Homemade Chocolates

Happy Chinese New Eve. It’s tradition to have your big meal on the eve so that you can have leftovers on the actual New Years day which is tomorrow so that you don’t have to cook and just be lazy. There is so much going on. There is Chinese New Year, Valentine’s Day, and Family Day. I couldn’t figure out which to blog about. I was inspired by last week’s revelation that Valentine’s Day was coming up but then there are these other things that we have blogged about in the past as well. Maybe I’ll do posts all month about them even though the holidays have passed.

Let’s do a Valentine’s post. I have recently taken up chocolate making in isolation, haha. Chocolates are always a tasty Valentine’s Day treat. I remembered as a kid I had made chocolate covered cherries so I decided to try it out. I bought a couple of molds on Amazon and then I went for it.

                                                         

I melted some semi-sweet chocolate then I used a food safe brush which I also bought on Amazon and I painted the outside layer of the molds. Then I placed the mold in the fridge for about 10-15 minutes until they were all hardened.

Next I placed a maraschino cherry into each of the molds and spooned a little bit of the cherry juice on top.

Lastly I cover each of the chocolate with more of the melted semi-sweet chocolate and then leveled them all off. Put them back into the fridge for at least 15 minutes. Try and keep them in there for a longer amount of time. An hour or so would be great.

Once they have been hardened in the fridge, then knock them out of the molds and place on a place and enjoy. If you have more than one mold then do a few at a time but if not, then repeat the process as many times as you want after you knock the first batch of cherries out.

Next I tried this but with cream fillings. I remember when I was little I had some yummy cream filled chocolates that my Aunt would bring from the States. They were so yummy so I am going to try these out.

You can use the same molds. Now for these, you can do semi-sweet or milk chocolate or even white chocolate. Your choice.

I found a base cream recipe. It’s basically a vanilla cream and then you can add flavourings. Some yummy flavours would be lemon, mocha, white chocolate, cherry, strawberry, orange, caramel (you can even melt caramels and just pour some in like a Rolo), coffee, vanilla, and mint. Those are just a few. I’m sure I could think up more. So many options but which one to start with. Maybe a Rolo type caramel one and two crowd pleasers like orange and mocha?

Cream Filling Recipe:

½ cup of butter

4 oz. of cream cheese

4 ½ cups of icing sugar

1 tsp. of cornstarch

Cream the butter and the cream cheese.

Slowly add the icing sugar and beat until fluffy.

Separate into a couple bowls and experiment with flavours.

I put about 3 tsp. of orange extract in one along with the zest from 1 orange and mixed that all up for an orange filling.

 

I also made a chocolate cream. I added about ¼ cup of cocoa and 2 tbsp. of melted semi-sweet chocolate to the base and then added in 2 tsp. of vanilla as well.

Then place them into your prepared chocolate molds and cover and harden.

Now taste test. Divine! These were gone pretty fast.

                                                              

Chinese New Year, Year of the Rat

This week’s national day is not really a national day but a holiday. This week we are focusing on Chinese New Year which we usually do each year.

We are sharing with you a cute rat, since it is the year of the rat, craft. The craft we have chosen is super simple and quick and very cute looking. We are making origami rat corner bookmarks.

To make these bookmarks, you will need coloured paper (we are using regular paper along with construction paper in red, grey, and light pink), a glue stick, a black marker, scissors, and a pencil.

First of all, cut your coloured paper or construction paper into a square. We are using 8.5x11 inch paper. We are making two versions so one has a grey body and the other a red one to celebrate the New Year. One of the squares is 15cmx15cm so that would fit your average book and we also are making a slightly bigger one at 20cmx20cm as well.

Now fold the paper to make a triangle.

Fold the bottom right corner up to the top and then fold the bottom left corner up to the top to create a diamond.

Now unfold it. 

Take the top corner and bring it down to the bottom. 

Take the bottom right corner and fold along the previous fold line and then tuck into the pocket. Do the same to the other side.

You should have a rat body now.

Attach some ears and a tail and then draw on some whiskers, eyes, and a nose and you’re all done.

Use on the corners of your books to keep your place or make them for your friends and family.

 *Take a look at where we got our inspiration from...
https://www.redtedart.com/easy-mouse-corner-bookmark/

Chinese New Year Fan

Today is Chinese New Year. 2018 is the Year of the Dog. The Dog is the eleventh animal in the Chinese zodiac. People who are born under the year of the Dog are often loyal, honest, and reliable; they don’t abandon their family, friends or work and are very popular in social circles. They are good at fixing and finding. However, they can be quite anxious at times even though they don’t show it. Men born under the Year of the Dog sign are energetic, genuine, and straightforward, but they are also quite stubborn and opinionated. Women born under this sign are protective, cautious, and independent, but they can be slow to trust.

To celebrate the day, we are making a Chinese fan that you can use as a fun craft to do with the kids or that you can make for decorations to celebrate the holiday.

The fan that we are making is a take on the fans that you probably made in art class at school. They are super easy and fun to make.

You will need some construction paper. Cardstock is too thick so you won’t want to use that. We have chosen red, but you can go with any colour. Good luck and popular colours for Chinese New Year are gold and red, so we are using red construction paper. 

We folded the paper in half, then unfolded it, then repeatedly folded the edges into the middle to make sure that all of the folds were even, until they were the desired width.

Then after you’ve folded it, you unfold it and then refold in a zigzag pattern.

After it’s all been folded, we decided where we wanted cut outs to be and then we cut in those spots. You don’t have to cut any pieces out, but we thought it was a nice added touch.

After you’ve done the cut outs, you can decorate. We are making it a subtle Year of the Dog fan so we drew paw prints near the top of the fan and then we did gold borders around the cut out spaces. If you want to bring the Year of the Dog even more into your fan you can print, stamp, or draw pictures onto the paper that you fold into your fan.

Lastly, we coloured two small labels gold and we taped them around the bottom of the fan to hold it together. You can also use Scotch Tape to hold it together or a twist tie.

Now you have Chinese New Year, Year of the Dog fan!