Rosen Trevithick

New Release: Smelly Trolls - The Gamebook

Thu, 12 Apr 2018 10:43:10 GMT

After over three years of writing, Smelly Trolls - The Gamebook is now available. It's the first interactive book that I've published and features game play reminiscent of the Choose Your Own Adventure and Fighting Fantasy books from the 80s.

Here's the blurb:

Only the bravest children come back from the Munchfoot Mountains alive.

Will you fight, will you scheme or will you run away? There are over 100 decisions to make as you choose your own path through this bumper book of gruesome and terrifying scenarios.

A school camping trip is not the best time to find out that trolls are real, especially when their food of choice is freshly caught child. You and your unlikely band of friends are the only ones who can put a stop to the gory bone-crunching that goes on in Munchfoot.

Recommended age 8-12.

The first half of Smelly Trolls - The Gamebook can be played online for free.

If you want to play the whole book, it's available for Kindle priced at £2.99 and in paperback priced at £9.99.

Gamebook Feedback from Children

Wed, 21 Mar 2018 11:05:10 GMT

Twelve children kindly agreed to help test Smelly Trolls - The Gamebook. Thanks to all the children who took part. Here are some examples of your feedback and my responses to your suggestions.

One girl, called Emily, commented: 'Some of the sentences were a bit long/wordy.'

Feedback from Emily

So I wrote a computer program that broke the book into sentences and then arranged them in order of length. This helped me to determine any that were unnecessarily wordy.

The longest sentence was:

'The sunset colours give the surroundings a crisp glow, reminding you of yesterday evening when you were sitting around a camp fire making up ghost stories, instead of pretending to be a ghost.'

I decided to split the sentence into two:

'The sunset colours give the surroundings a crisp glow. It reminds you of yesterday evening when you were sitting around a camp fire making up ghost stories, instead of pretending to be a ghost.'

Another sentence read:

'Your heart stops. You were going to run away, but now that you know an entire box of children (whatever that might be) is under attack, you feel obligated to stay and find out what that plan is.'

I realised that 'fell obligated' was a very grown up expression and decided to make it more child-friendly. I replaced the final section with:

'you feel you must stay and find out what that plan is.'

I did the same with half-a-dozen other wordy sentences.

Molly, aged 12, commented that she would change the font/colour of the chapter subtitles in the eBook version, as she found them a bit confusing. Because a lot of people read the books on black and white Kindles with fixed fonts, it is not possible to use colours and fonts to differentiate the subtitles, so I have made the subheadings larger, instead.

Feedback from Molly Marshall Aged 12

One girl wasn't keen on the front cover. Her mother wondered if she would have reacted more positively if there had been three children in the foreground. She makes a valuable point, as children like to see characters they can relate to, and most children (hopefully) do not see themselves reflected in ugly, smelly trolls. I talked to various people involved in the project, including the illustrator Katie Stewart, and we decided that we wouldn't change the cover based on one opinion, because we've had positive feedback from other people, and as taste varies from child to child. However, we will keep on collecting feedback.

How does the cover make you feel?

The Gamebook Cover

A Lovely Day for A Swim

Wed, 28 Feb 2018 15:55:36 GMT

Ever since I started winter swimming, I've been desperate to swim in the snow. Unfortunately, we don't get much of it in the South West, so I've had to wait quite a few years

I thought I was in luck when it snowed three weeks ago, but by the time I got to the beach, the flakes had stopped falling and, since none settled, I couldn't really call the subsequent dip 'a snow swim'.

However, today we had a blizzard. So rather than not enough snow, there was too much to even see the sea from the top of the beach. We waited, with a hot chocolate and a lattÉ, for the snow to ease. Finally, I was able to get it safely. Claire (LLE-Photography) kindly took photos for me. Here's my favourite:

My first proper snow swim

Is My Neighborhood Haunted? An ironic ghost hunting tool

Mon, 21 Aug 2017 11:38:26 GMT

Recently I found myself using the police crime statistics website, a tool that lets you find out the frequency and flavour of crime in a given postcode. I joked that a more useful tool would be to plot ghosts in the area. One of the motos I live by is "If you can't find what you want on the internet, create it", so I did.

The ironic website, is-my-neighborhood-haunted.rip allows you to enter a postcode or street address, and then estimates the probability that it is haunted.

You can also add ghost sightings, which is where creativity comes into it. Describe ghosts and write accounts of your encounters, until your heart is content.

Poem Generator

Fri, 30 Jun 2017 12:01:47 GMT

I have one project that's more successful than all my books put together, and I arrived at it entirely by accident. It's called Song Lyrics Generator and it's basically just a bit of fun that I knocked up when I was at university, to amuse my friends, which then exploded.

Over the last few months, I've been collecting suggestions from people that use the site, and the one request that came up over and over again was for a poem generator.

I shied away from writing a poem generator for years, because it seemed too difficult. Song Lyrics Generator takes existing songs and mixes them with users' input, to make new songs. The lyrics style is flexible; it's easy to stretch or bend a sentence. Song lyrics are often fairly nonsensical, so people looking for song lyrics are rather forgiving of the odd quirk. Poems, on the other hand, are usually structured. Yes, I could write a freestyle poem generator, but what else would I put on a poem generator site? One poem type isn't enough to keep people coming back.

There are a fair few site out there that automatically generate poetry. Whilst many of these are very good, I feel that some of them cheat. For example, I found a rhyming poetry generator that works by only putting user input in the middle of sentences, thus the final rhyming words are always the same. I found an acrostic generator that uses a bank of sentences that it picks from at random, with no opportunity to pick a subject or guide the poem's meaning.

Having outgrown writing simple generators like my song and plot tools, I knew if I was going to create a poem generator, it would want it to be something that creatives rather than simply shuffles.

After a little research, I was lucky enough to find Datamuse and The OED's API, which has allowed me to programmatically find rhymes, analyse words, count syllables and other useful literary tasks.

This opened up the opportunity to program a robot that could write rhyming poems such as limericks, or poems with a clearly define syllabic structure such as sonnets and haiku.

Visitors to the site describe the topic of their poem. My code then searches for words that could be useful, such as rhymes and adjectives commonly used to describe the visitor's topic. It tries to fit them to the structure and if that doesn't work, it finds synonyms and keeps searching for lines that work.

Because a computer write the poems, the results are sometimes slightly random. Much modern poetry requires the reader to infer meaning - I remember poets at writing groups saying, 'I'm not going to tell you what it's about. I want to know what it means to you.' Therefore the poetry format is perfectly suited to computer generated content because the reader's mind adds meaning to the odd obscure concept.

Computer generated poetry occasionally breaks grammatical rules, for example if a word has two meanings and the robot guesses the wrong one. However, people who want to perfect their automatically generator poems can easily copy them into their clipboards and tweak.

Another way I've allowed for unexpected results is the inclusion of a 'Refresh' button. If the user is not entirely happy with the first poem generated, they can reload the page until they find one that they really like.

Here are some examples of automatically generated poetry:

Tomato Plant - A Haiku

Showery summer

A wet tomato plant thrives

by the lack of sun

A Lass Called Rosen

There once was a young lass who wrote.

She thought she was rather remote.

Her name was Rosen.

She got quite frozen.

She couldn't resist the anecdote.

Summer - An Acrostic

Showery flurries brighten.

Ultraviolet rays accentuate.

Muggy nights bask, sometimes.

Marshy soils sunbathe.

Excellent storms invade.

Rainy holidays shimmer.

Please visit www.poem-generator.org.uk and let me know if you come up with any beauties.

Search Your Shutterstock History

Wed, 12 Apr 2017 11:26:07 GMT

Jump straight to tool: shutterlibrary.com.

I use Shutterstock a lot. It has a vast database of stock images available for licensing at reasonable prices. However, I found it very difficult to search my download history using their own website.

Whilst they have powerful search tools for their whole database, it's somewhat harder to search only images you've already purchased. It seems you have to click through every page of your download history individually, and scour each thumbnails with your eyes. This can be a problem if you have hundred, or thousands of photos.

Therefore, I designed a tool to search only your own images. I found it so useful that I decided to publish it online. You can find it here: shutterlibrary.com.

Once you've located the image you're looking for, you can either search your hard drive for the filename, or re-download from Shutterstock.

If, when you find the image you were looking for, it's not quite right, Shutter Library suggests similar images from your history and suggests images that are available to add to your collection.

Name Generator

Fri, 31 Mar 2017 14:29:01 GMT

One of my favourite things about being an author is designing characters, especially choosing their name. I usually scour the net looking for suitable names. So I decided to write a name generator.

It suggests given names and family names. You can specify gender, birth year, popularity and background, as well as choosing initials and an option to only include alliterative names.

Because there are billions of different combinations, and because the generator uses lists of names from all over the web, I can't possibly test it as thoroughly as I'd like to, so if you find any odd results, let me know and I'll update my database.

Copic Blending Hand Colour Chart

Thu, 22 Dec 2016 12:21:03 GMT

There are many great Copic colour charts out there but all the ones I've found feature discrete boxes rather than areas to try out your blending groups. With the true beauty of Copic markers being the ability to blend them, it seems a shame to separate your colours when making your own chart.

Download the Copic Blending Hand Colour Chart

I've knocked up a hand colour chart that you can print and use to try out your blending groups. One of the real advantages of this method is that you can easily tell whether or not you can jump a colour when choosing which markers to add to your collection. For example, E33 and E35 blend acceptably without E34, so I'll save money and buy a colour that really is needed to bridge a gap, like G24.

An example using the Copic blending hand colour chart

Blank Copic blending hand colour chart

Thanks to Paigee Draw whose Copic-hex colour conversion list was very useful when testing my chart.

Introducing the Self-Publishing Wiki

Fri, 30 Sep 2016 09:48:26 GMT

BookHippo.uk now hosts The Self-Publishing Wiki. There is a wealth of brilliant knowledge across the internet, but it's scattered across blog and forums. It's time we pooled our resources to create the ultimate resource for independent publishers.

The wiki already contains articles on Promoting a Book, Choosing eBook publishing services and many more topics, but we're hoping it will grow to cover all the questions self-published and prospective-self-published authors might have.

There are one or two paid writing opportunities for authors, in order to help us get a nucleus of content up early, for volunteers to build on. Email crew@boookhippo.uk if you are interested.

Screenshot of The Self-Publishing Wiki

Groundhog Day the Musical

Tue, 16 Aug 2016 12:54:57 GMT

It's hard to surpass a fantastic film like Groundhog Day, the classic time-loop comedy written by Harold Ramis and starring Bill Murray. Yet Matthew Warchus and Tim Minchin expertly pull it off with the extraordinary Groundhog Day the Musical.

I stumbled upon the show almost by accident, having never seen it advertised or even mentioned anywhere. I was looking for a show to bolt onto a planned London trip. The lazy marketing visuals reminiscent of pound shop flyers, frustrating website and relatively short run, caused me to assume it would be a relatively small production. Then I saw a Tim Minchin clip on the website and goosebumps rose from my skin. Not only have I loved his musical stand-up for many years, but was blown away by Matilda the Musical earlier in the year, for which he wrote the music and lyrics. As more and more appealing ingredients - choreographer Peter Darling and designer Rob Howell - were revealed, my determination to get tickets exploded.

Groundhog Day the Musical is described as a 'short test run'. The show opens on 16th August after one month of previews, only to close again four weeks later. It is believed this is in preparation for a Broadway launch next year. This only serves to make the performance even more special for those lucky enough to catch the show in London.

The show starts a little slowly. The Musical numbers are superb and set the scene adequately but don't immediately reveal the true brilliance of the show as a whole. The town of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, is dark, icy and its superstitious people are pleased far too easily for the likes of weatherman and central character Phil Connors, whose arrogance comes across beautifully, right from the start.

At first I had difficulty accepting anybody besides Bill Murray in the role. He has quirky charisma far apart from Andy Karl's more conventional good lucks. But I quickly realised Karl had made the role his own, avoiding direct comparisons between the two. With Karl perfectly equipped to play the role, his musical abilities added the scope to build movement and rhythm into the character, which would prove to be invaluable in later scenes.

Like the film, the show really picks up pace when the day starts repeating itself, with the structure allowing earlier music, choreography and dialog to repeat itself in innovative and humorous ways.

Tim Minchin's style breaks through the narrative when Phil Connors goes to the doctor for help with what seem to be delusions. Whilst this is a fleeting scene in the film, Minchin uses it as an opportunity to express some of his well-known contempt for alternative medicine, in a hilarious song starring a selection of 'health professionals'. Whilst the style-shift is quite noticeable, I liked the song so much I was more than happy for the digression.

My only major criticism of the original 1993 film was the portrayal of Nancy, a young, blonde lady that Connors tricks into bed. It's a pretty dire example of cinema depicting manipulating women as harmless fun. With Nancy being such an important symbol of the power Connors had gained by learning the (seemingly) inconsequential nature of his actions, the musical naturally included this subplot. However, I was delighted when Nancy later sang a post-interval solo about the shoddy nature of her superficial role as collateral damage and eye candy. I felt this modernised the piece and gave to sexism the reflection it deserved.

Nancy's solo wasn't the only knowing dig at the film - which seems entirely positive given that Danny Rubin wrote both the film and the musical's book. There's a joke about the age difference between Nancy and Phil when he pretends they were in the same year at school, and another referencing the slight continuity error that Phil can learn many skills (e.g. piano) as he repeats iterations of the same day, yet cannot seem to retain cardio fitness. A mention of Ghostbusters 2 gives a friendly not to Bill Murray.

For me, the absolute highlight of the play has to be the suicide scene. Disillusioned by the monotony of repetition, Phil Conners decides he's had enough drink and casual sex, and engages in a variety of varied suicide attempts. We wondered how they would manage to portray this on stage, so were thrilled when this turned out to be not just done well, but was actually one of the strongest moments. Illusions, a revolving set and, of course, a fantastic Tim Minchin song, are used to create a hilarious montage of perfectly choreographed, failed suicide attempts.

The magnificent set was largely created using elaborate props brought on by the actors. The timing and synchronicity made the changes slick and interesting, with a car chase being particular inspired.

Lighting played a key part in guiding the audience through the continual shift in mood - the perfect partner to the music.

The performances were spot on and I couldn't fault a single cast member.

If I was forced to find a negative, I'd say that I would have preferred it if one of the ensemble cast, who played an old lady, had been directed to sing in a voice that matched her character, as it jarred a little when she spoke in one voice and sung in another. Characters in Matilda sing in character all the time, and it really works. Also, the snow ball fight was a little minimalist compared with the hustle and bustle of almost every other scene.

I enjoyed Groundhog Day the Musical so much that I was in tears by the end; I knew I had watched the work of sheer genius. It's such a shame that it's only on for two months. I desperately hope it will come back to the West End or, better still, tour the UK. Thank you so much to everybody who was involved in making it happen.

How to Create Your Own Chocolate Making Hamper

Sat, 05 Dec 2015 13:39:54 GMT

Would you like to give somebody the gift of making their own chocolate? Or perhaps you'd like to make a really attractive prize for a raffle?

Collecting together all the things you need to make chocolate, and presenting them in a hamper, makes the idea gift for a chocoholic or anybody who loves making their own treats.

Below, I talk you through creating a chocolate making hamper.

An example chocolate making hamper

Decide Whether to Focus on a Specific Chocolate

Depending on your budget, you may wish to create a hamper that focusses on specific types of chocolate or you can spend a bit more and open up endless possibilities.

Questions to ask yourself: Does the recipient most enjoy milk, white or plain chocolate? Is the recipient vegan or on any other restrictive diet?

Work Out What Ingredients Are Needed

The drop down at the top of my ingredients page can be used to find out which ingredients are required for each type of chocolate.

Decide Whether to Buy in Bulk

Some chocolate making ingredients, such as cocoa butter, can be very expensive when bought in small packets, but you can't really tuck a 1kg wholesale bag into a presentation hamper. When I created my hamper, I bought enormous bags of ingredients and measured out smaller quantities to go in the hamper. Use this trick if you plan to either make your own chocolate as well, or prepare more than one hamper.

Buy the Ingredients

Many ingredients can be found at your local supermarket; others have to be ordered in or collected from a specialist shop. My hamper ingredients page gives you examples of places to find each ingredient. If you use a supermarket, go for luxury ranges, as they tend to be the best presented.

Present Your Ingredients

Many ingredients, (e.g. honey, date nectar and coconut butter) tend to look great as they are but others may need a bit of sprucing. If you're measuring cocoa butter from a larger bag, you'll need something attractive to present it in. I use cellophane bags intended for packaging cake pops.

Curl ribbon by holding it between the finger and thumb of one hand, and running the blade of sharp scissors along its length.

Label your ingredients. Blank gift tags are ideal for this.

Don't Forget to Buy the Book

Not all the cocoa butter in the world is any use unless you know what to do with it. Complete the hamper with a paperback copy of my chocolate recipe book Chocolate Making Adventures.

Chocolate Making Interview with Cecilia Peartree

Sat, 28 Nov 2015 11:44:36 GMT

Cecilia Peartree has kindly posted the next interview in my Chocolate Making Adventures blog tour.

Find out what I plan to do next and, whether there'll be a second chocolate book.

Read Rosen Trevithick - Chocolate Making Adventures on McCallum Ogilvy - A writing and cats blog set in Edinburgh.

Chocolate Making Interview with Katie W. Stewart

Fri, 27 Nov 2015 11:14:57 GMT

As my blog tour continues, Katie W. Stewarts (AKA the illustrator of my Smelly trolls series) has interviewed me about Chocolate Making Adventures. Why did I decide to take a break from fiction to write a cookbook? Who did the stunning photographs? And just how hard is it to make your own chocolate?

Read the full article Rosen Trevithick, Chocolatier extraordinaire on Katie's blog, Trees Are Not Lollipops.

Many thanks to Katie for hosting the interview.

Chocolate Making Adventures Blog Tour

Wed, 25 Nov 2015 12:21:09 GMT

The blog tour to promote Chocolate Making Adventures continues, with a guest post on Ken McGee's blog.

When Ken asked me if there was any way to link me post to his Dark Tidings series, I was sceptical. However, because my book includes a section on making silicone chocolate moulds, I was able to write a quick post describing how to make a dark (chocolate) wizard.

Out Today - Chocolate Making Adventures

Tue, 24 Nov 2015 13:39:15 GMT

My debut cookbook Chocolate Making Adventures is out today.

Download for Kindle (£2.99)

Buy the paperback (£10)

From cocoa bean to mouth-watering treats...

Make your own chocolate at home.

Most recipes for homemade chocolate involve buying it from the shop then melting it. But what if it's actual chocolate itself that you want to make?

Thanks to the recent widespread availability of cocoa beans and cocoa butter, chocolate-making has never been easier. You can create it on an ordinary kitchen stove.

Learn to make different kinds of chocolate, then mould it into bars, sweets and even build with chocolate bricks, as you follow Rosen's quest to become a home chocolatier.

100 pages packed with recipes and tips by chocolate enthusiast Rosen Trevithick and featuring beautiful photographs by Claire Wilson of Live, Life, Explore.

This week, I will be making a series of guest appearances on people's blogs, kicking off with Why Make Your Own Chocolate? at Michael Brookes' blog, The Cult of Me.

Next I visit Kath Middleton - Books, where I describe how I developed the recipes, after finding myself unable to replicate the milk and white chocolate recipes I found online.

The cover of Chocolate Making Adventures

Interview With David Wailing About Auto 2

Mon, 23 Nov 2015 11:03:23 GMT

Back in 2013 (remember that?) David Wailing published a novel called Auto, which went on the win the SpaSpa award for best novel that year. I read the book myself and it's terrific, but ended with a cliffhanger that I've been dying to resolve ever since. Finally, Auto 2 is here. I've interviewed David, to find out more.

The Cover for Auto 2 by David Wailing

Auto 2 is a sequel. Tell us a little about the first book. Do they have to be read in order?

The first book is called Auto and looks at a future where digital technology is even more advanced and prevalent in our lives than it is now. Everyone has an 'auto', a sort of super-smart version of Siri or Cortana, that helps run your life so well it can actually mimic your behaviour online.

Auto 2 picks up where Auto leaves off, so it'll make more sense to read the novels in order. You can download the first book for free this week, which should help.

I believe the first Auto book ended on a cliff hanger. Will we have to wait long for a resolution, or will that happen early on in the book?

Not telling. [folds arms]

Are you worried that early readers might hang a banner saying '[character] Dies' on a motorway bridge, like spoil-sports did with Harry Potter?

This is a worry, I admit. I'm expecting to turn on the telly and see 'Wailing we hate you!' and 'We want Duallists 2!' spray-painted across Tower Bridge.

The first Auto book successfully strung together a series of short stories that weren't originally intended to be part of a greater novel. What difference did it make knowing that Auto 2 would be a full-length book, from the beginning?

It was a different experience this time around, knowing in advance that this would be a novel and not just connected stories. I had to do a lot more advance plotting - the 'heavy lifting' that requires authors to stare at the screen with a furrowed brow for what feels like months. But it also meant I had a clearer direction to follow.

Having said that, with the Auto Series, a lot of it has evolved naturally along the way rather than been planned. Originally, the stories Hotspot and Tag weren't going to be in this book and were written to be standalones. Then I realised that a) the two main characters in them would fit perfectly into the larger plot, and b) it saved me having to write two new sections of the book!

Am I right in thinking that's Greg on the cover? I love his glasses.

Technically that's Greg A, his auto. Here's a picture of Greg and Joanna before it all went wrong. Cute couple, weren't they?

Joanna and Greg, from David Wailing's Auto series

Your Auto series is science fiction, yet the original Auto won the SpaSpa awards book for best novel, as voted for by readers. What is it about Auto that makes it appeal to people who don't usually read sci fi? Do you think it helps that your earlier thrillers aren't from the sci fi genre?

I think there's a few reasons why non-fans of science fiction enjoyed Auto. It's set in a recognisable London only a decade or so from now, rather than on an alien planet or in the far future, so those who prefer contemporary fiction can visualise it easily. Although most of the technology in the book doesn't exist yet, it's all based on things we already have or know about - smartphones, online profiles, Google Glass, self-driving cars. Alongside that are the modern concerns about our lives, such as the privacy of our data, government surveillance, cybercrime and terrorism, all of which are given a tiny futuristic twist but not so much that readers don't recognise them.

For some readers, it may have helped that my other books are not sci-fi. Although I often feel that die-hard genre fans avoid Auto because it's not sci-fi enough!

Is Auto 2 the last book in your Auto series? If not, can we expect another cliff hanger? How long will we have to wait for Auto 3?

There will be one more book, which will be the last. Obviously I can neither confirm nor deny the existence of another cliffhanger at the end of Auto 2, so stop staring at me like that.

There will be a bit of a wait for Auto 3, because the next book I write will be something else. I've been working on the Auto Series for nearly four years now, and feel like I need to cleanse my mental palate a little. So it's likely to be 2017 before the series is completed. I promise it'll be worth it!

If you could own one piece of fictional technology from your books, what would it be?

Well, obviously an actual auto is what I really want. Then it could run my life for me and let me get on with writing. Maybe it could even DO the writing. And all the book promo stuff. It would probably handle this interview much more smoothly than I have.

It's been four years since you started writing Auto books, which are set in 2022. To what extent has technology caught up?

Pretty much every week, I read the news and spot something disturbingly close to what was fictional when I first came up with it! There are some areas where modern technology is lacking, such as autos themselves, which remain disappointingly unavailable. Google, Microsoft, Apple, give your dumb digital assistants a kick up the arse! Other developments, such as self-driving cars and 5G, felt futuristic when I started but will definitely be with us in a few years. And the idea of autos existing after your death is already commonplace, with Facebook's option to memorialise a user's profile and several companies now offering 'deathswitch' services.

I'm writing a series of blog posts about this called The Coming of the Auto Age. So if anyone spots something in real life which looks like it belongs in Auto, let me know and I can include it!

Where to Buy the Auto Series

Auto 2 is now available for Kindle, priced at £1.99 - download

And remember, between 23rd and 27th November, the first Auto book is free - download

Chocolate Making Adventures Early Reviews

Wed, 18 Nov 2015 10:50:55 GMT

Two chocolate testers have posted the first reviews of Chocolate Making Adventures. The title is my debut cookbook, which is set to be released later this week.

The first is by Kath Middleton, from Ignite Books, who gives it five stars.

Kath received an early draft of the book and quickly learnt to create stunning chocolate, which she's been sharing around her neighbourhood, causing good tempered rifts between different factions.

She describes the ease of chocolate making:

"I began tentatively, not sure if what I was being asked to do would produce anything I fancied eating. All I can say is - go with it. The business of spreading the ingredients, vigorous mixing and re-melting sounds like a faff but it's quicker and less messy than making scones."

Kath also praised the photographs:

"I'm buying the paperback too, as soon as it's available, because the photos are just too gorgeous and too colourful to hide away on a kindle."

The photographs found in the book are by Claire Wilson from LLE Photography. Each photo is a work of art.

Read Kath's full review

Kath's pepermint creams

Joo from Joo's Book Reviews and Interviews also received recipes before the book was complete, and quickly became addicted. I have it on good authority that she wowed people at a KUF social gathering, with plain and milk chocolates.

She also awarded the book five stars. Her review begins:

"I was told this is one of the only books to show you how to easily make your own chocolate from raw ingredients. I didn't really believe it, but on having a look online, it's true, there is very little information on actually making your own chocolate."

Read Joo's full review.

An assortment of Joo's homemade chocolate

Chocolate-Coated Candied Orange Peel Recipe

Wed, 04 Nov 2015 11:57:39 GMT

✔ vegan (use agave instead of honey) . ✔ nut free

It's surprisingly hard to buy candied orange peel, and when I do find it, it tends to be very expensive, given how quickly I can devour it. Fortunately, it can be made at home for a fraction of the price. And it's fruit, so you can pretend to yourself that it's healthy.

Chocolate coated orange - Photography by Claire Wilson, Live Life Explore

makes 200g (72 pieces)

INGREDIENTS

100g plain or milk chocolate

the peel of three small oranges

2 tbsp honey

METHOD

1. Cut an orange into eight segments and use a knife to peel out the flesh.

2. Chop the remaining peel into slices, lengthwise.

3. Drop the slices into a pan of water and boil for ten minutes with the lid on.

4. Drain the water.

5. Preheat your oven to 110°C.

6. Refill the pan with just enough boiling water to cover the orange. This time add honey to the water.

7. Boil without a lid until the liquid has reduced to a syrup.

8. Spread the strips on a baking sheet and place in the oven for one hour.

9. Meanwhile, prepare a batch of plain chocolate. It's ready to use once a teaspoon comes out with a thick but smooth coasting.

10. Allow to cool.

11. Line a plate, tray or mat with greaseproof paper.

12. Grab each piece of peel by one end, and dip it in the chocolate. Place carefully on the greaseproof paper.

13. Transfer to the fridge for one hour.

14. Store in the fridge and eat within five days.

Homemade Peppermint Cream Recipe

Wed, 04 Nov 2015 11:51:26 GMT

✔ vegan (use agave instead of honey) . ✔ nut free (unless vegan)

Gone are the days when you need a saucepan and a selection of (slightly) obscure ingredients in order to make fondant. These days you can pick up fondant icing sugar in most supermarkets.

Fondant makes a wonderful filling for chocolates because it's quick to make, easy to work with and can take on a range of flavours. Peppermint creams are my all-time favourite chocolates.

Homemade Peppermint Creme Bars - Photography by Claire Wilson, Live Life Explore

You will need one tray of deep chocolate bar moulds.

Makes roughly 150g (e.g. two 4.5 x 11.5 x 14mm bars)

Ingredients

100g plain chocolate

40g fondant icing sugar

½ tsp peppermint oil or essence

few drops water

Method

1. Prepare a batch of plain chocolate.

2. Use one third of the plain chocolate to part-fill your moulds. You should create a 3-5mm layer. Leave the remaining molten chocolate over your pan of water. Stir occasionally but don't apply additional heat unless it starts to set.

3. Place the moulds in the fridge while you prepare the fondant.

4. Using a fork, combine the fondant icing sugar and peppermint oil. Very slowly, add cold tap water, one drop at a time. You're aiming for a consistency that you can shape in your hands, like modelling clay. If the mixture gets too thin and sticky, add more icing sugar.

5. Remove the moulds from the fridge and check that the chocolate has set, by poking it gently with the handle of a teaspoon.

6. Grab a tiny amount of fondant (the exact size will depend on the size of your moulds). Using your fingers, roll the fondant into a blob.

7. Place your blob on top of your chocolate layer in your first individual mould or, for bars, your first square.

8. Press the blob into shape, making sure that the fondant is at least 2mm lower than the top of the moulds, and does not touch the sides.

9. Repeat for every mould or square. For bars of chocolate, it's best to use a separate blob for each square, otherwise the fondant might show through the grooves.

10. Check that the remaining chocolate is still thin enough to pour. Give it a stir. If thinning is required, gently re-heat the boiled water and stir.

11. Pour just enough of the remaining chocolate into each mould so that it covers the fondant blobs. If there is chocolate left afterwards, top up the moulds with the remainder.

12. Refrigerate for one hour.

13. Carefully press the chocolates out of the moulds.

14. Store in the fridge for up to five days.