Happy (belated) Valentines day! Hope you all have/had a good day regardless if you're taken or not :)
The night before Valentines day, I made some 生チョコ (nama chocolate) which is handmade chocolate with a ganache or chewy texture similar to a fudge but softer. Previous years I usually just make normal hard chocolate where you melt them and just remould it and decorate it with some words and candies but I decided to make nama-choco since it was something different but simple and easy. Made some varieties involving almonds, peppermint, green tea. This is how they turned out :
I thought they turned out quite well and the pieces were a good size to eat BUT there was one problem- everything was salty. Yeap you read right, SALTY.
I literally do not understand why it was salty, had to check the almonds if they were salted (it wasn't), the butter I used wasn't salted, the cream wasn't seasoned; nothing contained salt to the point it would make these almost not edible. I'm not sure if it was the cocoa powder because it gave off a really strange powdery taste (despite it being somewhat quality cocoa powder) OR just the chocolate I bought because the white chocolate green tea ones weren't salty.
Here is the basic recipe I usually follow when making these:
→ 100g of chocolate
→ 40-45mL of cream
→ 1tspn of butter
1. Heat the cream slightly using a double boiler or a baine marie (make sure not to boil the cream)
2. Once the cream is heated, add your chocolate and allow the chocolate to sit and melt in the cream for about 1minute and then stir with a plastic spatula to melt the chocolate
3. Once the chocolate has melted and mixed with the cream to reach a creamy consistency, add your butter and stir to dissolve.
4. Add any optional ingredients such as liquor, nuts, coconuts, dried fruits etc and stir well.
5. Pour the chocolate mixture in a box or mould either rubbed with butter or lined with plastic wrap.
6. Allow the mixture to set in the fridge until firmed (around 1-2 hours)
7. Remove from the fridge and mould, cut into bite sizes. Remember to work quickly as it is quite delicate to handle and melts easily.
8. Coat each pieces with your desired coating (cocoa powder, chopped nuts, dessicated coconut etc)
*Cream is adjustable to your desired texture, more cream will have a softer and wetter texture while less cream will have a more chewier texture.
So that's it :D Here are some of the varieties I made:
→ Dark chocolate with almond rolled with cocoa powder
→ Dark chocolate with peppermint rolled with cocoa powder
→ Dark chocolate with almond and hints of cinnamon rolled with cocoa powder
→ White chocolate with green tea and almond rolled with cocoa powder
→ White chocolate with shredded coconut rolled with fine dessicated coconut
The white chocolate one tasted fine, not salty at all- except I added too much green tea so it's abit hard to eat. But overall if it weren't for the random saltiness- it would be great to giveaway. Unfortunately because of the saltiness, I wasn't able to gift these to friends. Oh well ahaha!
ANYWAY, my valentines day was pretty laxed and involved a little bit of cleaning, little errand running & shopping, alot of doing nothing and of course gaming :D.
Been playing this new MMORPG called TERA for the past 2 days now since it took forever to download since it was those type of downloads where you have to download from the launcher instead of the individual file, hate it so much. BUT it eventually finished downloading after 2-3 days (32GB file) and got to play the game and can I just say that I am SUPERRRR impressed with the game in terms of the graphics, the design, the music, the gameplay, etc. It just has so much detail as if you're playing those HD games on PS3 such as Final Fantasy, mind you even better because of the super fine quality details when moving around. I still haven't gotten use to the keys and been switching between keyboard and PS3 controller so I'm pretty slow in the game and I think I'm only level 8 if I remember correctly. And a high elf priest on the two servers I play :D
Anyway I look forward to playing more of it and hopefully will be able to catchup and join friends who play the game.
Moving on from gaming, so I did some cleaning around the house and my room, lighting up some scented candles around to make the house smell nice and have a nice cozy feel to it. Deep cleansed my makeup brushes and sorted out my makeup kits, folded laundry and reorganising here and there. Was good I say, gotta love the feeling when things are just nice and tidy :D Also gotta love the things you begin to realise, such as me just realising the amount of false lashes I own LOL!
The day ended with me watching the "Paradise Kiss" movie featuring Yamamoto Yusuke and Keiko Kitagawa at 2am and just trying to dose off to sleep while watching the movie. Not saying the movie was boring (definitely no), was just tired and just wanted to watch something and sleep.
I've watched this movie countless of times and I just love it so much. There's this rush of emotions and feelings that comes to me whenever I watch it because I've always wanted to live a life like that, you can say it is my dream to live in a life like Yukari. So much I can relate to Yukari because she's a girl who isn't sure who she is or what she's doing, she's held back by family. Exactly how I currently feel in my life at this moment. Unfortunately I'm not given the opportunity to face another direction and make choices which will change my future like she does BUT I try to make a change in direction.
But moving away from the personal, one of my favorite and most inspiring movie that I can watch. I haven't actually watched the anime or read the manga which I've heard it's better BUT I think you will enjoy this movie; especially if you're into fashion, styling etc. The base synposis is that it's about a girl name Yukari Hayasaka who gets scouted to become a model for this team of designer students but she is held back by her mom and makes choices to change her future.
Earlier in the night I tried to replicate one of the character's look with just some basic makeup and the result was this:
The character's name is Isabella and is portrayed by japanese actor Shunji Igarashi. Isabella is a transgender student at Yaza Academy who is like a motherly figure with an aura of high class, grace, and feminity. Isabella's background story is sad however inspiring as she was a boy who always wanted to wear dresses but was held back until she was encouraged and given the opportunity to wear one and make choices.
Anyway there's the comparison pic above, because it was quite late into the night - I didn't want to wear so much makeup or even apply it properly with foundation, eyeliner, contours etc. Only drew basic brows, highlighted inner corners, added false lashes, large rhinestones, blush and nude lip color and gloss. I thought it was aights, definitely could do much better with eyeliner, highlights and more blush- well just proper makeup in general but yeah!
Moving on to today (15th February 2013), before typing up this post I did the usual routine of checking my social networks, YouTube, emails etc. And when checking my university student email, I received this email which just already made my day:
Finally! Confirmation that I will be graduating from University in April 2013. SOOO EXCITED! Because finally it's over LOL! But yeah, definitely made my day so I think today will be a good day :)
Time to get the day going,
Until then- stay well, take care!
WOOOOOOO CONGRATS DANNAEEEEEE
ReplyDeletealso, dayum you're pretty.