Chocolate Coated Rice Bubble Balls

Posted by Vivian in Snacks

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While this is not an overdue post, it is something which I head meant to do with Elaina weeks ago. I finally made good my overdue promise last weekend.

The first time I came across this recipe was from some children recipe book 7 years ago. I attempted it twice and filed it away. Despite the fairly simple to follow steps, I couldn’t work out why the chocolate coating wouldn’t set even though I had followed the recipe to a T. I recall I had to put the entire batch into the freezer just to get the chocolate to harden (when the fridge didn’t do the trick!) and even then within minutes, the chocolate would melt promptly into a big mess. We had to literally “eat out from the freezer”.

Recently, I had to review a video clip of a cooking show segment for work reason and learned the following tricks of melting chocolate:

• Don’t let water mix with the melted chocolate. Otherwise the chocolate seizes and results in a grainy consistency. Quite honestly, I haven’t “tried” this myself yet and am unable to fully comprehend the full meaning.

• Tempering chocolate gives the chocolate its shiny appearance and will snap crisply when broken. I suspect that my attempts 7 years ago were a flop because I had failed to temper the chocolate, but I could be wrong because based on the theory I read, it will affect the appearance eventually but nothing had been said on affecting the chocolate setting process.

I started to dig through the cyberspace thereafter and learned that for coating purpose, even the usual chocolate bar can be used as long as it does not contain added ingredients like nuts, fruits or wafers. I had been living with the wrong impression that only baking chocolate works.

So whatever the case was, I felt brave to give it another go and see if I can make this work now that I am armed with these tips. My bravery didn’t let me down, but unfortunately with our hot and humid tropical weather, the Rice Bubble Ball won’t hold up for too long if left sitting on the table just like most chocolates. Still, I think that I had done much better now as compared to then. Just need to make sure these are consumed within 15 to 20 minutes after getting them out of the fridge.

Elaina had a lot of fun making these with me. Definitely an easy recipe for kids if they want to do something in the kitchen while still allowing the parents to contain the mess.

Ingredients:

• 2 blocks of white, dark or milk chocolate (2 tablets of Cadbury Diary Milk was used in my recipe)
• 1 box of rice bubbles
• Hundreds and thousands for decoration

Preparation:

• Using a double boiler or a saucepan, bring small amount of water to simmer (never boiling).
• If using a saucepan, place a glass bowl over such that it sits nicely over the saucepan. The water should not be touching the base of the glass bowl
• Add 2/3 of the chocolate into the glass bowl. Breaking the chocolate before adding it in will speed up the melting process.
• Stir continuously until the chocolate melts completely.
• Remove glass bowl from heat and add in remaining chocolate.
• Continue to stir till the chocolate melts.
• Pour in rice bubbles and mix well with the melted chocolate. (Add in half a bag first and gradually add more in so as to ensure that there is sufficient chocolate to coat well in case there is way too much rice bubbles as opposed to chocolate).
• With the help of 2 teaspoons, scoop rice bubbles into mini cupcake liners.
• Top with Hundreds and Thousands.
• Leave the already coated rice bubbles in the fridge for the chocolate to set

Number of Servings: 50 to 60