Kind of a silly name, yes, but the filling for these chocolates is really terrific – just dark chocolate (Amano Ocumare 70%) and mango puree (I used Perfect Puree). This was my second attempt at making a molded chocolate, and while I saw some improvement, I still was not successful. I first set about tempering the chocolate for the molds. I used leftover chocolate that I had previously tempered and poured into a plastic container for storage. Check it out, beautifully tempered chocolate – smooth and shiny and no trace of bloom!

Again, I filled the molds (square this time) with chocolate and let it set up before pouring out the excess. I can already tell that I’ve got issues, the shells are still too thin and haven’t pulled away from the mold at all. And for some reason I have a couple that lost temper, no idea why (notice the bloom).

I melted some of the chocolate (no need to temper) and then added the warmed mango puree a bit at a time until I got the flavor I was looking for. Larry thought the filling would make a great chocolate mousse, and I agree.

I let the mango-chocolate mixture set up a little before piping it into the molds, then let the molds set up some more. I was very careful to be conservative on the amount of filling and not overfill.

Once the filling had set up, I ladled more tempered chocolate onto the molds to form the bottom of the chocolates.

I then cleaned off the molds as much as possible and waited for everything to set up.

Once everything was set up, I inverted the mold and tapped on it to try to get the chocolates to release. Used a little knife to help ease them out. Put them in the refrigerator for a while to get the chocolate to contract. And nothing really came out, I did get some of the bottoms to pop out. We scraped some of the filling on top of the nicely tempered bottoms, and it was delicious. So I’m on to something flavor-wise, just need to master the execution!

I emailed my tutor for the course and got some really good specific tips about how to get the chocolate to come out of the molds. I was on to something with the refrigerator, because that was one of her suggestions. I’m looking forward to trying it out, but not for the class – my requirement for attempting two molded chocolates is complete. Even though neither one turned out, I still learned a lot in the process.