Nobody knows the "TRUFFLES" I've Seen

                                  

       Hope you will check back in the next coming weeks to be tempted by our  "NEW"          

and delightful creations

Soon to be available here on our blog

                            

Sea Shell Chocolates and a Tablescape

My Daughter Karin over at The Style Sisters has just put together an amazing tablescape using some of my  sea shell chocolates.
You can purchase these sea shell chocolates right here on my blog. I sell them for $1.00 each!

 I also sell the Sea Shells alone. Please email me for pricing joan@eatlotsachocolate.com I can do large or small orders. 

Easter is coming and wouldn't it be fun to have some of these chocolates around for your guests!

These make perfect wedding favors for your guests!

 I am selling these sea shell chocolates on the right side of my blog...I call them 

FRUITS DE MER (BELGIAN SEA SHELL CHOCOLATE IN A SEASHELL)

 If you haven't been over to my daughters blog hop over so you can see the rest of this "Under Da Sea" Tablescape!

More Chocolate recipes to come....

I am linking up to 

Tablescape Thursday

Sweeter than Chocolate

This is Ina Garten's  fabulous Ganache Cake

 

Grandma, I don't know what I love more

You or my chocolate cake

My precious grandson Turner... I

call him my sugar plum.

 










Chocolate Ganache Cake Recipe:

1/4 pound  unsalted butter at room temp 

1 Cup  sugar

4  extra large eggs- room temp

1  16 oz can Hershey's  chocolate syrup 

1  tablespoon pure vanilla extract

1  cup all-purpose flour

                                          For the Ganache:

                                     1/2  cup heavy cream

                                     8  ounces good semisweet chocolate chips

                                     1  teaspoon instant coffee granules or....

                                     ( I like to use 1 tablespoon cocoa powder) 

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.  Butter and flour an 8 inch round cake pan, then line the bottom with parchment paper.

Cream the butter and sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment until light and fluffy.  Add the eggs, one at a time.  Mix in the chocolate syrup and vanilla.  Add the flour and mix until just combined.  Don't overbeat, or the cake will be tough.

Pour the batter into the pan and bake or 40 to 45 minutes, or until just set in the middle.  Don't overbake!  Let cool thoroughly in the pan.

For the ganache, cook the heavy cream, chocolate chips, and instant *coffee in the top of a double boiler over simmering water until smooth and warm, stirring occasionally.

Note:  *When I use cocoa instead of the instant coffee I like to heat the cream till almost boiling, then pour over the chocolate chips and stir till creamy, then add the cocoa powder.   

Place the cake upside down on a wire rack and pour the glaze evenly over the top, making sure to cover the entire cake and sides.  You can tilt the rack to smooth the glaze.  Decorate with candied violets, if desired or crumble the gold leaf and place it on the center of the cake.  Do not refrigerate.

Sometimes I make this cake without the ganache (heaven forbid but it is lovely) and serve it with whipped cream and berries.  It's wonderful either way!    









Sedate this woman with Chocolate

 There is a skinny person inside me screaming to get out but I keep her sedated with chocolate.

These little Mendiants are so lovely.  Milk or Dark Belgian Chocolate with a macadamia nut, a pistachio nut and just a hint of orange from candied orange peel.  Nothing quite so delectable as dark chocolate and orange.  YUM!

                                   

Don't you love the gorgeous creativity of this dessert.  I think I may have to try making it.

Rember this:

Money can't buy happiness.....

But it can buy chocolate

and it's kinda the same thing.

These pictures tantalize me!!

I found them on hotpolkadot.com

Great blog!

OH MY, I DO LOVE CHOCOLATE!

I WON THE COOKIES and ....The Trials of Developing a CHOCOLATE BUSINESS

I was the very lucky lady that won
this Sweet Cheeks Bakery giveaway! on Nancy's Daily Dish.

Thank you - Thank you - Thank you!
You just can't imagine how delicious these

cookies from Sweet Cheeks Bakery are!!
They are oatmeal with almonds, cranberries and white chocolate and

Oh MY GOODNESS they are sensational. They absolutley melt in your mouth.

And they shipped beautifully too.

I can't wait to try some of the other cookies they offer.

You need to order some right away.

Just click on Sweet Cheeks Bakery and order up.

We get together on Monday nights with a group to study the
Scriptures and then we have a little snack afterwards.
Some of those that come are diabetic so we have to be
certain we provide something they can enjoy too.

So we offered fresh pears and yogurt
with berries and home made granola.

But of course I always have to provide a little chocolate from

Continental Chocolatier.

These are the Petite Tortoise (turtles in the vernacular of the public)

and Tortoise Shells - Dark or Milk Chocolate w/dried fruit and nuts.

Oh so very yummy!Check every now and then at our website http://www.eatlotsachocolate.com/ to order your favorites.

Each year I harvest enough grapes

from our yard to bottle 50 or 60 quarts of juice. Some times I add

a little Sparkling Juice for more interest. Tonight it is Sparkling Pear.

I love the beautiful pink color of the juice. It really is delcious.

Trials in Developing a Chocolate Business

We found a fabulous Chocolaier in Los Angeles and we were ready to give it a go. It seemed like there were several hotels interested in my ideas for their guests but none had ordered as yet. I had called on about 25 hotels (it seemed like thousands) but none had ordered and I was beginning to think I was mistaken about the interest I thought I had created. I came home one night ready to call it quits and look for a job selling wigs or something. (I had done that before and it was the one of the worst experiences of my life....and that is another chapter in my book)


There was a message on the answer phone from one of the upper class hotels in NewportBeach. He WANTED 500 boxes of our chocolates. I could hardly believe my ears. I met with him the next day and he gave me the order. I only had about 2 weeks to put the order together. Now this could present a serious problem. He wanted a specific box that was not readily available and I had to get it fast. I had to look for a space where we could package the product.


Can you believe I would start a business and not have a work place? Well I did, and it caused me great tribulation. To the rescue came my daughter Karin, (The Style Sisters,) and her boss offered us space in his building. Yeah! Of course we had no employees at this time so what does one do in that event, call on family. My darling children Tiffany, (The Childrens Nest), my darling son Tim and his wife Liz, all came to my rescue.



We ordered the chocolate from our chocolatier and received the boxes one day before we had to deliver them. Our chocolatier had shorted us on the chocolates and we had to buy 1/4 pound from Sees to finish the boxes. That was great. After I had convinced our client that European chocolate was extremely superior to American chocolate (which it is) I added Sees?

Don't get me wrong, I like Sees product a lot, but I love and adore European chocolate. There is no comparison. Fortunately for us they never noticed and reordered many times after that. We never had to resort to our former subtrufuge.


We were now getting serious about this chocolate business and knew we needed a space where we could have a legitimate kitchen with refrigerators, sinks and stainless steel tables , etc., and an office. We were really uptown now.


We were offering an assortment of bon-bons and truffles that were exquite and we could hardly keep up with the orders. I should say our Chocolatier could hardly keep up. We really needed a space of our own. He made them, we sold and delivered them. Pretty slick.


One day as my husband was waiting at the Chocolatier's place of business to place an order he happend to notice that inside one of the large commercial refrigerators that had a glass door, a live cat sitting inside on one of the shelves. He left without ordering and returned to our place of business to inform me that from now on we would be making our own products.
WHAT?!!!!! We had an order for about 5,000 golfball truffles for the Dinah Shore Open in Palm Springs.

What in the world was he thinking?

We had taken a course in chocolate making but we had not done anything with it, as of yet. I had always loved to cook and experiment with chocolate but..........


Stay tuned for the next frightening episode.

I am participating in Thursday Tablescape

Chocolate, the continuing saga and yummy giveaway

Wouldn't you just LOVE one pound of these gorgeous delectible things?

Well this is our giveaway....One pound of Continental Chocolatier's Desert Tortoises.

1 Entry- Leave a comment

2 Entries -blog about it and use my pictures

3 Entries- Facebook or twitter about this

Winner will be announced May 1st!

They come packaged in this box and wouldn't they make


a great gift? Gift my foot, I think every blogger deserves


at least one chocolate tortoise a day, don't you? I have to


have my daily dose.

All this past talk about lovely breakfasts in Brazil has me wanting
omelets. I adore setting things up where everyone can

choose what they want in their omelet.

My kitchen is full of silly chef items, most given to me from
my dear and wonderful family and friends. Do you see my beautiful

eggs in their chicken basket? They come from my very own dear little

chickens, but my favorite are the pastel colored ones from

the Aracana chickens.

I'm hoping my tomatoes, peppers an onions will look this

good. They are from Costco and they are as good as they look.

I love my Bon Appetit sign and I utilize in lots
of different ways. It added a little "French" feel

to this buffet.

I used 3 tea towels that have wonderful

colors for a table cover. I just wanted something

simple with bright colors and casual

Love this fat little chef, he just tickles me every time I look at him
The cheeses are a Wensleydale with apricots
and Goat cheese with fig. Yumalicious!


And now .....the continuing saga

This marriage was my second and I came into it with great hopes for a happy life for me and for my 12 year old daughter. My other two children , a daughter 24 and a son 22 had married at the same time I did, all within 3 months of each other. Three marriages in a row! Was I insane or what? Yes I was and maybe still am, but just a little.

So just 6 months or so after I married, off we went to Brazil.

We were forwarned by our Brazilian tutor before we arrived in Brazil that the only difficult thing he thought we would encounter would be the smell. They burn fuel for their cars and homes that is produced from corn or something like that. Our tutor was so right, it was breath taking for it took my breath away and not in a good way, but the time spent there was exciting.

Their Chocolate is so very different from ours but I loved it! Each morning I would rush to the hotels lovely breakfast buffet that was at least 75 feet long and loaded with delectible pastries, eggs, meat and fresh fruit and always a beautiful silver pot of hot chocolate. Oh Heaven!!

My husband was there to nationalize their computer security systems. He was to meet with these people each morning (we thought morning) but it always seemed to be early afternoon before they arrived to pick him up. (You see when you have a two or three hour siesta in the middle of the day then you must work till all hours of the night to accomplish anything and so therefore morning does not come early for them.) Sometimes I was included. Note: Neither of us spoke Portugese and they spoke very little English. Interesting meetings. They were trying to develop a catalog and my husband thought that I could help them with the wording.

Not so. We had several confrontations or should I say differences of oppinion. The gentleman I worked with was certain that his description of the security system made sense but he was way wrong. He used terms and descriptions of products that did not compute. I would ask " Is this what you want to tell them?" and he would agree, "yes, that is what I want it to say" soooooo .......I would write it the way we Americans can understand it. NO that was not what he wanted and that's how the days went. Of course many times throughout the day they would bring demitasse cups of the strongest coffee brew ever imagined, that would get them going, WOW, did it ever. That brew really put them on a nervous, tense plateau. Maybe if we would have joined in and had a few cups we could have better delt with their explosive personalities. After several of these meeting I elected to remain in the hotel, much safer there I might add, no confrontations.

During my alone time I had much opportunity to contemplate what else I wanted to do with my life. I had had several businesses throughout the years, I was a manicurist, had a plant business, jewelry business, an antique store in Laguna Beach, CA to name a few and even though I loved being a wife and a mother more than anything, I so desired to have a really successful business.

Oh, oh it's time to cook again and erase the chocolate from around my mouth before my true love arrives. We will meet again in Brazil so please stay tuned.

Don't forget to enter our CHOCOLATE giveaway !

P.S. Did you know that chocolate makes your breath sweet? Really, it does.

I am participating in Tablescape Thursday

Just for us Girls

It's always fun to prepare a little lite lunch

for just the girls. My husband doesn't care for

scones and they are one of my favorite things.

Love serving a salad in a large seashell.

Fresh spinach with strawberries and avacado

plus candied nuts. Yummmy

I made chocolate chip and apricot scones and served them

with lemon curd



I found these blue goblets in New Jersey
at a garage sale 40 years ago and I still love them.
I think I paid about $3 for each one. I do love a bargain.



I wish the weather would clear up and give us a little sunshine
I think my pictures would be a bit brighter if I had the right light.



These are some of our seashells that we sell at
Continental Chocolatier. You can check out
our web site at: eatlotsachocolate.com
It is still under construction but you can still view it.

I am a nut for yellow and blue. Love French Country stuff.
I added a bit of color with some of the material I had left
over from the table cloth so I just cut a short piece and
tied it around the napkin. Added a little ranuculus and there ya go



If you are interested in any of the seashell candies we
can offer you the wholesale prices if you can order
in the quantities listed on our website at - eatlotsachocolate.com

I am participating in the Tablescape Thursday

CHOCOLATE

&

FRESH STRAWBERRIES!

Is there anything better?

How about MORE CHOCOLATE, LOTS OF NUTS AND THE

WORLDS GREATEST CREAMY CARAMEL

But wait................I can help!

PROMOTIONAL OFFER

delightful CHOCOLATE Petite Desert Tortoise

bulk (approximately 30 pieces per pound)

$16.00/lb

These tiny Desert Tortoise are made from delectable, European CHOCOLATE and HEAVENLY CREAMY CARAMEL that does not stick to your teeth but melts in your mouth.

One pound could sustain life, deliciously, for several hours or perhaps one entire day.

To order you can e-mail us at info@eatlotsachocolate.com

Perfect little TREATLETS because they are just bite size and you can eat dozens of them without feeling any guilt. "I do it all the time and there really is no guilt."

Other packaging options

8 Petite Desert Tortoise in cello bag tied with rafia $5.95

8 Petite Desert Tortoise Packaged in

Terracotta Linen Gift Box $6.95

OR

24 Petite Desert Tortoise Packaged in

Large Terracotta Linen Gift Box $17.95

DESERT TORTOISE

Keep watching for our giveaway -

It could be you

Chocolate Giveaway!!!

My daughter at The Style Sisters is hosting a

Chocolate Giveaway for me.

Stop on by her blog and leave a comment to enter into the giveaway!!!

To win either some of my Belgian Chocolate Turtles

1/2 pound gift box.

Or

1/4 pound of these amazing Belgian Chocolate Nut Discs in a Cello bag tied with a beautiful Christmas ribbon perfect for gift giving.

Good Luck to all who enter the giveaway!