Melts in your Brain, But Also On Your Hands

 I'm experimenting with making chocolates. 

Chocolates were my first exposure to mushrooms; I was given mushroom chocolates very similar to these by a friend. I've experimented with making my own, and I won't say I'm good at them yet, but I'm no longer the sloppy mess I was when I started. 


I begin by figuring out how much dosage I want in each one, and weighing out the mushroom. I like these little cups molds, because they're easy to work with, easy to wrap, and easy to handle. They're also easy to do math with. I know that one cup is a gram, or a half a gram, or whatever I put in them... and it's easy. I figured out that each cup of the mold is 2 teaspoons of volume, and then I figured out (with a little trial and error) that twenty cups, which is forty teaspoons, equals three quarters of a cup, plus a tablespoon and a teaspoon... because .833 cups is not a really useful amount when you're trying to measure. And then I used the cups and the scales, and I figured out that the amount to fill twenty cups, is approximately 245 grams of chocolate. THIS is the useful number! This, I can drop into a glass measuring cup on a tared scale until I get enough, and then microwave in bursts until it's properly smooth and melted. Because the mushroom powder is so fluffy, it basically just dissolves into the chocolate without adding much bulk. 


I'm working with real simple melting chocolate; it's stuff that I buy in the bulk bins from a local grocery. It's pretty tasty, but it's not fancy. I'll get fancy, once I get my technique down. I'm learning on the cheap stuff. 






I didn't get pictures of all the steps, partly because they're not really pretty, and partly because I was busy and my hands were full. I powdered the mushroom,(in this case, six grams to make twenty 0.3 gram cups) and then sifted the powder through a sieve to catch any bits that didn't powder nicely, then re-measured to make sure I hadn't lost too much in sifting, then mixed it into the melted chocolate. I found that warming the bowl helped keep things nice and fluid. I made sure it was very thoroughly mixed, to avoid getting any irregularities in the dose, or any gross chunks of dry mushroom hanging out waiting for the unsuspecting consumer. 

I used a silicone spatula to scrape the chocolate-mushroom mixture into a quart Ziploc bag, and then snipped a tiny corner, and piped it into the molds. I tapped and shook the mold to get it nice and even, making sure that the chocolate is evenly distributed - this is important to ensure that each cup is a twentieth of the total batch, and thus a consistent dose. 




They came out really crisp and sharp looking! I'm pleased with their pretty finish. Unfortunately, handling them to get them wrapped warms them up just enough that they lose some of that sharpness - I'm not sure whether the solution is just to work with them colder and quicker, or if it's just learning technique, or what. Like I said... learning. Like with all the stuff I'm doing, I recognize that these are, when it comes right down to it, a drug delivery system - but I want for them to be delicious and aesthetically pleasing as well. 

Ideally, I want for these to be a thing I can take to events and share with friends. They're a very party-friendly way to consume mushrooms. You don't have to mix and measure; all the math is already done. 


These little candy-wrapping foils are the perfect size, and I like the fact that they come in a multi-color pack - I use different colors for different amounts of mushroom. Blue ones are a gram each for a social dose; you can take two for a more therapeutic dose. They melt well into hot milk to make a delicious hot cocoa that will sit you on your ass. Purple ones are 0.3 grams for microdosing. 



I store them in the refrigerator. They stay good for quite a while, although I haven't got an absolute shelf life on them. If you know what the mushroom tastes like, you can kind of tell that it's in there - but if you don't have a strong familiarity with that flavor, they just taste like chocolate, especially at the lower doses. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Shoup

Image
  I love Cream of Mushroom soup. Not the super-homogenized stuff that you get in a can, but the made-from-real-mushrooms-and-cream kind that you have with a good steak - aromatic, full of umami, and warming all the way through. And, if you add some cubes, psychedelic as hell. The soup freezes perfectly, and its psychedelic quality is maintained with no apparent loss of potency.  Because I wanted to have dose control, I made a batch of regular Cream of Portobello soup, and then dosed a measured portion of it. I started out with this basic recipe for the main kettle:  half a pound of good butter; I use Kerrygold. You taste it in this. three pounds of baby portobello mushrooms, rough chopped. Regular white mushrooms are also fine, but the color is a little more appealing with the baby bellas. 2 onions, chopped about half a fist of garlic, run through the press a quart of beef stock a quart of whole cream dried thyme - probably a tablespoon, but I just add until it tastes rig...
Read more

Duck Sells

Image
I am going to post the recipe portion of this morning's trip, and then work on the actual trip report later, because DAMN, it was a doozie. There's a lot. A LOT. It will be hours of figuring out, editing together the narratives and linking up what I want to say, and I have things that need doing around the house. But I want to get the duxelles recipe up on the page, because it was FREAKING DELICIOUS, and I want to share it with some friends muy pronto.  The basics:  100 grams wet cubes. I used Albino Stargazers from Nichy Myco's Market .  150 grams button mushrooms. This could easily be oysters or shiitakes, but there were button mushrooms in the crisper. I wanted the bulk, and the flavor.  Shallots. I used a big one that was really two stuck together. So much of this, is just "or as much as you feel like." Shallot is better than regular onion because it has a finer grain, and a more savory flavor. 2 cloves garlic 2 tablespoons or so of butter Whole cream, probabl...
Read more

Margarita de Loco

Image
  Last night at a Mexican restaurant I had a drink called a margarita de coco. It was a margarita – lime, tequila… but then it had coconut cream and coconut rum, and the combination was this delicious creamy, citrusy bright beverage, in a glass rimmed with Tajin. This morning I decided to try following it with a mushroom recipe. I went with blended instead of serving it on the rocks; I think a rocks version would be just fine, but I’d need to remove the mushroom powder. It was DELICIOUS. I’ll try this again soon and take photos and write it up like a proper recipe. I started with three and a half grams of powdered albino stargazers, the juice of two small limes because they were small, although one large one would probably do. I put the powdered mushroom into the bottom of the citrus juicer and squeeze the juice so that it drips down into the powder. This seems to make it soak in better; the powdered mushroom can be difficult to wet. If you pour all the citrus juice in at once,...
Read more