Rolla49 Potholders and Caramel Sauce

A while back I posted about the airbrush booth that my friend Jim made.  He is an uber talented carpenter, and it is thanks to him that I have a beautiful kitchen with hand carved teak counters and custom made cabinets to make my 1903 kitchen look original.  But lets face it.  Behind every talented person is an equally talented partner, and Jim's wife Maria is an inspiration beyond compare.  She is a woman after my own heart.  One day we were talking about "toys" that we wanted, and she wanted a plasma cutter to do metalwork with.  Gotta love her.  You can check out her work here.

Anyway, what does that have to do with chocolate?  Well, Jim came over to see about doing some custom repair work around the house (everything on this house is custom when it's over 100 years old, there's no running to a big box store).  While he was there I foisted some of my chocolates off on him, and he being the good husband that he is, saved some for Maria and shared them.

When we got back from Winter break there was a box from Maria waiting for us, and in it were (among other things) these beautiful potholders!  Maria knows we have a 1920's Magic Chef stove in our kitchen, but the potholders have wound up out in the carriage house so I can use them with the new induction plate when I make caramels.  Here was the maiden run for the induction plate and potholders.  I'm not sure what I liked better about making the caramel, the fact that it smelled so good, or that I got to use Maria's potholders.

This caramel is the more fluid kind that I use to fill molded shells.  It takes a day or so for it to form enough of a skin to cap the molds.  But the lovely, runny liquid sensation in the mouth is worth it.  This batch got flavored with rose oil.

I think the colors go well for Valentine's Day.  One thing's for sure.  Maria's creations and mine are both made with a lot of love.

Robot Chocolate Bars for Child Creativity Lab

You have to admire the energy and talent that the folks at Child Creativity Lab have.  They put their heart and soul into providing a safe and creative space for children of all ages to explore their talents. When I found out an acquaintance was involved, and they were hosting their first ever gala, I immediately signed up to make some chocolates they could hand out.

Robots seemed like the perfect theme for their venue.  But those Robots are tiny!  To make them stand out more, each Robot was glued onto a larger chocolate bar that was painted up to look like something a young child might have done (little do they know that I am an old adult...).  Here's how they got put together.

First, polish those molds, and clean them out really well.  I'd painted this mold up earlier in the week, and the cocoa butter was too hot when I painted it in the mold.  Needless to say, it stuck to the mold, not the chocolate.  It took over an hour to clean that mold out.  The upside was that my friends were pleased to eat the free rejects!

Next, the details were painted in by hand with toothpicks and tiny brushes.

The final painting step was to airbrush in the shoes and the body.

Once the Robots were done, they were glued with chocolate onto a bigger chocolate bar that had been splat painted and hand painted with the initials for the Child Creativity Lab.  The childlike paint and goofy robot seemed to echo their vision for the creative resources they provide to the greater community and our kids.

Happy New Year! Wishing you Health, Wealth and Good Luck

All dressed up and somewhere to go - out to ring in the New Year!  It looks like these guys and gals are ready to hit the disco and dance in the New Year in style.  No boring colors here.

The girls sport a lucky four leaf clover on their backsides, but for modesty's sake they are not displaying it on the Internet.  They really don't like hanging around for the photo shoot, they want to get a move on and par-tee.

These dapper boys are in their top hats with a purse holding their money on one arm, and lucky four leaf clovers tucked in the other hand.  Why are they smiling?  They know they are too good looking to eat!

Meet Uny the Marzipan Pig

Next off the spray booth runway is Uny, the smallest piggy of them all.  But don't let Uny's size (about an inch high) fool you.  Uny may be the mightiest of all the marzipan pigs.  Uny's certainly the bravest.  That's because Uny is our transgender marzipan pig.

I made Uny in honor of my nephew, who used to be my niece.  Let's hope there is room in every family for every type of pig, regardless of how they identify.

Uny tends to get a little cold in winter, hence the sweater.  I believe it was a Christmas gift, given the colors.  Don't you think it  brings out the sparkle in the eyes?

Heidi the Marzipan Pig

The first Piggy out on the runway is Heidi.  She is the most traditional of all the pigs I made.  But when I make her next time, I will put a little gold disk in her mouth to represent a gold coin, a symbol of wealth.

Heidi has been at a Swiss spa in the Alps, munching away on a diet of sweet green meadow grasses and alpine herbs.  At night she got mud baths and massages, which accounts for her lovely glowing complexion.  You have to admit, that spa she went to really made quite a transformation from that leaden figure of just a few days ago, 

and that pale complexion she previously had.

With those lovely spots, I don't think that she'll have any trouble finding a dance partner to wallow around with, do you?

Painting Marzipan Pigs

Naked pigs are not my thing, so it's off to the spray booth for the marzipan pigs.  

My friend Jim can make just about anything to do with wood, and he made this spray booth for decorating my confections.  I got the plans from here.  The booth is great.  A big thank you to the folks at Vent Works who shared their knowledge and know how.  I've got a couple of airbrushes, one for using with cocoa butter for the chocolate decoration, and another for use with the food color for the marzipan.  When the fan is going with the booth, you'd never know it.  It does the job.  The filter proves it.  It is a rainbow of colors.

While the piggies are made from old molds in traditional shapes, there is nothing saying that we have to paint them up in a traditional way.  I pop the pigs on top of a metal stand that I picked up at a ceramics supply house.  It is used for putting things on and lets you turn it around to make access easy to all parts of the object.  Like a lazy Susan on a stand.  

Using a combination of paintbrushes and the airbrush, I gussie up the pigs.  After all, they are going out for New Year's, so they have to look their best.  Plain pink just won't cut it, after all.  Remember that line from "La Cage aux Folles" where Albion has his black suit and white shirt on, and then hikes up his pants to show his bright pink socks?  "Always a hint of color".  Well, we are sort of channeling that in our dress design - a hint of color.  And a goodly amount of luster dust to top things off as well.  It is New Year's Eve after all that we are dressing them for.

Molding Marzipan

There's more than one way to make a marzipan pig, and working with marzipan is a bit like working with clay.  You can shape it by hand and mold it.  You can also put it in a mold (although that is not like clay, as you want your marzipan to be stiff, not like slip for clay).  I decided to use some of the vintage marzipan molds I got a few years back, and mold up some marzipan pigs for the New Year to bring health, wealth, and luck.  I figure I can use all of that I can get.

While you can use commercially available marzipan, I like to make my own.  Why?  Because I can control the sweetness of the final product.  I find most commercial marzipan paste too sweet for my taste.  I like to actually taste the almonds.  The downside might be that the marzipan I make is never going to be as smooth as the commercial brands, because I use the food processor to make mine, while the commercial brands employ special equipment to get that fine texture.  But I've come to prefer a bit of texture, and really appreciate the flavor less sugar gives in the final product.  I pretty much bring the food processors to the brink of disaster running them for so long to get the texture as fine as I can.  Someday I'll have a professional processor and a whole new world of marzipan texture will open up for me, but until that day, I'm happy with what I've got.

Marzipan is sticky.  It wants to stick to the molds.  I had the hardest time working with the molds.  Some folks said to grease the molds.  Some said to dust with confectioners sugar.  Some said to line with plastic wrap (?).  What worked for me was filling the molds as is, and then popping them in the freezer for a bit.  

Here's what the piggies looked like in all their naked glory after they were unmolded.  They have to sit for a day to dry a bit before they get decorated.

The tallest is about 3 inches high.  The smallest about an inch.  I guess a little marzipan goes a long way.

Some of the molds that came over in the shipment from Belgium had the actual positive figure with them made from lead.  No wonder the shipment was so heavy!