Tasha and I had decided as part of boycotting packaged Easter eggs we’d do some making chocolate treats this year with the kids so today was the nominated Chocolatiers Day.
We nipped into Lancing first thing to collect some cling film and paint brushes from the pound shop along with some mini eggs and arrived pretty much on time. As an aside we seem to have caught up with the rest of the UK quicker than expected and are now functioning quite happily on BST, so it seems 20 minutes each overnight suits us rather than the 10 I’d been expecting. Still think 60 is way too much to expect all in one go mind you…
Tasha and I had a quick catch up with each other; wedding news, work stuff, bitching generally, that sort of thing 😉 and then we kicked off with the chocolate making. Tasha had done an amazing job of planning and getting in supplies and while she melted the first batch of chocolate I read which was very good but did make me start to feel ethically opposed to chocolate generally what with all the air miles it contains ( clearly things like calories don’t bother me but I do have issues with air miles 😉 ).
We started with chocolate coated shredded wheat (supermarket own brand, fret not) so the kids got busy breaking up shredded wheat into the melted chocolate and syrup mix and then made little nest shapes and put mini eggs in them. 
Next they made white chocolate, chocolate spread, hazelnut and final layer of white chocolate delicacies and we cleared up a little while they went off to play. Four children, chocolate and creativity makes for a fair bit of clearing up ;).
We called them back for truffle balls although Scarlett had come back early as she wasn’t keen on whatever game the boys were playing and was much more interested in the mechanics of the chocolate making in the kitchen. So we set her to work smashing up biscuits into crumbs with a rolling pin instead 🙂
Added butter and melted chocolate to the mix we gave them a lump each to roll into balls and cover with dessicated coconut, chopped nuts or chocolate sprinkles to create truffle balls.
More playing by the children in the interval of clearing up and preparing the next delights before we called them back for peppermints creams and peanut butter chocolates. The peanut butter was milk chocolate, a rolled lump of peanut butter and icing sugar mix and then another splash of milk chocolate, sort of Reeces Cups style. Scarlett later did some white chocolate drizzling on hers but she was getting all fancy by that stage :).
Peppermint creams were supposed to have been chocolate dipped but the chocolate didn’t want to melt down properly so we went for peppermint cream discs instead. The boys wandered off again while Tasha, Scarlett and I did some faffling about with them – I made some pinwheels of chocolate and mint, Tasha did some little cases filled with both and Scarlett mostly licked icing sugar off her fingers 😆 In one of the books I’d taken round with chocolate and sweet recipes it has a recipe for lemon and orange creams so we’re going to have a go at them over the next couple of days I think.
Our final piece was the mold I had taken round which we coated with cling film and the kids painted melted chocolate onto. It didn’t come out so well, not sure if it was enthusiastic kids and paintbrushes runkling the clingfilm, a complete failure on the part of the mold or a need for much thinner layers of chocolate built up but hey chocolate is chocolate so they ate the results 😆
We finished off by putting their creations artfully and tastefully (or indeed shovelling them in as Scarlett did having said ‘I just like shovelling things in’ which Tasha and I agreed could be a motto for life really) into Tasha’s fab boxes. We were infact so impressed with them that when we came home we found a book we could rip pages out of to make some more of our own.
We had some lunch – Tasha had made some very delicious sweet potatoe and butternut squash soup and then left as we had swimming to get ready for and they had Circus Skills.
Back home we had about half an hour before swimming so we had a go at making our own boxes from the brief tutorial Tasha had given me. I managed to find an old library book on fossil fuels which has created fab little boxes with lots of pictures of maps with coal mines around the world and text about alternative energies :). So we’ve managed a low packaging impact Easter on the chocolate front at least :).
Swimming was good – the last lesson of the term for Scarlett and Davies so mostly fun with inflatables and games in the pool for them while I managed my best ever 53 lengths in an hour :). I did get most cross with the gaggles of people who hang out at either end of the pool in the lane swimming area chatting though – THERE IS THE WHOLE OF THE REST OF THE POOL FOR THAT, WHY DO YOU HAVE TO USE THE 4 FOOT RESERVED FOR PEOPLE ACTUALLY SERIOUS ABOUT SWIMMING!!!! – I need to decide whether I will not bother swimming for the next 2 weeks which only gives me one session before my Swimathon of whether I’ll make a special journey to the pool in the meantime and in which case whether that will be with or without children?
Back home (with aching knees) I chopped firewood, gathered eggs, cooked the kids tea and was about to sit down when Ady arrived home so I hung out in the kitchen chatting to him instead. I spoke to Julie on the phone and the kids watched a Simpsons video Ady had got them from a charity shop. I managed to execute a system restore on the old laptop that Ady uses to beat a nasty virus it had picked up (although it is still doing a very long scan now and I suspect it is not totally fixed), had baths, didn’t like the prawn pasta Ady had cooked (but had already expected not to like so it didn’t surprise either of us), watched Richard Hammond’s Invisible World and taped Masterchef Australia.
I’m working in the morning so really need to go to bed and try and catch up that last elusive ten minutes…
choctastic!