Chocolate!

"Do it yourself" or DIY is the modifying prevalent method amongst the social media community, with ideas being shared about clothing to food without the direct aid of experts or professionals. DIY fun food ideas are always quick, easy to make and associated with one's own creativity.

Making your own chocolate bark and decorating with your own hands according to one's taste buds and preferences always gives us the joy as well as to our children to have fun. Also, this is a wonderful way of transforming your chocolates into something really special that can be shared with your loved ones, rather than eating a plain and ordinary one.

More interestingly, there's no such recipe or even no need to measure any ingredients to make customised chocolate bark, cute little round disk French mendiants at home. It's all about getting creative and using your favourite flavours and textures and toppings. Only if you can melt chocolate, you can make all these pretty, and easy customised chocolate as a sweet treat to yourself, and to your loved ones.

CHOCOLATE BARK

Chocolate bark is actually a sheet of chocolate that is usually covered with nuts, dry fruits, candies, cookie chunks, or even additional pieces of chocolates. Use whatever you have, be it dark, milk or white.

Marbling dark chocolate with white creates beautiful patterns. To do this, melt dark and white chocolate separately and pour any one colour on a tray underlying with parchment paper. Spread it smoothly and then put small dots of the other colour using a spoon over the chocolate tray.

Gently swirl the two together using a cocktail stick or thin skewer to get the marble pattern. Add any toppings on it and to set quickly, put the tray in the fridge.

MENDIANT

Mendiants are French confections, bite-sized puddles of melted chocolate, typically studded with dried fruit and nuts. Modern-day mendiants can be sprinkled with any number of tasty ingredients, and in countless combinations.

Pistachios, walnuts, chia seeds, edible rose petals, coconut flakes, orange peel, freshly grated cinnamon — the possibilities are endless. To shape the mendiants, you can either use a spoon to drop tablespoonfuls onto your prepared sheet, or you can transfer the melted chocolate to a resealable plastic bag, snip off the corner and pipe out round discs on the parchment. From there, feel free to top your heart's desire. Then let set.

NO-BAKE CHOCOLATE ENERGY BALLS

Ingredients

½ cup dark chocolate

1 cup peanut butter

3 tbsp Dutch process cocoa powder

½ cup honey

1½ cup oats

1 tsp vanilla extract

A pinch of salt

Method

Chop the dark chocolate into small pieces or use dark chocolate chips. In a mixing bowl, place all the ingredients along with the chopped chocolate and mix well with a hand beater. Let the mixture rest for a while, allowing the oats to soak up the moisture.

Once the mixture has firmed up a bit, use a cookie scoop or spoon to take even portion of the dough in to the palm of your hands and roll them into balls. One by one, place the balls onto a tray lined with baking paper and freeze for 15 minutes. When the chocolate balls have hardened, put them in an airtight container and store in the freezer. These can be stored in the freezer for up to 3 months.

Take the chocolate balls out of the freezer and let them thaw for a few minutes before serving.

TWO INGREDIENT CHOCOLATE TRUFFLES

Ingredients

200g Dutch process cocoa powder (plus extra for dusting)

1 can (400g) sweetened condensed milk

Method

Pour the condensed milk in a pot and while stirring, heat it up. Condensed milk heats quickly so be careful. When you see light bubbles forming, take the pot off the stove. Pour the heated condensed milk into a bowl to make it easier to work with or you can leave it in the pot.

Sift the cocoa powder directly onto the condensed milk in 3 batches, instead of sifting the entire quantity in at once, mixing the two ingredients well together as you go. Line a square or rectangular dish with enough cling wrap to cover the bottom, sides and top of the dish. Pour the truffle mixture into the dish and using a spatula, spread it out evenly, making the top nice and flat. Cover the top with cling wrap and refrigerate for 2-3 hours.

After 2-3 hours, dust a chopping board with cocoa powder and flip out the firm dough onto the board. Dust some more cocoa powder on top of the slab of truffle dough. Using a sharp knife, cut the slab into squares. One by one, pick up the squares and using your fingers, shape the squares to give them slightly rounded edges and corners. Place the shaped truffles onto a serving dish and dust some more cocoa powder on top to make it look nice and pretty.

EASY CHOCOLATE MOUSSE

Ingredients

1½ cup of heavy whipping cream

½ cup powdered sugar

¼ cup Dutch process cocoa powder

¼ tsp vanilla essence

2 tbsp gelatine

¼ cup cold water

Method

Place a glass or metal mixing bowl in the fridge and chill for 30 minutes. In a separate bowl, sift the cocoa powder and set aside. If you want a stronger taste of chocolate, then use ¾ cups of cocoa powder.

Add gelatine to the quarter cup of cold water and let it bloom for 2-3 minutes. Microwave it for 30-45 seconds to completely dissolve the gelatine.

In the chilled mixing bowl, whip the cream till it's frothy and slightly thickened. Add the powdered sugar and cocoa powder and whip until the cream forms soft peaks. Add the dissolved gelatine and whip to get stable peaks.

Pour the mixture into a piping bag and using a large nozzle, pipe out the mousse into individual dessert glasses or cups. You can also pour or pipe the mixture into one large serving bowl. Serve immediately or refrigerate until ready to serve. You can garnish the top of the chocolate mousse with chocolate shavings, whipped cream, sliced or quartered strawberries, almond flakes or mini marshmallows to give it a gourmet finish.

Photo: Collected