DIY: making chocolate covered bread sticks

I have recently bought many chocolate making supplies in my 8th Gmarket order. Yesterday, I have finally put them to use. Because I am new to this, I thought it would be safer to just make a few things at a time. From the many chocolate molds that I bought, I picked out one chocolate pepero stick mold and one chocolate bonbon mold. Out of the four kinds of chocolate chips, I took the yoghurt one. I am the most curious about how this would taste like. I like the tartness of yoghurt a lot, so it has to be delicious.

After trying, the yoghurt flavored chocolate taste a bit like Yakult, one of my favorite drinks. It also smells really divine.

Korean chocolate melts/chips in yoghurt, melon, and mango flavor
The yoghurt flavored chocolate is the white and blue package in the left.
Now let's move on to the actual chocolate making.

First, I have put a small pan filled with a bit of water on the stove. When it starts to boil, put the metal bowl over the pan. Make sure the bottom of the bowl does not touch the water, because it could overheat the chocolate. I did not have a thermometer, so it is better to act more careful. Take the chocolate chips out of the wrapping and put them in the bowl, which is still hoovering over the pan with boiling water. Take the plastic spatula to stir for a bit. This speeds up the melting process.

melting chocolate chips in metal pot
The metal bowl over the saucepan with boiling water.
Put aside a baking tray covered with baking paper. Chocolate does not stick on baking paper, so this makes it possible to place the not yet set chocolate on it without worrying that it will be hard to remove from it later on. After making sure the chocolate is at the right temperature (I did it by looking if the chocolate paste has become glossy, but a thermometer would be the more professional way), use the spatula to spoon some chocolate on the cookie sticks until a large part is covered. The cookie sticks I used were store-bought, but you can find a lot of recipes online for making that yourself as well. Wait a little bit for the excess chocolate to drop back into the bowl and then sprinkle the chocolate sticks with the topping of choice over the baking paper. I have used multicolor ice cream sprinkles, and the Dutch brand, De Ruijter muisjes (white and pink puffs), and De Ruijter vruchtenhagel (yellow, orange, and pink fruity rectangles). I also used some of the Dutch brand Venz hagelslag (chocolate rectangles), you can spot one little piece in the right bottom corner.



I remembered that I had a pack of dark chocolate chips left in my cupboard, so I took that out to make some more chocolate covered sticks. The chocolate chips are from Albert Heijn, a large national grocery store in the Netherlands. The picture of the melted chocolate dripping over the strawberry, the cream puff and the strawberry ice cream, is really a great packaging idea. How can you pass this one up in the store? The directions tell me that I could even microwave these chocolate chips right in the packaging, but I thought the bain marie (the fancy name for bowl hoovering over a pan of boiling water) way is still the best. Nuts work really well with chocolate, so I decided to chop up some cashew nuts that I found in the kitchen to serve as topping.

albert heijn smelt chocolade

use chocolate when it looks like this: nice and shiny
The melted chocolate looking nice and shiny.

Chocolate sticks covered with cashew nut pieces.
Next, I took out the two chocolate molds that I wanted to use and poured the chocolate in. It was really hard to remove the chocolate from the mold afterwards. That is how the chocolate bonbon with the sunny face fell apart. To prevent the other shapes to break, I waited a bit longer for the chocolate to really set and I have also put cold water over the mold. The chocolate pepero stick molds have a handy ridge on the downside, so you can fill up the ridge with water without ruining the cookie stick or the chocolate. This really speeds up the cooling down process and I was able to take the chocolate out in one piece later on. I was a bit rough while taking them out, so the chocolate does not look as neat. I will try harder next time. :)


My roughed up chocolates. :)

Now comes a whole lot of delicious looking pictures. Do not read on when you are hungry. :P









home-made chocolate sticks

You can read more about my second time making these chocolate covered bread sticks over here.

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