Tradition

Every year for as long as I can remember my family gets together the week after Thanksgiving to "Dip Chocolates." The name of this activity is misleading, as it does not fully encompass the ginormous undertaking that goes on in a 48 hour period. Let me give you a run down. Basically everyone decides how many batches they want (We did eleven this year). Then everyone has to bring three pans of pre-made caramels per batch to the event. We all use the same recipe, and a pan, is a jellyrole pan. Yeah, that's a lot of caramel! We start by turning off the heat and opening the doors - breaking down the chocolate requires a certain temperature otherwise it won't melt right and it won't set right. Basically we freeze for 48 hours! We used 190 pounds of chocolate this year. We start out by making the centers, we make Almond Rocha, Mint Truffle, Raspberry Truffle, Almond Truffle, fondant covered cherries, rum balls, chocolate covered caramel along with just regular caramel rapped in individual pieces, almond joy's, 100 Grands, Cashew Clusters.. I could go on, you get the picture. We make everything from scratch. Here are a few pictures to document this year's madness.

The set-up.. Three tempering machines with the rack to hold the chocolate while it sets.

The caramel wrapping table. We sepcify which caramles get cut and dipped or cut and wrapped - You can see both activities going on here.

How it looks - We station people next to machines to dip, others are preparing the centers to be dipped

These are the peole who are preparing the centers, I believe this is mint truffle center.

This is the tempering machine. My aunt designed this machine especially for this purpose. It keeps the chocolate moving and it keeps it's temperature steady.

This is me dipping the center in the chocolate. We dip, completely cover and keep it moving so that all the sides are covered equally, once a fair ammount of chocolate has come off, we set it on the tray and swirl the top of the chocolate to achieve a decorative effect.

This is the rack, it gets filled several times over - it's a beautiful sight.Just one of the finished products - the Raspberry Truffels.

We usually get done late Saturday night and everyone is exhausted, loopy from a sugar high, sore and ready for bed - But its so much fun that we do it year after year. I love spending the time with family and friends. And I love giving out the fruits of our labor to friends or Christmas.