My wife and I did a little shopping at IKEA. We picked up a couple cutting boards for gifts. One can not just give a plain cutting board when he access to a laser. Lol. So I added a littleness personal touch to them.
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Nice! Personalizing a gift like that always makes it so much better! 
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When you engrave on a finished cutting board like that, do you have to refinish the board? What do you refinish it with?
Or does that just become the bottom?
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A little light sanding to get the sap and smoke stain off. ( I could have masked it to prevent that) I then use mineral oil for cutting boards to redo the finish. I’m hoping they use the other side to actually cut on.
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I made some chocolate this weekend.
It turned out ok. I tempered using a Sous Vide but it has mixed results. I intend to build a temp. controlled bowl out of acrylic (still utilizing the Sous Vide) before my next batch, and to use syringes to deposit into the molds… measuring cup was hella-messy.
This is a 65% batch using PERUVIAN MARAÑÓN beans which are a rarity. A little less than half of the nibs were a lighter color than the rest… kind of beige or tan. I’m not sure I can distinctly tell a difference between them and other peruvian beans in terms of flavor. Anyway, I have 10% added cocoa butter and a vanilla bean in the batch as well, and I use turbindo sugar. I like the flavor of it, and I like that it isn’t as processed as white sugar.
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That looks mahhhvelous! 
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I will only eat high quality chocolate when I (rarely) eat chocolate. You make my mouth water. Yummmm! - Rich 
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I’m starting to come to the realization that mass-market chocolate is barely chocolate at all. Halloween was the last time I had a mass-market candy bar, and I haven’t missed it at all. I have a good supply of great craft chocolate thanks to the NW Chocolate Festival a couple weeks ago, and as long as I keep buying beans, I can make more chocolate on my own at any time. I do intend to form this into a business at some point. The first step is to get my process down pat.
Part of that is going to be to build out one of the rooms in my house as a mini chocolate factory. By build-out I really mean set up folding tables for now, but counter-height workbenches will be coming in the future.
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Envy…envy…
- Rich
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Totes! The stuff on the shelf around here is brown, but that ain’t chocolate. Emulsified something with some brown powder in it and a lot of sugar.
I buy these, eat about a tsp at a time, and get more satisfying chocolate flavor than an entire Kit-Kat or Milky Way bar:
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A Hershey bar is roughly 11% chocolate. Those that you linked look to be 20% which is pretty good. “Dark Milk” chocolate is something that I’m seeing more and more of. Still “milk” due to added milk powder, but “dark” because it’s 40-60% cocoa as well. Personally, my favorite (until I make something I like more ;-)) is Meiji. Though I did get a really good “dark milk” from Solstice.
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I’ll give that a try!
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Me too. Free shipping from Amazon. - Rich
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They are also easily found at Asian markets if you have any near you.
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Well, yes and no. There’s a pretty big gulf between something like Hershey’s and something like Scharffen Berger, both of which are mass market.
Sure, but that’s not that awful for a milk chocolate bar - which, despite the recent rise in popularity of dark chocolate, is a perfectly acceptable snack. Where I think Hershey’s really takes a misstep is for their non Hershey’s bar chocolate, where they’ve started replacing the cocoa butter which garbage like vegetable oil (I say garbage within the context of a chocolate bar, not because I think veg oil is inherently bad).
All that said, this is my current favorite dark chocolate. So smooth:
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You guys have got to quit…although right now is the only time I can get chocolate delivered whole here.
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Have you been to the little baking/candy supply store up in the Maple Leaf/Roosevelt district? I don’t remember the name of it, but it’s in the same little strip as “Beadworld”. It’s one of those wacky hole in the wall stores that has been there forever and a day, and she has specialty items stacked floor to ceiling.
I’ve only had one little foray into chocolate making (nothing near as advanced as what you’re doing) but a trip to her shop showed me how easily one could get sucked in to that hobby!
Edited to add: https://www.yelp.com/biz/home-cake-decorating-supply-seattle
I don’t know that I would qualify the high-end chocolate as mass-market. Yes, it is mass-produced and available just about anywhere, but if you look at the numbers (and I haven’t for this particular statistic), I would venture to say that Hershey alone produces an exponentially greater quantity of chocolate per year than all of the high-end commercial chocolate combined. Being that these higher end bars run in the $3-$6 range per bar, they just aren’t in the same category.
I’m not sure where the line is drawn though. I’m on the fence starting around the Ghirardelli mark. I suppose I tend to draw the line when I start to see artificial ingredients on the package. I stopped eating Dove because I saw that their Hazelnut chocolate was artificial. I stopped eating the flavored M&Ms a couple years ago for the same reason… and now I’ve stopped eating M&Ms all-together.
Of course this is a difference of opinion, but that’s horrible for a milk chocolate bar. It is literally only 1% higher than the minimum amount to legally be considered chocolate. I suppose you could say “not awful for a $0.99 milk chocolate bar” and then I couldn’t really argue. Scharffen’s milk chocolate bar is 33%, but it also costs $4. I understand that many people can’t justify spending that amount (or more) on chocolate when you can get a Hershey bar for a buck… but if you’ve got the means, then spend the money and get the higher end chocolate. Taste-test it against Hershey’s. You won’t go back.
Oddly enough I’m perfectly ok with artificially flavored fruit candies like Skittles and gummy bears… just don’t mess up chocolate by tainting it!
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I haven’t. Good to know there’s a cake supply place around. Do you recall if they have a good selection of molds?
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Yes! That’s specifically what we went there for, and she had a huge selection.
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