Le Petit Paris Chocolate Bunnies

Posted on by Ian C.

This afternoon I spent a fun (and delicious smelling) time at Le Petit Paris, learning about the process of tempering chocolate and using it to create chocolate bunnies! Stefan showed us the tempering process of warming the chocolate to a specific temperature (which had been done before our arrival), cooling it by a specific amount (which he does by spreading on a metal table) then heating back a little (which he does either by mixing with some not-cooled chocolate, or using a heat gun!)

We then practiced pouring chocolate into molds (trying to get the air bubbles out) – we did this twice for each mold to give a thicker chocolate layer, with fridge time in between. As well as chocolate bunny shapes we did some egg shells and cases that we used later as chocolate stands!

Here’s a lot of delicious photos:

Here also is some video showing some of the tempering process:

[After] The Big Freeze

Posted on by Ian C.

While we were in Egypt back in January, Florida had VERY unseasonably cold weather – the coldest for 15 years or more, with overnight temperatures well below freezing. We knew about because friends told us, and also because I got thermostat alerts that the house was tool cold even with heat running!

When we got back, I took some photos in the back garden; most plants looked very dead. This is already more than two weeks since, which explains the few new green leaves …

We decided to wait a month and see if anything could recover, but more recently Margaret has started cutting down and clearing dead plants. However there’s a few little green shoots on some – and on those we have cut down to just above that new growth:

The big Prickly Pear Cactus in the back showed signs of freeze damage on the tops of some “Nopales” (leaves?) but recently it’s been growing loads:

Hopefully by mid summer there will be lots more new growth.