My SO has gotten into a candy making kick. Mostly making chocolates. We’ve made flavored ganaches. We’ve dipped marshmallows. We’ve coated ginger in chocolate. Mmmm. Chocolate.
Anyway, has anyone ever made the filling for chocolates using jelly or jam? Rather then try to invent a way to get a lemon marmalade flavor, I’d love to just use lemon marmalade.
Any ideas? It needs to be stiff enough to be handled and then dipped in chocolate.
Thanks
ToC (yes, it is funny.)
My gut instinct is that you could try to thicken the jellies, jams, and marmalades that you’d like to use with gelatin. You’d have to play around with proportions, but I imagine that you may be able to turn jam into a more jello-like substance that could then be dipped in chocolate.
The traditional way of making chocolates with liquid or semi-liquid fillings is to use a mold of some type. Normally it’s two stages: Coat the mold with a thin layer of chocolate, chill to set; add the filling, cover or top with a layer of chocolate, chill to set again. Pop em out.
You can try and freeze it, but I warn you that this will cause the chocolate to “bloom” rather quickly – the cocoa butter will come to the surface and make it look mottled and dusty. You can “save” the look by rolling nuts, cocoa powder or anything else that hides the surface.
I did this with Nutella – the result was not aesthetically pleasing, but tasty. 
The nutella comment does make me think of another possible option–
put your filling between a couple of crackers, then dip.
Works well with peanut butter and Ritz crackers–I made probably 5 dozen or so treats that way at Christmas time. Gave 3 dozen away, shared 1 dozen with my family, ate the rest.
But that’s not neccessarily the route you want to take.
We actually did this with mini-Nilla Wafers, and store bought cheesecake filling. Bite-sized mini-cheesecake. Yum.
Brandtwein Schockoladen (Brandy chocolates- Just as they sound… a chocolate shell, a squirt of fine brandy, a warm melt on your tongue and an orgasm…)
Maybe a Limoncello Chocolate Squirt?
I tried 6oz of lemon marmalade, a package of lemon jello, 2 packets of unflavored/sweetened gelatin and a little over a cup of water. It set up well enough that, left out on my counter overnight, it was still firm enough to handle. It’s a bit low on flavor, but I’ll work on that next.
Got an idea. Take a boxfull of your favorite Strawberry Fruit Leather (Roll-Ups) and make a manifold layer cake of fruit leather spread with Lemon Marmalade. Cut it into candy size squares or diamonds with a pizza cutter greased with veg oil. Dip in chocolate. Set.
Or, for more concentrated Lemon Blox-- use 2 packets of plain gelatin at half recipe (dilution), a jar of Marmelade. and some lemon juice.
You could also make a gloop with some kind of starch. A rice gluten or rice flour and lemon marmelade, with lemon leafs, and sour orange, would be nice candy
You know, if you have a dehydrator you might also be able to make a kind of tough jelly (band name) or fruit leather out of Lemon Marmelade., and you could use alternating layers of lemon leather for structure, along with a spread of fresh lemon marmelade much as I suggested with the strawberry leather.