A chocolate-tastic day!

On Friday last week, I received the most wonderful email from Dan and Paula at Elements for Life, telling me that my name had been picked out of a hat and I had won a free Raw Chocolate Making Starter Kit

Cue MUCH excitement from me, I mean, does it get much better than that?  Its chocolate, its good for you, its FREE and to top it off, it arrived just in time for half term so I could make them with the kiddies - YIPPEEE!!

So today we made our chocolates, much to everyone's delight!  As a bonus, Mr Starstruck made it home from work early so he was able to take some action shots of us...

Grating the Raw Cacoa Butter:

Preparing the mould - We bought some little white chocolate buttons and cut them up, then placed a few pieces in each mould so that we would get some white chocolate on the tops each each one.  If you can see the saucepan just past me, this contains a glass bowl, forming the bain marie that we melted the cacoa butter in:

Aliya adds the Raw Cacoa powder to the melted Caoa butter,  we then added some of the Sweet Freedom sweetener (we added a bit more than the recipe said as the kiddies thought it was a little bitter still.  I thought it was delicious, but they overruled me!):

Spooning our chocolate mixture into the mould:

And a couple of hours later....TA DA.....!

I like to think in this photo, Aliya is thinking "Oh my gosh, look mummy we made CHOCOLATES, and i'm SO excited, and now you're pointing a camera at me - here is my BIGGEST smile!".  And Austin is thinking "Yeah? And? Can I eat one yet?".

Confirmed by this photo where Aliya still can't get the grin off her face, and Austin is eyeing up the nearest one and wondering if he could sneak it in without me noticing:

OK - Mummy lets the kiddies eat the chocolate:

Loving the matching expressions:

My gorgeous chocolatey boy:

My very smiley little girl:

 

And I am really proud to show you this as well.  Aliya was so impressed with the chocolates that she sat and wrote this note.  Her reading is exceptional, but she really struggles with writing so this was a huge effort for her.  She chose the words herself, with just a little help with some of the spelling.  

Originally she was going to write "they were delicious", but when she got to writing the word "delicious", she decided to change it to something that she could spell!

All in all, a great experience.  The kiddies had great fun making the chocolates, and they definitely enjoyed eating them.  The chocolate itself is the best I have EVER tasted.  I've actually never tasted chocolate quite like it, so rich, smooth and it melts quickly in your mouth.  We've used half the pack on this batch, and Mr S and I have plans for the next lot, involving dried cherries soaked in Armaretto....Mmmmmmmm...