Valentine DIYs - Muji's Heart Shaped Crunch Chocolate

Hey guys! The next Muji baking kit we tried is the Handmade Heart Shaped Crunch Chocolate kit.

Although on the box it states that you can make 15 pieces of chocolate crunch, we only managed to make 14. Maybe we filled too much chocolate crunch into the mould but even so, it still tastes great! In addition, these chocolate crunch are quite easy to make.

The set contains the following:

Included in the kit:	External ingredients:	Utensils and Equipment:
1 bag of White Chocolate	Hot Water	Refrigerator
1 bag of Cookie Crunch		1 Big Bowl (for Hot Water)
15 Heart-Shape Moulds		3 Small Bowls (for Chocolate)
1 bag of Cocoa Powder		3 Spoons
1 bag of Freeze Dried Strawberries		Cutting board/mat
Gift Wrappers		Knife
1 English Recipe

Note:

-Make sure all the bowls and utensils are dry

-Make sure water does not get into the chocolates when melting as they will sieze

To make these delicious crunchy treats:

First, separate the white chocolate into 3 and chop the chocolates into small cubes. Put the chocolate cubes into the 3 small bowls.

Second, to melt the chocolate, put the bowls over the hot water bath. Melt the chocolates and prepare them accordingly. For strawberry chocolate, use your fingers to crunch the freeze dried strawberries into powder form as best as you can and add it into 1 bowl of melted chocolate. For the dark chocolate, add the cocoa powder into the melted white chocolate. For the white chocolate, you do not need to add anything.

Third, divide the cookie crunch into 3 equal parts and mix them into the chocolates.

Fourth, spoon the chocolate crunch into the moulds and refrigerate them for at least 10 minutes. You can make whatever combinations you like.

Fifth, remove them from their moulds and ding ding!!!

These chocolate crunch tastes so good, sweet and crunchy. What we like about this set is that you can DIY this set even more. Just buy the necessary ingredients, white chocolate, cocoa powder and freeze dried strawberries. You can substitute the cookies with cornflakes or rice krispies or some other crushed cookies. You can get the aluminium moulds from Daiso. Just do as the recipe states and you can make the same as Muji’s chocolate crunch.

Get some gift wrappers from bakery stores or Daiso and gift them to your valentine!

Upcoming next is the Handmade Chocolate Tart. Stay tuned.

Valentine DIYs - Muji's Heart Shaped Chocolate Crunch

As promised, here’s the Handmade Chocolate kit.

This set allows you to make roughly 32 pieces of chocolates (16 Heart-Shapes and 16 Squares). This looks like Royce’s Nama Chocolates, but it’s not! It’s going to be your own Handmade chocolates.

So the set contains these things:

Included in the kit:	External ingredients:	Utensils and Equipment:
1 bag of chocolate (100g)	45ml of Heavy Whipping Cream	Refrigerator
1 bag of Cocoa Powder	5ml of Liquor (Optional)	1 Big Bowl (for Hot Water)
1 Heart-Shape Mould	Hot Water	1 Small Bowl (for Chocolate)
1 gift box with paraffin paper		Silicon Spatula or Spoon
1 English Recipe		Tea Strainer
		Baking sheet or Cling film
		Knife

Note:

-Make sure all the bowls and utensils are dry

-Make sure water does not get into the chocolates when melting as they will sieze

-If chocolate melts too quickly, pop them in the fridge again for some time before getting started again

So let’s get started

:

First, fold up the cardboard box and line both squares with paper or cling film and set aside. Make sure there is no holes in the paper or film otherwise the chocolate will flow into the box.

Second, melt the cream and chocolate over the hot bath. Stir the mixture until the chocolate melts and is creamy. Then you can add liquor here. We added rum to the chocolate.

Third, pour the chocolate equally into the boxes lined with paper/cling film and smooth out the surface. Put the boxes into the refrigerator for more than 1 hour. (Not very smooth we know be we did our best)

Fourth, use the heart-shape mould to cut out heart-shaped chocolates. Cut out about 16 pieces and pour the remaining into a bowl. Refrigerate the heart-shape chocolates.

Fifth, melt the remaining chocolate over a hot bath, pour into 1 lined box and refrigerate the chocolate for more than 1 hour.

Sixth, put the knife in hot water to warm up the knife and wipe it dry. Then cut the chocolate into 16 squares.

Seventh, put cocoa powder into the tea strainer and sprinkle the cocoa powder over both heart-shape and square chocolates. Refrigerate them again if necessary.

Eighth, put the paraffin paper in the bottom box. Place chocolates in the box using chopsticks and arrange in a checker board pattern and…………

TA-DAH! Delicious handmade chocolates for your valentine!

The combination of the bitter cocoa powder and the sweetness of the chocolates makes these chocolates just so heavenly. With a faint taste of rum, it just tastes so rich and creamy! These chocolates may not look picture perfect like in those on the box but then it shows that they are homemade and not store bought chocolates. Buy some cute toothpicks from Daiso and use them to eat these chocolates to avoid getting your hands dirty.

A word of caution though, these chocolates are actually smaller than they appear to be. The box is only 10 cm by 10 cm so you can imagine how small the box is. Also, consider you surrounding temperature. If the weather is too hot like in Singapore, try to move fast and you might need to refrigerate the chocolates more.

What we like about this kit is that the ingredients can be bought from supermarkets. Just get the chocolate couverture, cream and cocoa powder and you are set. The only trouble is finding such a small box and adjusting the amount of ingredients. But it will all work out if you manage to keep the box clean, you can reuse it to make chocolates again!

Happy valentines! Til next time.

Valentine DIYs - Muji's Macaroons

Starting off, we will be going to start on the Macaroon set.

This set allows you to make roughly 16 macaroons depending on the size (8 Pistachio and 8 Strawberry). We managed to make 10 Pistachios and 8 Strawberry. The filling in between the macaroon shells is just chocolate, Dark chocolate by the way.

So the set contains these things:

Included in the kit:	External ingredients:	Utensils and Equipment:
2 bags of Powdered Sugar	20g of Water (for Pistachio Macaroon)	Oven
2 bags of almond powder	20g of Water (for Strawberry Macaroon)	Sieve
1 bag of Pistachio Macaroon Mix	10ml of Milk (for Chocolate filling)	3 Big Bowls (1 for Strawberry, 1 for Pistachio and one for Hot Water)
1 bag of Strawberry Macaroon Mix	Hot Water	3 Small Bowls (1 for Hot Bath for Chocolate)
1 bag of Dark Chocolate		Electric Mixer
2 Piping bags		Silicon Spatula
8 Gift bags
1 Japanese Recipe Card
1 English Recipe

Notes:
-Pre-measure the external ingredients before you start to avoid messing up.
-Make sure bowls and equipment is dry when handling chocolate
-Make sure no water gets into the chocolate otherwise the chocolate will sieze

To make these Macaroons, we recommend doing one flavour by a time. We did Pistachio first then Strawberry but it’s up to you which one to start with.

First put the Almond powder and the Powdered sugar into a bag. We used the almond powder bag to contain both ingredients.

 

Second, sieve the mixture twice. This step is quite tedious as the almond powder is not that fine. Just try to push the almond powder through the sieve and for the remaining that just won't go through just pour it into the mixture. Here we did both of them at once but placed them in a different container.

 

Third, it's time to preheat the oven. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius.

Fourth, in a big bowl, put the Macaroon Mix and 20g of water together and whisk the mixture with the electric mixer for 3 minutes (until ribbon-like consistency). [Note: Pistachio on the Left, Strawberry on the right]

                              

Fifth, add in 2/3 of the almond and sugar mixture and mix it.

 Sixth, add in the remaining 1/3 of the almond and sugar mixture and mix some more until the mixture looks a little gritty-like/paste looking.

 Seventh, fill the piping bags with the Macaroon paste.

Eighth, snip off the tips and pipe them onto a tray lined with a baking sheet. We used a silicone mat. The size of the macaroon shells should be 3.5cm. You can use the shell guide on the Japanese recipe card to pipe the shells. Do so by placing the shape underneath the sheet and piping to shape, moving the shape accordingly.

Ninth, switch the oven knob to 150 degrees Celsius and bake the macaroons for 20 minutes.

Tenth, remove the tray from the oven and wait for it to cool. Do not remove the shells from the tray until cooled as it sticks slightly to the surface of the paper/mat. Removing may ruin the surface of the shells.

To prepare the chocolate filling:

1. Mix the chocolate and milk together over a hot bath.

2. Stir the mixture until the chocolate melts and the chocolate is ready.

Assemble the macaroons by sandwiching chocolate between each shell, wait for the chocolate to cool and……

TA-DAH! Your own delicious handmade macaroons! You can just eat them or put them in the gift bags provided and gift them to your loved ones. Store them in an air-tight container and refrigerate [P.S They turn quite hard after refrigerating….].

These macaroons taste delicious. Although we don’t like pistachio, these macaroons smells so good we couldn’t resist. But comparing the Pistachio to Strawberry, we prefer the Strawberry macaroons. It doesn’t really taste very sweet and combined with the chocolate filling, these macaroons taste damned good. 

So grab your today and bake them for your loved ones. The next kit we will review on will be the Handmade Chocolate kit.