On Pond Spectacles, Home-Made Milk Chocolate Recipe, and some News

Created some pond spectacles today, essential for any pond watchers to cut reflective glare. In the absence of classy polarised glasses, I cannibalised a pair of Cinema 3D specs which use polarisation filters. However these had to be inserted the wrong way round and rotated by 90 degrees, hence the strange appearance. Who cares? They work!

The next important task of the weekend was to make milk chocolate from scratch. First mistake - not grinding the dried milk. I was naively expecting it to dissolve into the chocolate liquor/chocolate butter. It didn't. Hurried further research revealed the important sentence "dried milk will not dissolve into the cacao butter, you need to blend it into a fine powder, so the chocolate feels smooth in the mouth.". Batch two was a marked improvement. Today's recipe:

• 40 g chocolate liquor drops
• 40 g cacao butter
• 25 g VERY FINELY BLENDED LOW FAT DRIED MILK
• 40 g maple syrup

Melt the chocolate liquor and cacao butter at 45+ deg C, stir in the VERY FINELY BLENDED LOW FAT DRIED MILK until mixture is even, then mix in the maple syrup. Stir and cool to about 27 degrees to initiate crystallisation, heat up again to about 31 degC, pour into mold and allow to set. To help setting, I grate some existing chocolate into the cooled chocolate mix before re-warming. 

The one downside so far with the milk chocolate is that the chocolaty flavour is so intense, you cannot eat a whole bar in one go.

The weekend continues with sporting events, concerts and carnivals, albeit with higher security in place, whilst in the background, more uncovering of the possible associates and locations involved in the tragic Manchester bombing. Tattoo parlours overrun with requests for Manchester Busy Bee tattoos in solidarity. The British Airways computer failure reduces terror risk by stopping people from travelling around the world for 2 days.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel admits that Europe has to look out for itself as it cannot rely on friends UK and US after Nato and G7 summits.

News analysis of Trump overseas tour - Success!/Major gaffes avoided/World security improved by massive weapon sales/Some agreement with NATO/ Trump learns more about places that exist outside America/Disappointing/Unbelievable!/Russia must be laughing at disarray in Western policies (delete as appropriate).