All My Life’s A Circle . . .

All my life’s a circle, sunrise and sundown

The moon rolls through the nighttime, till the daybreak comes around

All my life’s a circle but I can’t tell you why

The season’s spinnin’ round again the years keep rollin’ by.

As so often happens, I woke up with a song in my head. I think my subconscious provides me with the lyrics, depending on my mood and what is happening in my little piece of paradise.

This morning, the song in my head is Harry Chapin’s “Circle.” I know why.

It’s because the seasons are spinning ’round, and it’s autumn, and candy season has begun.

As I’ve explained before, I sell handmade chocolates, and I can’t temper chocolate for the candy when the temperature is warm. Every spring, when the mercury goes up, I put away the candy-making paraphernalia and my circle spins to other pursuits.

Every September, the circle spins again, I take out my lucky tempering bowl and my digital thermometer, my sugar and butter and chocolate, and I commence to make candies.

I’ve had my first candy foray of 2015 this week. I made a double batch of caramels—about 200 candies—and yesterday I dipped half of them in dark, beautiful Callebaut chocolate. This morning I made white chocolate bark and will dip the rest of the caramels in Callebaut milk chocolate.

(On a side note, there’s a story in the news about someone who worked at Callebaut in Vermont, who hated his job so much he called in a bomb threat, in order to get fired. Never mind, how twisted his thinking was—can you imagine hating a job at a chocolate factory?!)

In the next few months, “candy season” in my world, I’ll make the equivalent of about 500 half-pound boxes of chocolates.

This arc of my circle is pretty predictable. I’ll chop, stir, temper, dip, garnish, package, label, rinse, repeat. And repeat.

I’ll get knickers in a twist about preparing enough candy for the one holiday boutique I participate in, and then I’ll have too much.

I’ll get up in the morning and check Etsy, half hoping to find more candy sales, and half hoping I won’t.

I’ll worry about running out of chocolate or out of half-pound boxes.

At some point, I’ll probably get a nasty sugar burn and I’ll get very, very sick of chocolate.

And, while this arc waxes, others aspects of my circle will wane for now. I’ll have much less time for vintage linens and weaving and blogging and quilting, and I’ll pout about all of that.

I’ll wonder why I do this candymaking thing at all.

But then, I’ll get my first order of the season from the “Queen of Sienna,” a blog friend, fellow seller of vintage lovelies, and loyal lover of chocolate. She’ll say kind things about my candy and be excited I’m back, selling again.

When I do the holiday boutique, people will come specifically looking for something they loved last year or because they heard about the chocolate from a friend. Etsy shoppers will buy candy as Christmas gifts and ask me to include sweet messages to their loved ones far away.

And my family and friends will be pleased when I have extra candy around!

I’ll find I enjoy quiet mornings in my warm space, with the smell of chocolate and caramel and vanilla. I’ll achieve a certain satisfaction from the repetitive motion of dipping caramel after caramel into silky dark chocolate. Zen and the art of candy making.

And, through it all, I’ll know that, when and if it stops being fun and fulfilling, I can put away the lucky bowl and digital thermometer for good. Because the circle of my life isn’t a stone circle, and the seasons can be filled with whatever I choose.

For now, though, I choose chocolate, and candy season.

Isn’t It Lovely?

Isn’t it wonderful?

It’s a big bar of beautiful chocolate.

It weighs 11 pounds.

It measures 18 inches long by 10 inches wide. It’s 2 inches thick.

And I have 35 of them in my pantry.

They account for almost 1,000,000 calories of happy.

Life is good.

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Edited to add:

Oops! I am reminded by Silver in the Barn that not all of you know why I have so much chocolate around! I eat a lot, but not all of it, myself. The rest I make into a variety of chocolate candies. You can visit them in my shop on Etsy!

Chocolate Vs. Blogging

Do you know this episode of the old American TV show “I Love Lucy”? Lucy and her pal, Ethel, get jobs in a candy shop and are soon overwhelmed by the workload. It’s a classic!

As you may recall, I make candy. I can totally identify with Lucy and Ethel right now! I am pretty fully occupied by the demands of the holiday candy season.

I love what I’m doing–I’m up to my knees in chocolate! A dream come true! But it may mean that my blog is updated less frequently and my posts are short.

Please understand that I am thinking of you and will be back with more thoughtful posts as soon as I can be!

Back in the Chocolate Again

  All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn’t hurt.
― Charles M. Schulz

My kitchen has been cold and dark. Well, actually the kitchen has been pretty lively but, as a cook, I have been cold and dark since May.

My husband does nearly 100% of the cooking at our house (yes! It’s heaven!) and he has been very busy. I bake the occasional batch of cookies or loaf of bread but my main activity in our kitchen is making candy and chocolates. And I have not been able to indulge, in making or eating chocolate, since it got warm out.

The reason I had to take those months off is that it is impossible to temper real chocolate if the temps are above about 70 degrees. “Tempering” is the process by which chocolate is brought to the state where it has a high gloss, stays solid at room temperature, and has that “snap” when you break it or bite into it.

If a person wants to work with chocolate in warm weather, they either a) have a climate-controlled workspace or b) use a substitute for real chocolate, like the so-called “candy melts” or chocolate chips.

Candy melts and chocolate chips have their place in the world but they simply are not real, quality chocolate. And since, for me, chocolate is a treat (and a high-calorie one), if I’m going to eat it, or give it to my family, or sell it to valued customers, I’m going to use the real thing.

So, anyway, it’s cool now in upstate New York, so I’ve gotten back to this particular creative outlet. I’ve been re-listing candy in my shop. I guess I sell about 25 varieties and have been slowly getting them all back out there.

In the last few days I’ve made a couple different concoctions. First, I made a dipped candy that is similar to Mounds bars, but a little more robust and chewier. It has a center of coconut mixed with a cooked candy syrup that is then dipped into tempered chocolate.

I also made a couple of batches of a spicy bark—dark chocolate, with toasted pumpkin seeds and dried sour cherries in it. It is souped up with cinnamon and some hotter spices, for a warm glow when you eat it. I made two batches because it is my mother’s very favorite and, since I was making it for a customer, I thought I better give my mom her fix, too!

The traditional way to make bark is to get the chocolate in temper, add the inclusions and then spread the mix, free form, on parchment paper. Then when the chocolate has set, you cut it or break it apart.

When I made this bark yesterday, I did most of it that way but then made some into candy bars, using molds. I like the way they look (see that nice shine? The chocolate was in perfect temper!) but you can’t just break a little bite off, for a nibble, like you can with the traditional bark. What do you think? Is one form more appealing than the other?

I’m sure I’ll be back here, talking about chocolate as the months go by. I may even write up a lesson on how to temper chocolate, so you can make some of my goodies for yourself!

Books for your Hands at Home: Chocolate and Confections by Peter Greweling

If you’d like to learn to make candy, for fun or profit, or simply to increase your popularity immensely since most people LOVE chocolate and the people who can provide it, you need to read a book.

And the book you need to read, and follow like a spiritual text, is Peter Greweling’s Chocolate and Confections at Home.  The At Home part of the title is critical; Greweling also has a book called simply Chocolate and Confections but, if you’ve never made chocolate and start with that book, your head might explode. It’s a lovely book but not the place to start.

When I want to learn something new, I always look for books. It’s just me. I know other people take courses or workshops, or watch YouTube videos, but I read about it. And I scare myself, sometimes, because I like the reading part so much I might just never move on to the doing!

But, if you read this book, you’ll want to move on and make the candy. The pictures are so great and the candy is SO tempting, you’ll definitely want to try it. And Greweling does such a good job of explaining that he de-mystifies the scary parts of the process—tempering real chocolate, using a candy thermometer, boiling sticky stuff at 300 degrees.

Learning to temper chocolate is where it’s all at. Greweling doesn’t condemn the use of compound coating, the so-called candy melts you buy at the grocery store or Michael’s, but, really, if you love chocolate you need to just accept that candy melts are NOT chocolate. They are a chocolate-flavored mix of vegetable fats, cocoa powder, and other stuff. Cheap and convenient, sure, but not chocolate.

So, Greweling will teach you to temper chocolate. If you can do that, you can make a lot of cool candy just by mixing tempered chocolate, dark, milk or white, with other ingredients you love and calling it bark. One of the favorite combinations I’ve come up with is dark chocolate, with a little mix of hot spices stirred into the tempered chocolate, and topped with toasted pumpkin seeds and dried sour cherries. Crunchy and unexpected, with this subtle heat . . . too yummy!

The book moves on from such simple treats to elaborate layered candy bars and molded chocolates. You can build your skills and get fancy or just keep it simple. But because it’s real chocolate and other ingredients that you love and choose, with no weird additives, simple is spectacular. Really, check this book out!

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If all this sounds good but you don’t have time for another craft, I can make the candy for you. Candy-making season at KerryCan, my Etsy shop, begins sometime in mid-September. I’ll keep you posted.