I Never Thought I'd Say This...

but I may be sick of chocolate. *Gasp* Temporarily, of course.

You see, it's Christmas and as is my usual tradition I have been up to my elbows in making a ridiculous amount of chocolate filled, chocolate coated, chocolate covered, chocolate dipped and, well, just chocolate goodies. Yep, I have gone wildly Willy Wonka. And my helpful Oompa-Loompas, also known as Ella and Jack are desperate to sample everything. Which is really a terrifying thought...small children hyped up on dark chocolate. I'm not actually sure how loud they can scream, but I'm pretty sure a few of my homemade dark chocolate truffles would solve that mystery.

Anyway, yesterday afternoon I was filling chocolate shells with the most amazing dark chocolate raspberry ganache filling. And I mean it's crazy good. Believe it or not it started out as a goof-up. I intended to make a firm ganache and dip the centers in chocolate, but I had a double boiler catastrophe. I don't have a real double boiler so I was improvising with a large pot and a glass mixing bowl. Well, apparently I miscalculated the sizes and the bowl slipped inside the pan and stuck. Really stuck. Drat.

So quick thinking candy maker that I am, I scooped out as much of the chocolate as I could, added it to the raspberry mixture and thought I managed to save the batch. Alas, I did not. I didn't rescue enough chocolate to make the ganache firm enough to dip. But, it tasted sooooooo good there was no way I could toss it out. So, again with my candy making brilliance...or desperation, whatever, I decided to make chocolate shells and use the too soft ganache as a filling. And it is AWESOME! I'm already trying to figure out how much of the chocolate I lost so I can recreate the goof-up. Which makes my goof-up not a goof-up, but in fact a flash of genius. Ha ha!

But in the process of sampling the utter chocolate bliss (for quality control purposes of course), making and filling the bite-size yummies and basically smelling, handling and occasionally wearing chocolate for most of the day...yep, I may have reached my chocolate limit. Which is eye opening, because truthfully I didn't think that was possible.

So you know...too much of a good thing is...uh...bad. And when life hands you lemons make...um...raspberry ganache. Well, you get the whole moral of the story thing, right?

Oh, and if I show up at your house Christmas Eve with a present...try to act surprised. :)