melting the christmas goodie chocolate

Today was a long day of Christmas goodie making... so long in fact that it will be nice to go to work tomorrow in order to sit down and relax.

I left my place a little later than I intended, but I still got to her place by around 8:30. And that was just in time for a fresh batch of Ham Hearts to come out of the oven. Nothing quite like them, even if I do mostly end up eating the miss-shaped ones to keep the nice ones for giving away.

As always, the first thing to attack was my Rocky Road... which always turns out pretty damn well for something I made up out of my head (and using the things that should be in Rocky Road). Putting it together can be a little tedious... cutting all the marshmallows in half and whatnot, but it's an easy start to the day.

Then we started up the production line... I manned the food processor and started crushing up biscuits, Ma worked on the Chocolate Balls, which is based around the stove, at least initially. I ended up putting the whole Peppermint Cookie Truffles together, because I'd forgotten that you essentially blend everything in the food processor.

That was about the point at which we realised that we didn't have any macadamia nuts... we looked at them at the supermarket, and I could of sworn that we bought a pack, but I think Ma was going to check her list of things she still needed... in any event it never happened.

So I jumped in the car and headed off to Parabanks. Now I haven't been to Parabanks in what must be at the very least twenty years. Which was a problem when I parked in the first spot I saw, got into the building and then realised that I had no fucking idea where the supermarket actually was. Thankfully it's not that big of a mall, so I just picked what I thought was a logical direction and went with it.

On the way back to the car I stopped off in Big W and had a look at their thongs... I've been needing a new pair for a while, but normal thongs rub my feet to death, so I've been looking for a pair with decent fabric straps. We'll have to see if they work out.

By the time I'd gotten back Ma had rolled out all the balls from the two mixtures that were ready when I left, and then I went to work on the nuts and fruit and whatnot.

Due to the unscheduled road trip, we ended up finishing the ball making portion of the morning around 1pm, cleared up the kitchen, had some lunch and watched some very questionable television.

The second half of the day, the melted chocolate part, went relatively smoothly... although this time I used a fork instead of one of the "truffle spirals" that we normally use. For some of them it worked really well, for others it was a bit of a mess (mostly for the mixtures that have a very low melting point, like the Peanut Butter Balls and Apricot Brandy Truffles).

But even with that minor issue, it all worked out pretty damn well...

Clockwise, top left: Hazelnut Delight, Apricot Brandy Truffles,
Rum Balls, Candy Cane Truffles, Chocolate Ball, Peanut Butter Balls,
and my Rocky Road in the centre

Of course after we finished the last of the chocolate coating we needed to clean up the kitchen again and I helped Ma put all of the leftover ingredients away so she wouldn't have to do it herself after I left.

Neither of us were particularly hungry, so we just turned a couple of muffins into some very simple mini pizzas and pretty much called it a day.

Well, after putting all the truffles I was taking away with me, along with a collection of Ham Hearts and mince tarts, in appropriate tins and containers.

It always feels pretty damn good when we're done, and people do appreciate them, but holy fuckballs is it a long and tiring day getting it all done.

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