Happy New Year and Bonbon project 2.0

The New Year has come. Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday with their beloved ones, friends, colleagues, whoever, with whom you could cook, bake, eat perfect foods together and had a great time.

For Xmas this year since I am a gourmand and have this gastro blog, I didn't have another chance but only prepare eatable presents for everyone, my family and friends also. I prepared a lot of delicious things already before xmas, in all December but from all I loved making bonbons. It has endless number of variant and who doesn't love chocolate. The bonbon as xmas present proved perfect choise. All my family was struck dumb by the small sweet surprises which is always the best proof for me. :)

Right before Christmas I  bought a new bonbon silicone chocolate molds what I needed to try immediately. Of course! 

I made 4 different kind of bonbon with different fillings or design:

1. Bonbon filled with lemony white chocolate cream and sour cherry jam (I have prepared this before)

2. White - dark chocolate striped bonbon

3. White chocolate bonbon filling with sour cherry jam

4. White chocolate bonbon filling with orange dark chocolate cream

1. Bonbon filled with lemony white chocolate cream and sour cherry jam 

Ingredients (15 pieces):

15 dkg dark chocolate (minimum 60%)

For the filling:

4 tablespoon cream 

10 dkg white chocolate

4 coffee spoon yoghurt 

1 lemon's zest

+ home-made sour cherry jam

1. For first step let's prepare the filling. Melt the white chocolate with the cream above medium heat, stirring constantly. When the cream is solid, set aside to chill. When it's cold (after 5-10 minutes), addmix the yoghurt and lemon zest. Set aside again until preparing the chocolate shell in the forms. 

2. Melt the 2/3 of chocolate slowly in another saucepan stirring constantly. When it's completely melted, take from the cooking-stove, turn the rest of chocolate into the melted chocolate and stir until they get melted as well. 

3. Wih the help of a paint brush (Yes, you can use what we painted in elementary school with if we haven't purchased a professional bonbon brush yet) grease the holes of bonbon form. Hold toward the lights to see whether you haven't left any small hole anyway the filling runs out through it. Place the form in the fridge to congeal. If you want to play it safe, grease again with the chocolate (as I did also for the very first time).

4. When our chocolate shells chilled, place some white chocolate filling with a small coffee spoon, then some jam but leave some millimetre place for the feet of bonbons to close them. Pull down the unnecessary chocolate with a spatula so the feet of bonbons will be nice and plain.  

5. When we are ready witht the filling, put them back inthe fridge for minimum 1 hour then carefully turn out the bonbons from the form and you can taste them immediately. 

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Bonbon project 1.0 - Bonbon filled with lemony white chocolate cream and sour cherry jam

The long weekends always give a handle to try those dishes, cakes and recipes we have deferred for a long time. I also devoted partly my weekend for this vagary. On the one hand these wonderful bonbons were prepared on Saturday, and yesterday ginger-cinnamon Williams pear jam. Wowowowow!! Even I made both for the first time but I wanted to create something special and unique and to be "very unpretentious" I think they turned out well.  

I stated that I still need to improve related to bonbon (I would like if my bonbons were sooo shiny as the most delicious ones are) in technics, variations, tastes, forms but what is essential that 8 from 10  bonbons  came out in one shape from the form. The other reason why I needed to try to make them is that in 2 weeks I will need to prepare in Stockholm and at the time I won't be allowed to make lame bonbons. :)

My mum has bought the forms for me a few weeks ago in Lidl, but in Hungary you can buy also in Butlers, Tescoma products can be bought in almost all kitchen utensils store, in almost every big shopping mall (in Budapest: Allee, Westend, Aréna) and online on the Hungarian website: Gasztroshop, Sodrófa.hu. For the persons who lives in Sweden (;-)) the FikaMera is a very useful web store!!!!! Soon I will also purchase the ingredients only from here. 

For start I wanted to try only one portion, the important for me was to see how to use the chocolate, how to temper then how to grease the form with the melted chocolate to make equable thick chocolate layer then in the end if I reached the last step without any big mistake how to conjured the bonbons out from the form without breaking. In short, to know all of this above, I turned in to the blog of Praliné Zsuzsi, and Csak a Puffin, to learn the basics and get inspired. In this way I reached to the lemony white chocolate and sour cherry jam filling. 

I aim at summarize the most important things what a starter bonbon maker should know before starting a bonbon project.

Ingredients (10 pieces):

10 dkg dark chocolate (minimum 60%)

For the filling:

2 tablespoon cream 

5 dkg white chocolate

2 coffee spoon yoghurt 

1/2 lemon's zest

+ home-made sour cherry jam

1. For first step let's prepare the filling. Melt the white chocolate with the cream above medium heat, stirring constantly. When the cream is solid, set aside to chill. When it's cold (after 5-10 minutes), addmix the yoghurt and lemon zest. Set aside again until preparing the chocolate shell in the forms. 

2. Melt the 2/3 of chocolate slowly in another saucepan stirring constantly. When it's completely melted, take from the cooking-stove, turn the rest of chocolate into the melted chocolate and stir until they get melted as well. 

You can read about the different way of melting and tempering of chocolate at Praliné Zsuzsi's blog.  She says, either to melt above  boiling water or in microwave oven but the most important thing is to measure with chocolate tempering thermometer, because if for instance we overheat the chocolate it can happen that our chocolate won't be shiny.

3. Wih the help of a paint brush (Yes, you can use what we painted in elementary school with if we haven't purchased a professional bonbon brush yet) grease the holes of bonbon form. Hold toward the lights to see whether you haven't left any small hole anyway the filling runs out through it. Place the form in the fridge to congeal. If you want to play it safe, grease again with the chocolate (as I did also for the very first time).

(If your chocolate has congealed, melt it again.)

4. When our chocolate shells chilled, place some white chocolate filling with a small coffee spoon, then some jam but leave some millimetre place for the feet of bonbons to close them. Pull down the unnecessary chocolate with a spatula so the feet of bonbons will be nice and plain.  

5. When we are ready witht the filling, put them back inthe fridge for minimum 1 hour. (or for a whole night), then carefully turn out the bonbons from the form and you can taste them immediately. 

How long are 10 binbons enough for you?

The chocolate shell was perfect, the cream was softly lemony, and with the sourish cherry jam they became a very special couple. 

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