Sunday 30 December 2007

Green faced

Three young people; an in-between aged person and two older people all sitting green and pale. A chocolate fountain whirrs away bubbling up gorgeous brown liquor with treats and fruits to dip all around. Quite frankly one piece dipped was enough. Whilst youngest tucks into an impressive third mouthful before anyone else was seated, and continued to demolish marshmallows to banana to orange segments. Leaving fresh pear, apple and best of all: fresh pineapple; to the rest of us.

The chocolate fondue mixture was lovely. Having done lots of internet research I was really unhappy about adding the quantities of vegetable oil to the melted chocolate as it just didn't seem right. In the end, I probably did add the quantity of vegetable oil as I could see the 1 kg chocolate (Cadburys Dairy Milk whizzed in small batches in the ice crusher of a blender until crumbly) with the three x 284 ml pots of double cream (heated first) was going a tad lumpy. After heating the cream, the melting/mixing process took maybe ten minutes maximum using our induction hob at the lowest heat, which is like a warmer. And then into the ready heated chocolate fountain.

After filling the reservoir and then switching on the motor it seems half the mixture went straight up the funnel. I then poured more of the chocolate mixture into the reservoir. I suppose if I had switched off after this point it would just over flow the whole container!

Luckily plenty was eaten, even though it was very rich. It was delish but just too much. The picture of the fountain above shows air bubbles and not lumps in the chocolate mixture. The picture below is of the chocolate in the saucepan before mixing into the hot cream.

It is surprising, but not as much chocolate is wasted as I thought. I don't like waste so with the judicious use of a rubber spatula and pouring back into the warmed saucepan with the remainder of the warm chocolate mixture and then into plastic food bag lined mugs means it is ready to be frozen and re-used another time. Like a bit later on as we are expecting visitors .... who gave us this apparatus. I'd like to subject them to it and realise that this an object that should be given to party animals. Not people who are downsizing and are hoping to move.

Proving that bah humbug is not confined to Christmas.

2 comments:

rashbre said...

I'm impressed you managed to get the full curtain of chocolate effect working. Rashbre central had one of these as well, but I didn't read the instructions and just lit the fuse.

The first few minutes of chocolate sort of solidified in the upperscrewything and I had to resort to a microwave pit stop.

Second attempt with more lubricant and everything started to work although like you I do seem to have a surfeit of choc now to deal with. Petit fours, anyone?

Doris said...

Sorry the pics are temporarily removed!

LOL to the idea of just lighting the fuse. I didn't realise quite how "lucky" we were with ours working. I've since heard from someone else that theres was a catastrophe and vomited up lumps on occasion. Something to be said for my nerdy web research!

Freeze the left overs until you decide what to do with it.