Chocolate Maker's Mark Bottles

The next item on my meaningful food series is another chocolate. This combines a favorite technique I learned in chocolate class and my alcoholic drink of choice: Maker's Mark Bourbon.
One Thanksgiving a few years past, my best friend, Christian and I decided to drive to her house outside of Louisville because it was about six hours closer to our New York campus than Kansas City. We had a blast on our weekend 14 hour road trip each way. When we arrived, Christian really wanted to drink our way through the Kentucky Bourbon Trial and who was I to say no?! We started at Maker's Mark distillery, which really is a shame. My advice to anyone who is interested in doing the bourbon trial, save Maker's Mark for last because it truly is the best and will put all the others to shame! All of the other distilleries have some kind of self guided gift shop/ hallway that explains the bourbon making process. At maker's Mark, you drive out to the middle of who knows where and pull in a long winding drive. The distillery is dwarfed by all the others, the buildings are black and every window is adorned by bright red shutters with the shape of a bottle cut out. There is an old wooden covered bridge and being that it was the holidays everything was adorned by a bright red bow. If my description sounds so sweet and adorable it is giving you cavities, then stop reading because it only gets more charming.

These are the open mash tanks. The whole room smelled very very yeasty. Yum.

We were heartily greeted by every person we passed on our way inside the visitor center. We were given a tour by a descendant of the founder and she knew the name of every employee we passed. That might be more impressive if there were more than about 50 employees total. We saw every step in the process and were even allowed to taste the sour mash if we desired.
At the end of the tour, we entered a large gift shop where you can buy anything dipped in red wax. If somehow they forgot to dip something, you can dip it at the bottle dipping station in the gift shop. Of course I HAD to dip my own commemorative bottle.

The chocolates I am making for the graduation open house where I am featuring these special foods are mini chocolate Maker's Mark Bourbon Bottles. It is a very difficult technique that I did in school and have tried three times at home and have never been successful. I am determinded to make these work!

The first step is to mold a tiny bourbon bottle out of polymer clay and fill up a shallow sided cookie sheet with regular corn starch. Bake the corn starch and the clay bottle in a low oven. The bottle should take about 10-15 minutes and the corn starch should be baked for several hours and even over night. This dries out the corn starch, it is a very important step! If the cornstarch is not dried out, it will just obsorb the liquor syrup and you will just have a big mess. Tip: make sure you have more than enough dried corn starch to fill the baking pan AND plenty to dust over the top later. I once made the mistake of not drying enough and dusted fresh corn starch over the top and it just obsorbed into the syrup.

The second step, once the corn starch is dry, is to level it and press the clay bottle into the starch. This is a tidious and frustrating step. Every ridge, tiny ball of starch and imperfection will be evident in the finished sugar mold and could show in the finished chocolate. Tip: make plenty of molds because you will inevitably break several along the way.

The third step is to cook your sugar syrup and add the liquor. This step is much easier when you have the proper equipment: a fondant gun. Unfortunatly I don't have the funds for a proper fondant gun or any other suitable substitute. So I ghetto rig an aluiminum foil cone and wrap it in tea towels or anything else I can put between my fingers and 200 degree sugar. However I still use my bare finger and thumb to pinch the tip as I move from mold to mold. My fingers are burnt by the time I finish, but the end result is worth the sacrifice.

The fourth step is to dust the extra dried corn starch over these molds. Make sure they are well covered. The starch draws moisture away from the syrup and causes the sugar to crystalize and form a shell all the way around.

The fifth step is the most fun and also the most infuriating becasue this is when the most bottles break. After the bottles have been crystalizing in the starch for a day or two depending on the size of your bottles, very carefully escavate the bottles out of the starch. Using a clean pastry brush, gently brush away as much excess starch as you can. Tip: if the bottles break, over the starch, just cover the syrup with starch and allow it to recrystalize. It makes the cleaning process much easier.

The sixth step is to dip however many surviving bottles you have in well tempered chocolate. If you have bottles that have a tiny hole that slowly seeps syrup, you can still dip it. However, if the syrup is rapidly leaking out, just cut your loss and pop it into your mouth. Decorate the bottles to mimic the bottle of which ever liquor you use; I colored white chocolate bright red to drip over the top of the bottles.

These chocolates can be infuriating to make, but they are fun and always impress! Don't worry about getting drunk, you will get sick from the sugar long before you feel the effects of alcohol.

Inside the bottle: you can see the crystalized sugar and the liquor syrup pouring out.