Nutty Chocolate on an Election Night

The silence before the storm as we all go to the ballot and vote - our walk was shortly after lunch. Anticipating a long evening, both with friends and then later, the election, a new chocolate bar was due to be created. Today's recipe:

• 40 g Cacao liquor
• 80 g Cacao butter
• 40 g Icing sugar
• 40 g Maple syrup
• 150 g mixture of roasted pumpkin seed, roasted sunflower seed, broken pecan nuts, combination of dried cranberries and raisins.

Melted the cacao liquor and butter together and mixed in icing sugar and maple syrup. Added a single cacao butter drop to help initiate crystallisation. Allowed mix to cool with stirring to 27 degC. Then warmed back to 31 degC. Added the mixture of seeds, nuts and fruit and mixed well, then poured into a foil lined square 20 cm shallow sandwich tin and placed in fridge to set. Success!

After finishing an afternoon of work and dinner, Hildegard picked us up to go to our monthly Stammtisch with other friends, this time in Bottisham. Took along about 80 g of our new chocolate. Conversation ranged from German regional dialects, our children and inevitably touched on the election. The majority of the group were either personally adversely affected by Brexit or at least had a very jaundiced view on it. We decided to wait until we had seen the exit poll at 10 pm, before departing back home. 

It was a pleasant surprise to see the results of the exit poll suggesting a far lower Conservative majority over Labour and the Liberal Democrats possibly bouncing back. Exit poll figures for expected seats in Parliament out of the 650 available were:

Con:314, Labour:266, SNP:34, LibDem:14, the change being

Con -17: Labour +34, SNP -22, LibDem +6 

By 2 am, a small swing to labour of  9 seats projected. Biggest trouncing so far has been the hammering of the SNP from both Labour and the Tories. UKIP also seems to be a general loser. The current economic reaction was a fall in the Pound against the Euro and Dollar, followed by a slight recovery.

First forecast at 2:16 am Con:322, Labour:261, SNP:32, LibDem:13 (based on about 110 declarations coming in). Good news in that Kenneth Clarke re-elected. The secessionist SNP is now likely to be outnumbered by the combined unionist parties - commentary that this kills immediate independence referendum. Note that Huntingdon's Jonathan Djanogly re-elected.

2:46 Liberal Democrat Nick Clegg loses seat - sad loss of a voice of reason.
2:53 How ironic, Vince Cable - another voice of reason, retakes his seat. in Twickenham.
2:57 Boris Johnson re-elected
3:04 Jeremy Corbyn wins Islington (for the 9th time) with largest vote ever for his borough (40K+).
3:20 Theresa May re-elected to Maidenhead 37,018.
Apparently Tim Farron kept his seat but there had been a recount.

Second forecast at 3:28 am Con:319, Labour:267, SNP:32, LibDem:11

Hung Parliament possible.

3:30 Paul Nuttal UKIP only gets 3308 votes and does not win Boston - Hurrah!

Time for Bed!