Tuesday 5 February 2013

Sriracha Chocolate

sriracha chocolate heats in mold
Perfect  Valentine Chocolates
It had to be done, I don't often enter the realms of making sweet things but Sriracha and Chocolate had to be put together. Not that there is much sweetness though, I went with a 74% Cocoa Chocolate so it's pretty bitter.

Apologies in advance for the photo quality, it was pretty hard documenting this and trying to keep the melted chocolate stable.

Ingredients:

300g Gluten Free Plain Chocolate
2 1/2 Tablespoons Sriracha

With Valentine's Day coming up I figured I'd make some heart shaped Sriracha Chocolates so I bought a cool silicone mold to do the job. It's available here (UK) or here (US) if you want one.

silicone heart mold
Total Girl, Yes
I used a Tesco plain chocolate that has no gluten containing ingredients. It's a good quality 74%.

dark chocolate
It Wants To Be One With Sriracha
I'd been looking into different methods for melting the chocolate such as in the microwave or slow cooker but decided to go with an old fashion bain marie.

pyrex bowl over saucepan
I'm Available For Sponsorship Pyrex
I boiled a kettle and filled the saucepan so that the water sat under the dish but didn't touch it. I then added the chocolate. This went on the hob at a medium heat so that the water would simmer gently and create steam to melt the dark stuff.

chocolate in melting pot
First Bar In
chocolate pieces melting in bowl
Getting Steamy
melting chocolate
First Signs Of Goo
I moved the chocolate around every minute or so with a plastic spoon.

half melted chocolate
I'm Melting!
When there was just a few bits of solid chocolate left I added the Sriracha and stirred it in.

adding sriracha to chocolate
Chocolate Meet Sriracha
It was at this stage that the chocolate could be considered to have gone grainy but it was actually still smooth, there was some form of reaction when the Sriracha was stirred in but so far so good. There were tiny bubbles though.

melted sriracha chocolate
It Tastes Amazing
I used two spoons to fill the mold, one for depositing the Sriracha Chocolate and one for scraping from the other spoon.

sriracha chocolates in mold
Messy Job
I won't lie, it was a bit of a trial getting the chocolate into the mold and making sure that each one was fully filled, I'm not great at fiddly jobs. After all the hearts were loaded I scraped the excess chocolate off, I had extra so I ended up half filling an ice cube tray too.

Once the Sriracha Chocolate was cool I put the molds into the fridge for a couple of hours. I didn't do a great job filling the molds, once popped out there were several cracks and missing bits. Still, not bad for a first timer, they taste AMAZING and I'd rather they taste better than they look rather than the other way round.

chocolate hearts
Imperfect Hearts But Fantastic Flavour
I happen to have a big pot of chilli on the hob so I thought I'd do a little taste test. I've heard in the past that high percentage cocoa chocolate goes great melted into a chilli, it's true, it does. Double the heat in this instance of course.

So that was my foray into sort of making my own chocolate, simple ingredients but perfect flavour combination. I'll definitely be experimenting further.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Blog Widget by LinkWithin