Friday, March 29, 2013

HOLIDAY PREPARATIONS

Easter is Sunday and here I am at the last minute figuring out what to do about it.  Or, more to the point, something fun that I can do to enhance the day.  It is not going to be a big family day here, as my oldest son and his wife have other obligations with the munchkin.  

So it will be a small family gathering with two out of three sons and one Dad present and accounted for, who is also bringing the ham (of course before hand so I can cook it)!  I am the great planner who bought ham last week as a food stretcher for the end of the month, not realizing it was Easter the next week, so I in reality already went through ham dinner last Saturday.

I was going to just make a center cut pork roast which in my opinion is just as delicious, but my middle son got a whine on about ham, so his Dad is going to accommodate.  I never need a reason to cook as you all may have gathered by now, but like I said, must do something different with what I have on hand.

I have found two ways to make chocolate and may just make my own chocolate as I pull out the Easter decorations and make some homemade goodies.  The boys always loved homemade chocolate when they were younger when I was fooling around with the candy molds I bought in the clearance aisle when I used to have disposable income. 

 (MY favorite aisles in the whole store for sure I have found so many cool, and useful at some point in time objects, from crafts, cooking, decorating, fabric, home, or auto - you name it, if it is on clearance enough to be worthwhile - eventually it will come in handy.)

Nobody eats  hard boiled eggs here so the whole decorating eggs became useless years ago.  I do want to try hollowing out and decorating an egg one day, but today is not the day!  Need to do some more research on that one!


                                                       Homemade Chocolate Recipe

Cocoa powder - 220g (2 cups)
Butter - 160g (3/4 of a cup)
Water - 230ml (1 cup)
Flour - 30g (1/4 of a cup)
Sugar -120g (1/2 of a cup) - if possible use powdered sugar

Take 220g (2 cups) of coca powder (make sure you take as finer powder you can find, look at the picture) and put them in a bowl. Take 160g (3/4 of a cup) of butter and put them in bowl containing the cocoa powder. Using a spoon grind bigger pieces of cocoa powder. I recommend chopping the butter in smaller pieces for easier processing. Put the contents of the bowl in a blender or a food processor and blend them into a fine paste (check the last picture), if you don't have an access to a blender or a food processor you can use a regular mixer for the job but I will warn you, it will be messy.

Put 230ml (1 cup) of water in a pot and put the paste you made in previous step in it. Heat it up until its hot, but not boiling. Put the fluid back in the bowl and add 150ml (2/3 of a cup) of milk , 30g (1/4 of a cup) of flour and 120g (1/2 of a cup) of sugar in while it hot. Put the mass in a food processor or mix it by hand until you get rid of the lumps.

Put the chocolate in different molds, ice cube trays, bowls to get different chocolate shapes and put in a fridge or the freezer for at least 6 hours. After it cools remove the chocolate form the mold using a knife and enjoy your homemade chocolate.

I thought I would share it with you, just in case you are feeling creative and ambitious before the holiday!  Looks fairly easy, sounds fairly easy and they showed using ice cube trays as molds or a pan, I have molds for chocolate, so I am not worried myself, just offering up suggestions!  

Have a great time, have some fun and have a great time!



2 comments:

  1. If you like peanut butter filling alls you need to do is take a cup of peanut butter and 1/2 cup of powdered sugar mix well and shape into balls and place in the middle of you chocolates yum....

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