See, Thursday (today) was Valentine's Day. And since I'm in Japan, that means I get to make chocolate for the guys I work with and any significant men in my life.
At the moment, that's... nobody here. Well. Ish.
My plan was simple. For every male coworker at the places I would visit on Thursday (my office and my larger middle school), I would make an assortment of chocolates, two sugar cookies, two chocolate sugar cookies, and a chocolate cupcake of some sort. Easy. But that's a lot of chocolate. Like, for serious. Oh, and just giving chocolate to the men seems really unfair to the women in the office, right? So I decided to make peanut butter blossoms for them. I bought a bunch of Hershey's Kisses and two giant tubs of peanut butter last month, so yay!
So I spent a few hours last week chopping chocolate up so it would be easily melty. I made some milk chocolates last week in preparation. I had Tuesday night to make the rest of the milk chocolate, Wednesday to bake my cookies and cupcakes and finish the dark chocolates, and Thursday to deliver. Sounds like plenty of time, right?
Hello. My name is Ashli, and I have a problem. I cannot budget time to save my life.
You see. On Tuesday I needed to go shopping for a few ingredients for the chocolates and cupcakes and whatnot. So I went shopping and bought all the stuff! And cut all the chocolate! And then... it was 10:30 pm! WTF! Dear Nostalgia Critic--you suck my life away when I should be elsewise occupied. Rawr. So I made another batch of milk chocolate chocolates, chopped up all the dark chocolate, gave up on the sugar cookies because I just didn't feel like making the dough, and decided I'd make the batter for the cupcakes Wednesday. Went to bed around midnight.
Wednesday I'd reserved the kitchen in the gakushuu center from 7-9pm. I had time to run to the store because I forgot some stuff yesterday, and I'd even have time to unmold the milk chocolates and mold one set of dark chocolates to chill while I was cooking! Perfect!
Except it was actually from 5-7pm. I had time to.... go to the store. Except when I was in the check-out lane I realized I'd forgotten the cream for the truffles I was planning on making someone else. Dammit. Well, I didn't want to go back and get it, so I decided to run over to the grocery store across the street and get it. Except they were sold out. Dammit. So I had to go back to Fukuhara anyway. 9-9 Then run home, grab the giant black bag o-doom (it's the size of a small suitcase. In fact, I think I can put my small suitcase inside this bag) and pack it full of ingredients. I mean, this bag was full. Peanut butter, butter, and strawberries actually fell out of it while it was in the car, it was so full.
See, I'd decided I'd have time while everything was baking to make my chocolate strawberries. I even brought my kindle to keep myself occupied.
Ha. Haha. Ha HA haha.
I got to the kitchen and set up everything. Oh noes! I forgot the vanilla and cinnamon! So I ran back home real quick.
It's now 5:30. I have the kitchen until 7.
Okay! Turn on the gas, get everything started preheating and whatnot. Something's wrong. It's too quiet.
See, I have another fault. I cannot stand the quiet. At all. I talk to myself all the time in the car and at home. My computer is constantly playing music or movies. I make really awkward smalltalk when I'm around people. I just cannot stand silence. So I turned on my iPod and my beloved Panda-tan speaker! I could rock the kitchen! It would be mildly embarrassing but completely endearing to anyone who happened to walk by and see me in the window! I could make a montage of this if someone were filming! It was great!
For about thirty seconds.
Then my iPod decided that it was gasping its last, but I could probably get another couple of hours out of it so long as I didn't touch it too much. But then Panda-tan, my trusty panda-shaped speaker
decided that it too was hungry for battery-loving. It would play, so long as I kept the volume at a level equivalent to the voice a new parent uses when she's finally gotten the colicky baby to sleep at three in the morning.
So... rock on!
I'd already turned on the ovens and whatnot, and I didn't really wanna run home again to look for new batteries. Whatevs, I can deal. It's quiet, sure, but it's noise.
Apparently I vastly overestimated my multitasking skills. I had exactly zero non-active time for the four hours it took me to make approximately 50 chocolate chunk muffins with cinnamon sugar topping and approximately the same number of peanut butter blossoms, plus cleanup.
post-packaging and pre-fuck-it-I'll-clean-tomorrow)
It was 9pm when I closed up the kitchen. Yay for having my own keys to the kitchen and nobody else signing up to use it! >.> <.< Totally didn't break any rules there. None at all.
I gave the night custodian-guard-office-babysitter-person a muffin and cookie. Happy Valentine's Day, thanks for not kicking me out. ^-^ He seemed genuinely surprised and happy. Woot.
Then I got to go home and make two batches of dark chocolate, dip my strawberries, make two types of truffles, and package everything. And maybe sleep. x.x
I wound up making one batch of dark chocolate rather than two, and one of my truffles was kinda... ish... on the cap, but it was after 11 by then and I was vaguely concerned I'd be cross when I saw the person today if I had to mess with them anymore. Then I'd have to explain why I was cross with him. So it was close enough.
Homemade chocolates.
(Photo of leftover chocolates,
taken in my apartment about ten minutes ago)
Then packaging everything. That was actually kind of cute. The chocolates go into a small plastic bag. The muffin into a medium bag. The two bags go into a large bag. Twist-tie closed with individual name tags that I made last month. That part was actually kind of therapeutic. At least it would've been if my hands weren't shaking from the cold. See, I didn't turn the heater on because I didn't want to melt the chocolate on accident. The kotatsu wasn't on so the table wouldn't get hot. T.T
My kitchen after the Chocopocolypse:
Extra milk chocolate drips stored in plastic bins on top of the microwave.
Completed chocolates stored in bins in the freezer (left)
Truffle shells chilling in the fridge (right)
(You also notice I have next to no food in my fridge.
I promise I am eating. I ate that eggplant tonight.)
[Funny story about that eggplant. I was cutting it up, not really
paying attention to what I was doing,
and suddenly I thought,
"..... I smell eggplant. I don't eat eggplant. Why do I smell eggplant?"
So yeah.]
The dark chocolate that didn't get used, still waiting in its separated containers, on top of the dishware counter. That has no space, as you can see, because I need to clean.
There's also chocolate in the red container in the corner there, and in the teddy bear mold on top.
My poor sink. It's in there somewhere. The pink bowl in the corner has dark chocolate rum ganache.
The rice bowl in the left upper corner there has dark chocolate peanut butter ganache. The red pan is milk chocolate scraps remelted to make the caps for the peanut butter truffles. I only just now realized, the next day, that I used dark chocolate for the ganache but milk chocolate for the shells. But it was 1130 by then, I think I can be forgiven.
The little pink mold in the center-ish is for the truffles. It makes hollow chocolates. Unfortunately the shells get really thick if you use too much chocolate. By 11pm, I didn't care anymore. The paper cup is half full of resolidified white chocolate (I don't like white chocolate, I had no use for it after the strawberries). I used the squeeze bottle to fill the molds.
Completed chocolates in their blue bags with name tags. The bag on the right is full
of peanut butter blossoms for the junior high and a tray to serve them on.
Dark chocolate ganache strawberries with white chocolate drizzle,
white chocolate dipped strawberry with dark chocolate drizzle,
two dark chocolate rum truffles,
and a peanut butter truffle.
But everything went over really well today! My office peeps made a small fuss about how much money I had to have spent on it all, and the junior high teachers were impressed that I'd made everything. The assistant principal said that I thought too much about them, since I brought them back omiyage (souvenirs, usually sweets) from Abashiri on Tuesday, too. Everyone liked my cookies, too--my section chief ate about six in just the two hours I was there in the afternoon.
But the best part!
This is a selection of chocolates and sweets I received from my middle school students today! ^-^ Now I get to give them back something on White Day next month. I'm thinking jam tarts. Better start collecting jams now...
And I'm still finding chocolate drips, shavings, and blobs all over the place in my apartment.
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