Brexit factors: UK-US Trade Deal, Scottish Report; 500 bn cost to EU, Milk Chocolate Trial, Macro-photography

Macro Witch Hazel flowers

As ever, mixed opinions today on whether Brexit will be good or bad for the UK. The increasingly fraught relationship between Donald Trump and the UK, decreases the likelihood of a fast trade deal with the US to counter possible financial losses of Brexit. Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon expressed her continued dismay at the inability of the UK government to say what relationships it wants with the EU. Scotland is firmly pro-EU and the report on the imapct of Brexit on Scotland was published today, outlining the financial and other costs of a hard Brexit in 'Scotland's Place in Europe - The Scottish Government'.

The Express, on the other hand, points to a study that suggests that due to the UK trade deficit with the EU, the latter will be over €500 bn worse off - because of the UK's imposition of WTO tariffs after a hard Brexit. Think it through, there is a logical flaw in this argument, surely!

I tried a different method to include milk in home made chocolate. Manufacturers use dried milk, but this gives a grainy texture if done simply at home, the particles would have to be ground a lot finer. 

This time I started off with carnation condensed milk, which is about 55% w/v sugar (55 g in 100 ml). I added 25 g of sugar to 60 ml of condensed milk last night with a lot of stirring. It was very viscous and you could feel the undissolved sugar crystals on your tongue. This morning, a gradually added additional condensed milk to the warmed condensed milk with sugar until I could not detect any crystals on tongue when testing small quantities.

By trial and error with small quantities, I finally settled on making a chocolate with 60 g cocoa buttons, 60 g cocoa butter, 30 g saturated sugar solution and 30 g sugar saturated condensed milk. For good measure I also added half a teaspoon of orange essence in oil. After melting, there were tiny droplets of condensed milk visible on close inspection. I reduced these in size by whisking the chocolate, which at least did not congeal into a solid viscous mass as would happen if adding water. Tempered the mix by cooling to 27 degC and then warming to 31 degC before casting in small moulds, some containing hazelnuts. The chocolate set firm but did not have a crisp bite or snap. Experiments in other ways to add milk to continue.

In the afternoon, took the opportunity of a visit to Anglesey Abbey to practice macro photography. Used the strategy of using a 20mm extension tube with a Nikkor objective set at 300 mm. I used flash and a fixed aperture of 32. This gave me the ability to photograph from 50 cm to a couple of metres from subjects, have a sufficient depth of field ( a couple of centimetres and enough light on what was a dull grey day nearing its end. This was very successful, though as with any hand-held macro photography, you had to take many pictures to get a few that were well framed and in focus.