Chocolate Almond Hearts

These tiny hearts are so simple, obvious and delicious, you'll wonder why you hadn't thought of them.

Two almonds almost make a heart, so all you have to do is coax them together with love and chocolate.


Ingredients:
     Dark chocolate- your favorite will do.
     Almonds - raw or steam pasteurized.

Place almonds on a baking sheet and bake at 375F.
Check after 4-5 min, then every few minutes after that.

Shake the pan once in a while for even browning
Pull them out when you see just a hint of toasty brown.
The almonds will continue to bake as they cool.

Cool your almonds.
If you want to store them before making your hearts, you can protect them from humidity in a sealed jar.

Select nicely matched pairs of almonds, and lay them out in pairs

Using a mandolin or use a grater, shave or grate your almonds to make a half-heart shape.

Trim to suit. .

Use a double boiler, or devise one.

Fit a bowl over a pan of simmering water,
Add your favorite dark chocolate.

Cover it to keep steam at bay.
Wait.

Check (stir- {er, taste}) every few minutes.
When you have a smooth, easily poured substance, kill the burner, but let the chocolate sit in the hot water.

In this exercise, I just took a spatula out of my melted chocolate.
Wiping a bit of chocolate on an almond, I assembled the two pieces, using chocolate as a cement,
Wait for these to set up, before continuing on to the next step.

This is pretty self explanatory.
Let the excess chocolate drip off, before placing these on waxed paper.
Chopsticks work well as an implement.

I sprinkled my mandolin shavings onto these hearts, while the chocolate was still melty.

Careful who you give your heart to.

I heard a sad story of a lady who ribbon-wrapped a tin of these for her hopeful-who snarfed them down like so many candy bars on Halloween.

I passed mine out at work, in the tissue-lined paper clip box you see here.
No one noticed the box.