to set up for 2 days! That was torture, but they are sure tasty.

I was a little heavy handed with the red food coloring in my orange flavored gumdrops, but they still taste orangey and delicious. I also made strawberry flavored. There are quite a large variety of flavor extracts available now, so I recommend trying whatever you like, or maybe be adventurous and get an extract you have never tried before.

Enjoy!