Chocolates of the Cut

I painted these little boxes, containing home- (or rather boat-) made chocolate truffles as Christmas presents for friends. The truffles were surprisingly easy to make, and the boxes great fun to paint, copying liveries from my book 'Colours of the Cut' by Edward Paget Tomlinson.

To make the truffles, I used 300g organic, fairtrade, single-source Ecuadorian milk chocolate (I prefer it to dark) and 300ml of double cream. I melted the chocolate while heating the cream gently, then mixed the two together with a splash of the delicious brandy-based Winter Pimms and a dessert spoon of honey. I left the mixture to cool in the well-deck overnight and made it into bitesized balls, before dusting them with icing sugar.

I took the recipe (and adapted it slightly since I don't have a food processor) from Gastronomie Domine, another blog by a lady who co-incidentally also lives in Cambridge!