Chocolate Frogs - Who doesn't know about the chocolate frogs in Harry Potter? So iconic, they were the first recipe to be tried from the Harry Potter Holiday Cookbook!
I honestly thought this was going to be one of the easiest recipes ever! Butter, chocolate chips, and a frog mold, how hard could this possibly be!
Turns out, a lot harder than I thought (should I be surprised?!)
First mistake was not reading ahead to know I needed a double boiler.. or a good substitute.
Not doing much more than baking in an oven, I didn't have anything that worked well for this. My 2 pot attempt at a double boiler just didn't quite work out how it should have.
Needless to say, I still tried, putting my butter and chips in the pot and letting it heat up!
Not the prettiest frogs!! Also, very few. The recipe said it would make 24-36 frogs. I only had one mold of 8, so chose to do 1/4 of the recipe to get 6 frogs. I ended up with 3!!
The texture was just off. I think I was so worried about my "double boiler" not heating up, that I tried to heat it too quickly and almost burned the chocolate.
It didn't end up tasting burnt, but it was overcooked in some form, unfortunately. I still let them go in the fridge overnight to set. Hoping for the best!
They look far from perfect, but did resemble frogs, and for that I was grateful! Even ugly chocolate frogs are still chocolate frogs.. and still quite edible!
I wanted more than 3 frogs in this plan, so I did go ahead and cheat a bit for another batch. A half batch made it into the microwave to try a microwave version of this train ride treat!
Even microwaved, the 1/2 recipe only made the 8 frogs.. still nowhere near 24-36. I don't know what I'm doing wrong!
My initial frogs were better despite being slightly burnt. I just didn't like how the microwave set turned out. Very blah overall. No shine, the chocolate didn't go into the mold shape as well. They were just sort of off.
I will say, both sets were yummy. It's just so hard to really go wrong with chocolate! The makeshift double boiler version was better in my opinion; and a bit more solid. Both sets were surprisingly soft. They looked much harder than they were, they kept their shape.. but just very very soft. I like soft chocolate, so didn't mind, but it was a surprise texture.
This recipe was far from a success, and one I need to try again! Lesson learned, chocolate looks easy, but isn't!
