Star Wars Valentines Day Chocolate Boxes

Happy 2017 all! Can you believe it's officially 2017? 

We celebrated the new year away from home and up in Maine on a snowboarding and ski trip with some good friends.  It was so nice to get away and detach from the usual routine.  It was also really cool to come down a mountain as a family! My hubster, oldest kiddo, and I all snowboard and the twins ski.  The kids can all get down most blues and greens and I have to say one of my favs from the trip was looking around and seeing my kids coming down on their own with us next to them.  It was really amazing.  One of my new years resolutions is to make sure I take time to enjoy these special moments many that happen everyday.

OK enough of the mushy reflectiveness, onto the treats! 

As you know we are huge SW fans so we went to see Star Wars Rogue One recently.  Can I say I loved this movie without sounding biased?  I mean I think I loved it more than The Force Awakens.  Rogue One is the story in between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope.  It basically tells the story that depicts the infamous opening movie crawl and provides context on how A New Hope (the first Star Wars movie) came about.  My oldest kiddo, a self proclaimed Star Wars nerd, also loved it as much as I did.

And what do you get a Star Wars nerd for Valentine's Day?

Star Wars chocolates of course!

I seem to have collected a plethora of shaped ice cube trays and that includes many Star Wars themed ones.  Great for jazzing up your drinks with fun cubes but even better as molds for treats.

Since one of my least favorite things to do is dip cake bites/pops into melted chocolate, I use these molds to make no dip cake bites too.  It's pretty simple.  Add melted chocolate or candy melts to coat the mold, let candy harden, add some cake bite mixture, cover with more melted candy and let harden.  

Pop the candy out of the molds spray with some color mist or similar spray food colorant to add some silver accents.  Darth Vader is done with milk chocolate, stormtroopers with vanilla candy melts, and Han Solo in carbonite (no cake mix in center) with dark chocolate.  Add the trooper detail with a black edible food writer.

Use Pearl or Silver spray!

If you have some heart shaped boxes you can add them and make some super special Valentine's for your favorite Star Wars fan!

Aww don't they make a cute couple?

Who can say no to Vader??

Happy 2017 everyone and I hope you are off to a great start to your year!

Star Wars No Dip Cake Bites

by Michelle Clausen January 11 - 2017

Ingredients

• 2 cups of chocolate chips
• 1 cup vanilla chips or melting wafers
• 1 and 1/2 cups of cake mixture (1 and 1/2 cups of crumbled cake and 1-2 Tablespoons of frosting)
• Black food writer
• Silver Color Mist spray

Instructions:

1. Melt each flavor of chips/wafers in microwave safe bowl in 10-20 second intervals until candy is melted.  Add to quart sized freezer bag.  Snip an end and coat mold with candy (ensure thick enough to coat all sides of mold but leave a space to allow for filling).  Tap mold to remove air bubbles and to make sure all parts of mold are coated well.  Reheat candy as needed.  Freeze mold for 5 minutes.
2. Remove mold from freezer and fill cavities with small ball of the cake mixture.  Press to cake fills mold cavity (see photos).  Cover with more melted candy.  Tap to cover evenly.  Freeze for 10-15 minutes.  
3. Pop cake bite out of mold.  
4. Add detail to Stormtroopers with black edible food writer.
5. Spray with color mist.  Let dry 10 minutes.
6. Add to Valentine's day boxes.

Prep time: 1 and 1/2 hours Yield: about 20-25 cake bites 

Game of Thrones Dark & White Chocolate Wine Truffles

Game of Thrones is back people! Season 6 starts tonite at 9 PM EST! WOOOO!!!!

It feels like for ages that we've been waiting for this new season to come back around.  If you don't watch, sorry but it's totally addicting.  The show is based on George RR Martin's Song of Fire and Ice book series and the HBO series has now caught up to the last book and George is nowhere near finished the next book installment.   SO this season starts all new territory for everyone.  There is controversy of course.  Book readers are all sorts of annoyed that the HBO show runners are taking some liberties with the book plot.  I've read the books and love them too, but there is no way they can fit all the detail and intricacies into the series easily so I'm actually fine with the HBO version as well.  

More than anything I want to find out what happens next! I'm giddy with excitement for tonite.  And to welcome the season back I made some chocolate truffles.  

Not just ordinary chocolate truffles - truffles made with wine.  Wine is a common theme in Game of Thrones.  Pretty much everyone drinks wine.  It's grown everywhere and you have plethora of choices from sweet Arbor Gold to the dry and sour Dornish reds.  House Tyrell's motto is "Growing Strong" as they like their sweet and spicy Hippocras or find your favorite bold reds from Volantis or lush reds and white from Lys.  

Whatever your preference there is something for you in Westeros.

So of course I had to make something with wine.  And truffles seemed a perfect fit.  Decadent and something only the Game of Thrones elite would be eating.  

I tried 2 versions.  One with dark chocolate and wine and coated in cocoa powder.

And another with white chocolate + wine 

Then coated in powdered freeze dried raspberry and blueberries

Both very decadent but when we taste tested with some friends the overall consensus was that the white chocolate and wine truffles would most definitely win the Iron Throne! 

Now go get ready for the GoT Season 6 premiere tonite!

Dedicated to Prince - another iconic artist taken way too soon

print recipe

Wine Truffles

by Michelle Clausen April-24-2016

Ingredients

• 260 grams (each)  dark chocolate (70% cocoa) and white chocolate
• 240 mL red wine
• 120 mL heavy cream
• 2 tablespoons butter
• cocoa powder (enough to roll truffles in)
• freeze dried raspberry/blueberry (enough for rolling truffles in)

Instructions

1. Finely chop each type of chocolate into separate bowls.2. Combine wine and cream in sauce pan and bring to boil. 3. Add 1/2 to dark chocolate and 1/2 to white chocolate.  
4. Add 1 tablespoon of butter to each bowl and mix until smooth.
5. Let set 1 hour or refrigerate 15 minutes.6.  Scoop into teaspoon sized balls and roll dark chocolate truffles in cocoa and white chocolate truffles in freeze dried fruits (crush up the fruit into powder).7. Refrigerate until ready to serve.

Details

Prep time: 15 mins Cook time: 20 mins Total time: 35 mins Yield: about 30