Making Easter chocolates with the kids is fun. Children are highly unlikely to refuse the task and you may discover some other areas of interest. One of my daughters really liked measuring the chocolate temperature and seeing the thermometer going up and down (we had a non-digital one), the other one really like painting the base of the moulds to obtain a more creative finish.
Ingredients:
- couverture chocolate of your choice (milk, dark, white), at least 500 g
- a chocolate or candy thermometer
- chocolate moulds, a small brush and a larger one
If you plan to fill them with a truffle ganache, you will need to prepare that one at least 12 hrs ahead. Check out the dark chocolate truffle and the salted caramel truffle recipes.
Method:
Tempering the chocolate is a three stages process, the chocolate needs to be melted slowly (ideally on a bain marie), then cooled down to about 26-27°C. For that stage, there are a few approaches. Finally, the chocolate is slightly warmed up to 31-32°C which makes it easier to work with (a little more runny).
The cooling down of the chocolate (step 2) can be done by:
- Waiting until the chocolate cools down mixing from time to time. Pretty straight forward but the longest in term of time.
- Adding to the melted chocolate some finely cut pieces of the same chocolate. This exchange of energy will make your mix cool down much quicker. Keep mixing until the added pieces are fully melted.
- pouring the chocolate on a marble top, spreading and gathering it with a flat spatula. You may have seen that method on TV cooking shows. Go for it if you want to try it, I can’t tell you much about it.
For the dark chocolates with fill, I use a salted caramel chocolate truffle preparation to use a filling (at least the day before). You can choose a plain chocolate truffle if you are not fan of the salted caramel one.
FOR THE LITTLE easter eggs or small PIECES:
Now is the time to use your little moulds, if you want to have them hollow for filling latter, pour tempered chocolate over the mould, distribute to each print, it must be full. Then place yourself over the bowl of chocolate and pour back the excess. Use a large knife to clean the top surface and place to cool down in the fridge. Once they are hard, you can do the filling.
If you want full eggs (or other shape), keep the print full, clean the top surface and let to cool down and harden (again quicker in the fridge). You can choose to mix up colours or to have a little of another chocolate for a feature part of the item, as is the case on the flowers we made.
To attach two halves together, heat up a baking sheet (not too hot). Place each half on it to melt the edges a little. If you are filling the eggs with a truffle, fill them ensuring they do not overflow. Then stick the two halves together!
Tips: try to keep clean hands to avoid leaving traces on the tempered chocolate
Tips: White chocolate, then milk chocolate will harden much quicker than dark chocolate. Tis is directly related to the proportion of cocoa butter in the chocolate.
Making larger pieces – a large Easter egg or a bunny
This can get a little tricky. The key is to make sure the thickness of the chocolate is sufficient in the fragile parts: the edges, the collar of the bunny, ears of the bunny , etc.
Pour the chocolate, remove the excess after 2 minutes. Cool down (quicker in the fridge). When solidified repeat and place face down on a baking paper sheet. If you judge that the edges are too thin, use a kitchen brush to add chocolate along the edges. Cool down completely. The shapes will actually come undone from the mould on their own, this can take overnight. Alternatively, when you see it has solidified, you can pull out opposite sides of the moulds to check if the form is ready to come out. Then you just need to assemble by melting the edges of both pieces on a warm baking sheet and joining together.
