E.T.

Gorgeous, gorgeous work, cakemuse!

A few small treats ... Chocolate crinkles Semisweet ganache with pear liqueur and dried pears, in a dark chocolate shell

Adorable!

Love the Santa Bears!

Hi Simon, Welcome! I'm also a newbie at chocolate making (there are a lot of pros here though!), and I found the two Greweling books very helpful: 1) Chocolates and Confections at Home 2) Chocolates and Confections: Formula, Theory, and Technique for the Artisan Confectioner I started with the first one, since the recipes are simpler and use easier-to-find ingredients. The second one has better explanations of theory, shelf life, and other things of interest to a professional. For help with specific problems or recipes, nothing beats this forum. Just about every problem I've had, somebody has solved and posted a solution!

I second that! Gorgeous

Rico, those look yummy! Ganache always contains chocolate and cream (or butter), but you can flavor it with just about anything, including peanut butter.

Beautiful! I also have a couple of the floppy silicone molds but have succeeded only in using them for solid molding. My one attempt at getting any kind of a shell with them failed miserably I found it very difficult to scrape the top of the mold.

Chocolate dipped orange-hazelnut biscotti: my favorite flavors in one crispy little package ... Black pearls (caramel ganache center in a dark chocolate shell)

Wow, gorgeous! Thanks for sharing, Kerry!

I'll have to remember that one I used this recipe, without any modifications. The honey flavor is amazing, and it's not too sweet. I recommend using a deep 9in pan (the batter was about 2in deep when poured in), and lining the bottom with greased parchment paper.

A whole wheat honey cake with almonds ... also known as today's lunch. It's Sunday, after all. Cake for lunch is perfectly acceptable on weekends.

Those look adorable Kim!

Kim, your cake looks really tasty, lactose-free or not And I love the buche, dystopiandreamgirl!

A chocolate-chocolate-chocolate birthday cake: mud cake with a soft ganache glaze and dark chocolate accents.

Thank you To be honest, I may have had a good deal of beginner's luck on my side. We'll see if I can reliably reproduce them. I used a hybrid of Ms. Humble's and Tartelette's recipes. In particular, I used Ms. Humble's formula with the following changes: * Aged the egg whites 3 days in the fridge, and 12 hours on the counter. I started out with 120g of fresh egg whites (4 large eggs), and ended up with 97g of aged whites. * Added 1/4 teaspoon of cream of tartar to the egg white powder / sugar mixture (not sure this was strictly necessary); * Omitted the food coloring; and * Added 1 teaspoon of espresso powder to the almond meal / powdered sugar mixture. As for the procedure, I followed Ms. Humble's method, but followed Tartlette's advice to use no more than 50 strokes when folding the almond meal mixture into the meringue. Once the macarons were piped on Silpats, I let them rest 45 min until they formed a firm skin. I then baked them at 295F for 15 minutes. They were quite crisp when they came out of the oven, but matured beautifully after being filled and left in the fridge for 72 hours. Both Ms. Humble and Tartlette have a series of great macaron posts on their blogs. I hope this helps!

Thanks Stuart, Kim and Tarko! This was my first attempt at macarons, so I went with a safe filling (1 part chocolate, 1 part cream, a splash of frangelico). I think I'll go with something softer and more fruity next time.

Here are a few goodies I made recently. Having family visit is always a great excuse to bake up a storm! Espresso macarons with frangelico ganache Pecan buttercrunch Molded hazelnut gianduja (1 part hazelnut paste to 1 part dark chocolate) Orange zest cupcakes

Those look great Tarko! How did you get you get pate de fruit into the molded chocolates? I expect that just pouring the mixture into the lined molds would melt the chocolate ...

A blog I follow has a recipe for these lollipops, which look nearly paper thin.

It looks delicious! What was the sugar / cocoa mass / milk solids ratio in the finished bars?

Thank you, Lior! I can't wait to try out the halva recipe that you guys posted a few days ago. It's one of my favorite confections!

Maybe Kerry's solution for getting chocolate to stick to toffee/buttercrunch (by dusting with cocoa powder before bottoming) would work here too?

A couple of chocolatey treats I made recently ... Amaretto mousse in almond tuile cups Chocolate pots de creme with vanilla meringue kisses

Those look amazing! I wish my chocolate looked like that when it has tempering problems I don't see any streaks or spots on the shells.