1-Caramel Chocolate-making Workshop: Raspberry Almond

11th February 2012. Written by Vinleon. Photos by Xinli.

For the second of our 3-part chocolate series, I present to you, the slightly more tedious Raspberry Almond.

You'll need:

540g   Valrhona equatoriale 55% dark chocolate

300g   Raspberry puree

60g     Trimoline

130g   Unsalted butter

100g   Baked almond (chopped)
300g   Coated chocolate for shell

How to transform ingredients into yummy Raspberry Almond:

1. Heat the Valrhona equatoriale 55% dark chocolate buttons over a hot water bath.

2. Heat raspberry puree and stir in trimoline.

3. Mix in melted chocolate and unsalted butter into the raspberry puree to yield ganache. Chill in the fridge.

4. To form chocolate for shell, temper the chocolate until smooth and shiny (that is to melt the chocolate and keep stirring till the chocolate reaches 32 degrees celsius, but most of us would not have a thermometer, so take the sheen as a cue). Pour over mould, hitting the bottom of the mould to remove air bubbles, pour out the excess chocolates. Scrap off any excess, chill mould upside down.

5. Remove ganache and mould from fridge, fill piping bag with ganache, then pipe the ganache into the mould (don't over-fill it!).

6. Place silvers of almonds on the ganache, pushing in slightly.

7. Seal with more tempered chocolate, scrapping off the excess. Chill right side up this time.

8. Eat some before boxing it up to surprise your better half.

Again, I highly recommend that you give this recipe a trial run first before making a gift batch.  What can potentially go wrong is with the consistency of the ganache. Too much chocolate added to it and it'll harden, too little and it won't hold its shape.

Also, you may use this as a base recipe for other fillings, or simply replace the raspberry puree with other puree.

You may purchase these ingredients from Phoon Huat and some leading supermarkets.

Look out for our last recipe of the series! It'll be the easiest to make!