Chocolate and friends

Since we were on break from dance class, and I had a Friday off for the first time in a while, I decided to invite some friends over for some take-out Thai (thank you, Salad King), and hanging out. Flush with success from the chocolate class with Becky, I decided to get some supplies of my own and try my hand at making some chocolate-covered strawberries.

Here's the 'before' shot.


And now the 'after' shot.


Things I learned:
1) Strawberries that are too ripe are not good to use for this purpose. They get extremely hard to handle.
2) The digital thermometer that I use when roasting meat is not good for chocolate. I don't think the chocolate I used for the strawberries was tempered quite properly, and that proved to be the case when I found some blooming on the chocolate after I chilled the finished berries.

With the left-over chocolate, I decided to melt it again, and re-temper it. This time, I did it without the thermometer, and tried to go on what I remembered about how the chocolate felt when we had our class. I don't think I got it quite right, but it was better than the stuff I used on the berries. I used this chocolate to make chili pepper bark. Yum!


What would a party be without party games? Greg's gift of Rock Band has been great.


I think Richard wins the 'Best Rocker Face' award. Aaron got pretty creative, playing the drums like tom-toms. He and Jia were a pretty good team, playing the drums together.

A super fun evening! Thank everyone!!