5th annual Christmas baking
In early December Sylvie and I got together for our 5th annual Christmas baking day. This year we decided to make chocolate. We found a new recipe to make chocolate covered cherries and a simple recipe to make chocolate covered sea salt caramels. We started the day off the way we normally do, by getting ourselves organized.
Then we drained the cherries and started making the dough to wrap around the cherries.
Once the dough was the right consistency, we wrapped approximately 30 cherries each in a thin layer of dough.
Sylvie used cherries with stems and made them with dark chocolate, and I made mine without stems and made them with milk chocolate.
Then we set the cherries aside to harden a little and we turned our attention to the chocolate caramels. We started by melting the chocolate.
Once the chocolate was melted, we used food safe brushes to pain the inside of the cups.
We painted one layer, set them to cool then painted a second layer.
I have to say, we were probably a bit more finicky with this part than we needed to. In the end, they all looked and tasted just as delicious regardless of how perfect they were painted.
Once the chocolate layers were done, we set them to cool and started making the caramel.
When the caramel was ready we transferred it to a measuring cup for easy pouring and filled the chocolate cups.
Then we topped the cups with chocolate and sprinkled them with sea salt.
We had a bit of caramel left over so we poured a little in some extra cups and tried it once it had cooled and it tasted amazing. So later that day, we absolutely had to sample one. For quality control of course.
It tasted even better than it looks.
So with the caramels done and set to the side for cooling, we went back to our cherries. We melted more chocolate and started dipping the cherries in the chocolate.
Then we set them on parchment paper to cool.
They look so delicious!
We made approximately 30 dark and 30 milk chocolate cherries.
Once all of the chocolate was made, we started on the felt ornament. Last year we made little mittens and I thought they were the cutest thing I’d ever made so this year we made matching stockings.
It took a while to get back into the rhythm of the stitching, but once I figured it out it was smooth sailing.
And now there’s a matching set for the tree.
All in all, it was another successful annual Christmas baking day.
gabandkirby 