Making chocolate with a third-generation chocolatier again

Today was the second time I ever made chocolate, the first being around three years ago. this was the first time that I was actually making the important decisions, like how much flavoring to put in, which molds should be used, et cetera. Before this, we had gone to get bagels, and then went to my old friend and third-generation chocolatier Judy.

The first batch was Cherry-flavored, and the molds used were bowties, shells, and a square shape that was patterned using transfer sheets, which are large sheets that have a repeating design on them. You cut off an area, then put it on the chocolate. As the chocolate cools, the color slowly transfers onto the chocolate. The process we used was weighing the amount of chocolate we wanted to melt, letting it melt extremely slowly, measuring out extracts and flavoring, mixing in the flavoring, scooping the chocolate into molds, refrigerating the molds, and popping out the finished chocolates. While the second batch was melting, we enjoyed bagels, and then finished watching the chocolate melt.

The second batch was orange-flavored, and the molds here were leaves, a smaller form of the shells, and the same square, but with a different transfer sheet. while these were refrigerating and solidifying, Judy taught me how to put a ribbon or string on a small box, and sometimes a large one.

The third and final batch was raspberry, but something strange happened. When we added the raspberry extract, the chocolate thickened extremely fast. One second, it's a smoothly flowing liquid, the next second it's the viscosity of fudge. As such, I was just barely able to spoon one piece of raspberry, and it didn't come out the way I had hoped, but for the time being, as far as first attempts go, I'd say this one was pretty good.

Also, as a side note, when I added the flavoring and tasted the liquid chocolate, I could just barely taste the cherry. But when the chocolate cooled, the cherry's flavor multiplied tenfold. So just as a heads-up, if you ever happen to be making chocolate, less is more.

Here you can see me making the first batch, the cherry one. The melter is set to Warm, meaning that it melts very slowly. however, setting the melter to Melt would destroy vital flavors and slightly burn the chocolate.

This is me holding up a fully finished, boxed, and wrapped box of chocolate. This was also from the cherry batch. Judy had a gold pen that does not smudge on plastic, making it ideal for writing on box tops.

This is me wrapping and unwrapping the boxes just to pass the time and practice wrapping for the future. We had a red box and a lot more green bows, so there was some thinking done on which box got the red bow.