Summer Berry Chocolates

“Who says nobody eats chocolate in the summer?”

Summer Berry Chocolates

Ingredients

  • 300g of freshest strawberries and blackberries you can get
  • 550g white chocolate for ganache
  • 400g white chocolate for shell
  • 40g coconut oil
  • 250g organic oats, blitzed
  • 2 digestive biscuits, blitzed
  • Freeze dried raspberry nibs

Makes approx. 80 large chocolates.

Inspiration

The image came first

I’d dreamt up this image long before I decided on what the chocolates were actually going to contain! Primary colours in an image always look good to me. I’d imagined a white chocolate shell with some sort of red decoration against a green background. The use of the berries in a breakfast one morning inspired the idea of the ganache, and hence, Summer Berry Chocolates.

I like a challenge

Try making these in early August. This not an ideal time for making chocolates, admittedly, even in the UK (yes, we really do get sun here now and again). Recently released from the grip of a heatwave the first time I made them, I’d been blighted by a number of failed white tempers. These are very frustrating.

Balance the sweet

The white chocolate I use is very sweet – in fact, just all about all of them I have tried have been. For this reason, it’s good to balance the sweet flavour, so the sugar doesn’t overpower the flavour. For that, fresh raspberries and blackberries are ideal. These grow locally to me, and thanks to my continued laziness hedge pruning, we now get them in the garden as well.

Biscuit to the rescue

The ganache, when cooled, is too soft to hold enough shape to form into something that could be dipped (this I have learned). How to rescue this? Well, to get something dippable, I added oats and just 2 digestive biscuits, to dry it out a little and add more bulk. That works nicely, and is barely detectable in the finished chocolate.

So dip I did, into yet more white chocolate, and some simple freeze dried raspberries provided a good contrast to the white.

Instructions

  1. Start the temper of the 400g white chocolate for the shell.
  2. Prepare an 8 inch baking tin to take the ganache.
  3. Briefly pulse the berries in a blender (not including the raspberry nibs). Allow it to keep some of its structure if possible.
  4. Strain it to get rid of as much juice or water as possible. Reduce in a saucepan to a compote if necessary.
  5. Gently melt the 550g white chocolate. Add in the fruit, biscuit powder and 100g oats.
  6. Pour into 8 inch square tin and allow to set in the fridge until semi hard. It may well be a little spongy from the pectin in the fruit.
  7. While this is setting, it may well be worth spending some time on the tempering of the white chocolate.
  8. Take the ganache out of the fridge and remove from the tin onto a cold surface. Cut into 1-1½ cm squares (depending on how big you want the chocolates). Roll each square into a ball, and roll the ball in the remaining oats to stop it being so sticky to handle. This will help when dipping.
  9. Dip in the tempered white, and sprinkle just a few freeze dried raspberries on the top for decoration.

Next Time

Can’t think of anything I’d do differently. These came out just right.