Sweet Memories...

...are made of this: chocolate!

Earlier this week, my Mum, my sister and I went to a one-evening course about how to make your own pralinés. It was held at my old school (yes, the same complex of buildings I visited not long ago) in the school's kitchen.

The lady who held the course works as a cook in a rather posh restaurant near Stuttgart. She was expecting 16 participants, but there ended up being only twelve of us, which was alright as far as I was concerned - because said lady, nice as she was and certainly good at cooking and baking and all things food, was of the extremely disorganised and erratic kind who never do one thing after the other but try to be everywhere at the same time and do everything at the same time - and fail.

You could already tell from a look at the print-outs with the recipes she gave everyone; there was first a list of ingredients for each recipe and then the description of what to do in which order. Sounds good? Yes... in theory. In reality, though, there suddenly appeared ingredients in the description that had not been part of the list, and some of what you were supposed to be doing was worded unclearly and didn't sound logical at all.
At one point, while our teacher happened to be in our corner, my Mum asked her whether the nuts should be added to the mixture now; she said "yes" and so my Mum did that, only to hear five seconds later that, no, the nuts were actually meant only for decoration and not as part of the mixture... 

Never mind! Everyone had fun, and we ended up with so many different kinds of VERY delicious pralinés and truffles and sweets that it is hard to say which one I liked best!

I made these.

The round chocolate hollows were the only ready-made thing we had; various fillings were made for them.

Caramelised almonds. Quite easy to make, and all you need is sugar and almonds.

These were filled with home-made marzipan (the only sweets I do not care for).

Don't these look fantastic? I'd never be able to make them like this!

A close-up of the ones I made.

My Mum had a temporary adoptive daughter for that evening; when we split into smaller groups, a very pretty girl asked us whether she could join the three of us in our corner. And of course we had nothing against it - meeting new people is part of the fun of taking such a course, isn't it! 

The results of our work were sisterly shared among our group of twelve women, and I am not ashamed to admit that the entire contents of the tin I took home with me was gone by last night :-) 

PS: Correction - the teacher of this course does not work at a posh restaurant, but at the academy's cafeteria sharing the same location. Thanks goes to my sister for pointing out my misinterpretation of what the teacher had said at the beginning.