Blast from the Past

I was never all that interested in food and cooking when I was younger. My mother is an awesome cook and while I was happy to potter around making the odd cake now and then, I generally only aspired to be her sous chef. Even then, the camera only came out when I made something seriously awesome, which is why these pictures are quite unusual.

I was organising our pictures the other day after reformatting my computer and I came across these pictures. I was a big fan of Jamie Oliver's The Naked Chef and he made some chocolate truffles for his babysitter in the chocolate episode. I love chocolate and I remember really wanting to give them a try. So, I tracked down a recipe and this was my progress.

These pictures are from 2003, when I was still living at home and it was my mother's kitchen I was making a mess in. I'm pretty sure I cleaned it up. I think the truffles turned out okay, but I can't really remember that. I do remember that all the chocolate gave me a migraine, it was the first time I realised that excess cocoa/chocolate was one of my triggers.

Making the caramel for the praline

Praline setting. Now I'm looking at it thinking who makes praline with pine nuts and what kind of tray is it on?, but then I realised it's actually a pizza tray and they are almonds. It's early.

Blurry picture of the praline being blitzed.

Chocolate in its double boiler.

Mmmm, melted chocolate

Chocolate and praline mixed!

After this my hands got pretty messy rolling the truffles in cocoa, icing sugar and drinking chocolate so I guess that's why the pictures stopped halfway through the process.

It was pretty cool to find these pictures after so many years, I guess there was a little foodie in me hiding, even back then. I also found pictures I had taken to make my own little recipe folder of my favourite recipes. I made the recipe, took the picture and then wrote up the recipe attaching my photo. I still use some of those recipes today.