Links, mostly fanfic

[azurelunatic]

Some people should not be allowed to open their mouths.
Chocolate Alchemy. I really do need to find some good non-abrasive chocolate. (Hershey bars are actually abrasive when licked.)

"Drinks for the House" Hermione/Draco (dubious consent, kink), Hermione/Harry (kink).
"Flame and Shadow" Ron/Pansy, and not so horribly fluffy.
"Seven Things That Didn't Happen On Valentine's Day At Hogwarts, Or Maybe They Did." by rageprufrock. Remus/Sirius, with extra James-makes-an-arse-of-himself and accidental potion-aided genderbending.
"Night-Blooming Heartsease" Snape/Neville, plot with character development & sequel, Final Battle with assorted character deaths.
"Severus Snape and the Ghostwritten Romance" A clever pastiche of Cyrano de Bergerac: Harry/Draco, Harry/Snape.

Fearsome things from fanfic (culled from the worst) -- the daily_sporfle
Pairings of Fear! -- theferrett

Comments

[torrilin.livejournal.com]

Ghirardelli's is smooth, but I don't care for their milk chocolate much. Bit too melty for my taste.

Cadbury and Symphony are both European style chocolates. Cadbury is classic British chocolate, so it has a very caramel flavor blended in with the chocolate. Symphony is Hershey doing Swiss chocolate (both brands are made by Hershey's in the US). Symphony is a bit more flexible in what it's willing to blend with.

If you're looking to get truffle making down, biggest factors are batch size and equipment. Other biggie is technical skill... if you can temper chocolate reliably, that helps loads. Batch size is one of those bigger is better kinds of things, provided you have the equipment to do bigger. Pretty much every candy recipe is wildly unreliable at a 1 lb batch, tolerably reliable (meaning totally unsuitable for commercial work, but it'll generally come out tasty) at a 5 lb batch, and really 20 lbs or so is a much better small size. Yes, there's a reason why candy is mass produced *g*.

[azurelunatic]

I've been working with the semi-sweet chips, and those are fun to work with.

I found Cadbury abrasive. Symphony is nice, but a little too sweet unless it has other things in with it.

I've never actually followed a truffle recipe. I've made butterscotch from a recipe, but never anything chocolate. I just improvise. I learned the basics of dipping candied fruit in chocolate, and then started playing around from there.