Orange Cream Chocolates

I have heard this kind of chocolate center called a "fondant" center, and maybe that's correct, but I don't like it because it sounds like the kind of fondant frosting people put on wedding cakes, which is disgusting (in my opinion). They are also called buttercream centers, which is better but also evokes, to me, a not-very-good frosting. I think a better name is just cream (or crème? if we are feeling French?) centers because that sounds delicious, and these ARE delicious! 

I have never attempted dipping any kind of chocolate except caramels before. (Although Sam's grandma helped me do it with her once, when the kids were very little.) We watched the video on the Gygi site and followed this recipe for our centers. We thought it was very clear to follow and they turned out great!

I will reproduce the recipe here, since links have a way of dying out in a few years.

Cream Centers for chocolates

1 cup heavy cream

½ cup milk

2/3 cup white Karo Syrup

4 ½ cup sugar

¼ tsp salt

2/3 cup Marshmallow Crème

1. Stir all but marshmallow crème in heavy, 6-8 qt. pot. Bring to boil. Cover with lid for 30 seconds to steam down crystals. Continue stirring and cook to 228º F Salt Lake elevation (or 237° F sea level) on a candy thermometer.

2. Remove from heat and pour, without scraping pan, onto marble slab. Let it cool until a flick of your finger into the candy takes a few seconds to recover.

3. Add marshmallow cream and beat with a flat utensil or putty knife until candy begins to lose its gloss—about 10 min. Let candy rest for 1-2 min. Resume beating until candy begins to stiffen and loses its gloss.

4. Divide and flavor as desired, or add flavoring to entire batch at beginning. Shape into walnut-sized balls (make a rope, cut, shape in Pam-sprayed hands), place on Pam-sprayed parchment, and let sit, covered, overnight or for several hours to form thin crust. Dip.

NOTES

To make other flavors: 

Raspberry: process 1/2 cup of freeze-dried raspberries in a blender and sift out seeds using a fine strainer. Beat raspberry powder into the center mixture. 

Orange Cream: 1 ½ teaspoon Boyajian orange oil, and (if desired) zest of one orange, finely chopped. Lemon: 1 ½ teaspoon lemon oil, and zest of lemon, finely chopped. 

The process of making these is interesting. We used a marble slab for cooling and beating the buttercream (the cheese board Sam gave me a couple years ago!) but I read somewhere that you can use any natural stone countertop like granite, too. I think our counters are quartz so maybe that would work? Not sure. Anyway, we happened to have this slab and it worked well.

You just cook the ingredients on the stove and when they get up to the right temperature, you pour the mixture onto the stone. It wants to run off, and did run off for us unless we chased it with our spatulas, but after a minute or two it sets more firmly.

Then you fold it and beat it to cool it. We used my bench scraper and that worked best because it's firm and wide. But a regular metal spatula was okay too.

You work it around, lifting and folding over and over.

And suddenly, it changes from a sticky/stretchy liquid into this beautiful fluffy solid! It's like magic!

Then you just form balls out of it, let them set a bit, and dip them in chocolate!

We used orange extract and orange zest for our first attempt, which was delicious, but we had to use lots of extract and still felt the orange flavor could have been deeper. For our second attempt, we got the orange oil recommended in the recipe, and it was SO good! Much better than the extract. We are excited to try to the lemon and lime oils that came with it, too.

We also made raspberry flavor with some freeze-dried raspberries, and it tasted really good, but our raspberries were quite old and had turned an ugly brownish color. Even with pink food coloring added, it didn't have the best visual appeal. So we are also anxious to try this recipe again with some fresh (freeze-dried) raspberries. The orange was my favorite, though! Next to the caramels, which will always be my VERY favorite kind of chocolates.

Our vast amounts of chocolates! Seems like they should last longer than they do…

So delicious!