Now I Have A Tempering Machine

I hope everybody reading this is aware that Fallout Durham is currently accepting orders for Christmas, right? (Terms and conditions apply: you need to be able to get to the environs of Durham, and orders will close midnight Friday - the 14th of December. Offer void where prohibited)

If you remember from earlier in the year, one of the things I kept on mentioning, aside from how lonely I was in California (and boy, didn’t I go on about that, eh? Sorry for the attack of the emo), was that Stacie and I had a Kickstarter ready to go and that it would be running Real Soon Now. Well, the bulk of the money that we would have raised from that would have gone towards a beast of a tempering machine, the Chocovision X3210. With the right extras, it can temper up to 8kg in under an hour.

It arrived on Thursday, courtesy of an unexpected bonus from work. It is glorious. I have been making chocolates for over four years, but it was never, never as easy as it was yesterday when I threw together some kirsch ganache molded chocolates on a whim and turned them out with almost perfect thin shells. It’s pretty amazing. Though I guess it was good to learn tempering the hard way. But even better to be able to temper huge quantities and not have to babysit it for an entire afternoon.

To sum up: look out, Durham - 2013 is going to be a great year to have a sweet tooth. Our Kickstarter is on hold for the moment, but we may reactivate it later to finance a few other bits and pieces. But we’ll see.

Also: I don’t have diabetes. Although I’m still having to adjust to the whole paying to see a doctor affair, I can’t deny it was quick! (To be fair, my doctor back home did offer to do a blood test, but it would have involved fasting and I was on holiday, so I decided not to do it there and then)

It’s been a while since I’ve made an entry here, so what else is new? The TV downstairs is playing something that has Supergrass’s Alright in the background, which is triggering all sorts of nostalgia flashbacks. Weather is stupidly hot; ten years ago, I suffered through a scary and freezing ice storm which lead to eating nothing but Jersey Mike’s for two days straight and trying not to shiver to death. This week, it’s been 23°C. It’s just wrong, I tell you. I have a new desk, my bookcases are sagging under the weight of my books, I still have to buy Christmas presents for far too many people, and I’m going to look at gingerbread houses in a couple of weeks.

I miss the Radio Times.