Lombardy Chocolate
Panyan beans are the best chocolate beans ever. They need very little processing and you just warm them up in a pan with a little milk or butter and sugar and they turn instantly into the most delicious chocolate. Unfortunately panyan beans do not grow anywhere on the planet Earth. The Lombarders could only get them when they went to the planet Panya.
However, it is possible to cheat a little and use chocolate chips – the sort you put in muffins, cakes and biscuits. And the better the chocolate chips, the better the Lombardy Chocolates turn out.
Also, fun for decorating, are chocolate strands or chocolate vermicelli. Again, the better the chocolate the better the Lombardy Chocolates turn out. They also look nice if you put them in little sweet cups.
The following places supply some of the things you might need for making really chocolaty Lombardy Chocolates.
Chocolate chips:
Solid chocolate:
Do get an adult to help you with this, as you will be working with a heavy pan which will become very hot.
Ingredients
Chocolate chips
or solid chocolate broken into chunks 100g
Unsalted butter 100g
Icing sugar 250g
Vanilla essence a few drops
Bonbon cups 48 (optional)
For decoration: icing sugar,
chocolate strands
chocolate or coca powder
Method
- Melt the butter and the chocolate very slowly over a low heat in a heavy-bottomed saucepan.
- Stir in a few drops of vanilla essence
- Turn out the heat.
- Put the icing sugar into a large bowl.
- Slowly stir the melted chocolate, butter and vanilla essence into the icing sugar until you have an even, stiff mixture.
- Form small balls about 1.5 diameter, and place each ball in a bonbon cup. (If you’ve not managed to get bonbon cups, just spread the balls over a piece of parchment or grease-proof paper on a tray.)
- Sprinkle with coca or chocolate powder, icing-sugar and chocolate strands.
- Keep in a dry, cool place until they are firm, then store in a larder or fridge. Eat within two days, though they will probably be gone long before that.