Here is some of the maple sap I collected from our trees.  It wasn’t much this year, probably because I started late this year.  

I boiled it down, trying to male it sweet so I could make root beer with it.  I knew it would make so little maple syrup that it wasn’t worth the effort.

It finally got sweet when I got it down to about 3 cups.  I managed not to get a photo of it at that point, but it was mildly amber in color.  It was a little sweet but had a woodsy flavor too.  I used this extract to make the root beer today.  

I am feeling quite ill today. My best guess is that the extra energy used for sheep maintenance flared my symptoms.  So I did the chores this morning, just because I still want some exercise.  But I decided to take it easier this afternoon, and kitchen projects seemed like a good choice.

I used some Red Star white wine yeast.  I added no other sweetener.  Here it is all bottled.  It should be ready in 2 1/2 weeks.

After the root beer I decided to make Hot Chocolate Bombs.  I didn’t have round silicon molds so I used the heart shaped molds I recently bought for the Swedish Hearts.  I bought dark chocolate chunks just because I was trying to make it dairy free.  I tempered the chocolate in the microwave and then painted the insides of the molds with the chocolate.  

I did the three layers but was nervous about getting them out of the molds.  I found this site about how to get chocolate out of silicone molds without breaking.  So I put the mold in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.  Then I figured out that to get them out you peel the mold away from the chocolate rather than pulling or pushing the chocolate from the molds.  I accidentally broke two of the molds while I was learning this.

Here are the unbroken molds flipped over.

Then the next issue was the hot cocoa mix.  I wanted it to be dairy free, but the ones in the store were all dairy except one which was terribly expensive.  So I used this Simple Hot Cocoa for One recipe and made my own mix. I used 2 tablespoons of cocoa powder and 1.5 tables of sugar per serving.  But I wanted vanilla but didn’t think liquid vanilla would work.  So I pulled out my vanilla sugar leftover from my Swedish cooking frenzy.  I substituted some of the sugar with the vanilla sugar.  

So I filled the molds with the cocoa mix, mini marshmallows and some sprinkles.

I tried to fix the broken molds with some more tempered chocolate and refrigerator time.  Then I sealed them with melting the edges and then I added extra tempered chocolate with my finger to the joint.  I used the little leftover chocolate to dribble on top and added some more sprinkled there.

Here they are looking a little more pretty.

So here is the bomb placed in heated almond milk.

It didn’t “bomb” like I had hoped.  I am thinking that the milk could have been hotter and maybe that would have helped. It was also incredibly chocolatey.  I had to add more milk because it was so strong and thick.  When I try the next bomb I will try hotter and more milk. It was fun but a lot of work for not much excitement.  Probably won’t be doing again unless I can get it to bomb better.

Obligatory Ryeleigh photos:

I think I nailed it in the first photo.  In the second one, she is bagging for pepperoni as Tom makes pizza.  She didn’t get any either.  

Here is a jigsaw puzzle with the first photo:

99Ryeleigh