The conching was to the point where you could stop any time now.

This has always been a two-person project. It’s one of the things we like about it.

He had a migraine and I was avoiding the chocolate: usually it’s one watching and stirring as it cools and eventually adding the cocoa butter at the right temp while the other cleans up the equipment, and then one pouring, one smoothing the bars over, but none of that is something you can do in the dark holding still holding your head.

Which is how the big cherry tree that’s needed pruning got pruned. Avoidance is a productive thing.

And then I came inside, washed up, dried my hands exactingly–no water near chocolate–and with a few check-ins with him to make sure I was remembering the right temps for each stage, I did it.

I didn’t get the cookie sheets under the molds shaken to help get air bubbles out, the amounts aren’t perfectly even from mold to mold, and the tempering? Yeah well. I did my best. But I did it, and now I know I can.