Gratuitous melted chocolate picture for you …

My sister bought me some cool things for Christmas. Amongst which were a packet of culinary lavender flowers, a bottle of culinary lavender oil and a chocolate mould.

The possibilities were endless and mouthwatering but in the end I decided to make little milk and dark chocolates flavoured with the oil and a few flowers for crunch, and decorated with flowers.

They turned out really nicely and tasted divine, but I really wanted a challenge so decided to experiment with filled chocolates as well. I had made hard ganache before, but never soft ganache for fillings.

To make soft ganache you use twice as much cream as chocolate and boil the cream before stirring in the chocolate to melt it. After that you have to leave it in the fridge overnight until it has thickened and then whip it up so it becomes light and airy. I used milk chocolate for my ganache and added about 8 drops of lavender essence to the cream before I stirred in the chocolate. Here is the finished ganache.

I then oiled the tin and poured chocolate in to make the cases. You have to swirl the tin around to make sure the sides are evenly covered and then pour out the excess chocolate.

After that you can fill the cases with ganache, making sure you do not fill them fuller than the level of the tin, and then pipe over the chocolate to finish. It is a very messy business as you can see!

I have to admit that this was not the easiest of things to make, and I made a few mistakes along the way. The first time I made the cases, I left them to set overnight before filling them, which meant they were too brittle to come out of the tins. I also buttered the tins instead of oiling them which wouldnt have helped either. On the second attempt they came out of the tins beautifully and this was the result. Not perfect, but not bad either, and they tasted (past tense) great. More adventures in chocolate to follow soon.

Watch this space!