Advice for a beginner

[sadie]

I see some of these posts are from a few years ago now, so I'm hoping people have done this enough to have learned a thing or two.

I have quite a few sloes sitting in gin right now, that I'm about to take out. I'd love to make chocolates with them. What advice do people have? What little things to I need to remember?

[spammeplease]

You really can't do much better than the truffle recipe. Tried, tested and gorgeous.

Tips are the same for all chocolate cooking: Use a bain marie - I use 2 saucepans one inside the other; Get the best quality cooking chocolate - Green & Blacks for me; Allow them to set slowly to avoid blooming; Don't under-estimate how many you want to make - they really are that good; And take your time, it's worth it. Good luck!

[sadie]

How do you suggest getting the stones out of the sloes? Even post-gin, I've found a lot of them are intact and cutting the stones out is seriously fiddly.

[Languid Lil]

Haven't made the chocolates but have totally sorted de-stoning the sloes. I tried the flat-of-the-blade method (messy; didn't work; sticky) and a high-tech looking olive stoner (rubbish) but finally found that a cheap garlic press with integral cherry stoner worked like a charm. Yippee!

Lil