Christmas chocolate OVERLOAD: Saffron-honey dark chocolates and Blackberry-cassis dark chocolates

Ah, the chocolate craze this Christmas started a few weeks back with ginger carrot dark chocolates and peppermint ganache and continued with no break in the storm through Christmas.  So. Much. Chocolate.

Left to right (bottom to top):

Peppermint candy cane dark chocolate

Blackberry creme de cassis dark chocolate

Caramel chai dark chocolate

Saffron honey dark chocolate

And they all came packaged in these little treat boxes:

Yes!  That's my "company" logo on it.  Okay, I don't really have a company, or really a business in which I make money at all.  But I do make desserts for other people.  I do have real clients and orders, so I wanted to have a name and logo.  I have to say, I'm pretty proud of my business name and logo, which is a play off my last name, pronounced like the feminine pronoun, "she."  Clever, no?

Anyways, back to the chocolate.  As I said before, So. Much. Chocolate.  There were so many people who I had to gift boxes to, in addition to my parents' co-workers, for whom they'd ordered chocolates from me.  The chocolates came out deliciously.  My personal favorites were the saffron-honey dark chocolates--the ones on the far right:

The saffron-honey ganache was just to die for.  I seriously had to restrain myself from eating it all before it made it into the candies.  The combination of saffron and dark chocolate was so rich and decadent, with the incredible fragrance of the saffron and the bitterness of the dark chocolate.  I've honestly found a new favorite chocolate flavor combination.

The other chocolates were hits as well.  (More so, especially, since saffron-chocolate is a bit "out there.")  The peppermint candy cane chocolate used the peppermint ganache recipe here for filling.  In the blackberry-cassis candies was blackberry jam and strong cassis liquor-flavored ganache, for an extra robust berry kick.  The caramel-chai chocolates were filled with soft lemon caramel and Darjeeling/cardamom flavored ganache.  (Quite reminiscent, in fact, of the chai sandwich cookies I posted about a few days ago.)

I am super relieved that Christmas is over, and I can give the chocolate work a rest for a while!  Up next is buttercream and cupcake overload for a birthday party this coming weekend.

Okay, I am off to figure out a way to make champagne pancakes for New Years!  Enjoy the chocolates, everyone.  The recipes for the blackberry-cassis and saffron-honey chocolates are included below.

Happy New Years!

Read on for recipes...

Chai tea sandwich cookies

This Christmas was most definitely not a cookie Christmas for me.  Actually, I was up to my elbows with chocolate making, since pretty much everyone I knew (that I saw) received a box of chocolates.  But more on that later this week.  I did get around to making one kind of cookie, and, given my infatuation with sandwich cookies this year, of course it had to be another sandwich cookie.

Vanilla-cardamom cookies

with Darjeeling tea filling

The original spark of inspiration for these cookies came from leafing through Christmas Gifts from the Kitchen (by Georgeanne Brennan), a book that one of Richard's aunts gave me as an early Christmas present (of course with the string attached that she wanted something out of the book for Christmas this year).  Amongst the recipes that I'd flagged to try during my first flip-through of the book were these awesome-looking vanilla cardamom cookies.  But, these are not it.  For some reason, I wanted something more.  And nothing was more natural a companion to vanilla and cardamom than Darjeeling tea.  :-)

I was hugely lucky also that my roommate, Maria, had brought me some Darjeeling tea from Darjeeling, India! on her trip there last year.  Of course, being me, I had to find a way to bake with it rather than sitting down and enjoying a cup....

Anyhow, I hope that everyone enjoyed a very Merry Christmas!  Have a great final week to 2009!

Read on for recipe...