For your budding chocolatiers...

Wait…. a…. minute. I might be just about to write something mildly topical. Hold on to your Easter bonnets, because, just in time for the school holidays, when you might be in the market for a fun activity for children, and Easter, when you might have a large amount of chocolate lurking around, here’s this!

Yes!

What is it?

Umm… Rocky road? A sort of chocolate collage? The result of an accident in a sweetie factory?

Read on, reader...

BG announced that next time her friend, H, came over, they wanted to make chocolates. I think they actually wanted to make the chocolate, but I pointed out that many (most?) chocolatiers wouldn’t go so far as to make their own chocolate, but would buy it in and add their own signature flavours.

So after school today we made this. I melted some chocolate (I used Sainsbury’s Basics milk chocolate bars, which I think retail at the princely sum of 35p for a 100g bar but I bet you could also use the bits of chocolate egg that you’re bored with, too) and assembled the dregs of the ‘surprise’ baskets at from the back of the cupboards. Half-eaten bags of buttons, about five tubs of sprinkles/silver balls with about a centimetre left in each, scrunched up, long-forgotten “no you may NOT eat that whole entire bag we’ll put the rest away for another day” treats, marshmallows, raisins, broken biscuits and any random confiscated confectionery I hadn’t managed to secretly eat myself. It was great to have a clear-out!

I used my favourite non-stick foil to line a couple of shallow dishes, splodged in the chocolate, and the children did the rest, starting with white chocolate buttons so that they melted a bit and could be swirled into the milk chocolate, which they then proceeded to annihilate, pouring pools of rock-hard sprinkles in among the jelly crocodiles and the ageing caramels until no surface area remained. After an hour or so in the fridge it was ready to be cut up into squares and served up. 

I know this isn't rocket science, and it isn't exactly health food either, but I reckon this could easily be gussied up for yer actual grown-up dining and entertainment purposes. Pools of chocolate dropped onto greaseproof paper and then studded with.... brazil nuts? Crystallised ginger? Posh dried fruit? I used to work in a chocolate shop selling this kind of thing for £2.50/100g... and this was in the eighties!

Mind you, most of the grownups of my acquaintance would probably delighted with the Haribo, marshmallow and chocolate button variety too. Whatever you are doing this spring, enjoy!