Inspiration

A good problem to have?

Often, chocolates are based on a cream ganache. The majority of the recipes I’ve used involve the use of cream. It’s a way to make chocolate fluid enough to work into a chocolate filling, or a truffle. Trouble is, the more that is used, the shorter the shelf life I’ve found the chocolates have. Which of course means, they need to be consumed quickly. Not normally an issue, but if they are to be a gift, then ideally they would at least last a month or more. Such a short shelf life often results in chocolates being given away. It’s simply not possible (or healthy) to make 70 chocolates and eat them all yourself in a week. Doing so is likely to result in the kitchen worktop getting further and further away due to an expanding waistline.

Boozy beginnings

So how to make a chocolate last longer? Well, removing the cream altogether had to be a good start. Couple this with an alcoholic content would surely go a good way to this. Liqueur has a high alcohol content. I’d tried a dark chocolate dipped cherry once, and was wowed by the combination and depth of the flavour. The supermarket shelf offered the idea – cherry liqueur and dried cherry as a basis for a chocolate.

Creamy but creamless

Lacking the time to prepare shells, dippable chocolates was to be the way. So where to get the mass from for the cherries? Well, cashews, when blitzed, yield a slightly creamy flavour, especially when made into a praline. This was to be the way to make the cherry mixture dippable and add texture to the chocolate.

Dip decisions

So, in which chocolate to dip? As ever, it’s hard to ignore the white chocolate for appearances. Dust colour works so well on white. It just pops. White chocolate dip it was then, and a tiny sprinkle of red dust on top, and just a few shavings of milk chocolate, to add a little extra interest