Nutella and Godiva chocolates

My best friend in college introduced me to the wonderful world of Godiva Chocolates.  I led a sheltered rural childhood.  I have taken great pleasure in introducing my daughter to Godiva Chocolate at a young age.  Our special thing when we are shopping together is to split a milk chocolate bar and not tell the boys.  However, without a Godiva Boutique anywhere in sight and no one leaving me an assorted ballotin at my front door, I haven't had one of my favorite milk chocolate hazelnut praline hearts or an open oyster in years.  As Valentine's Day approaches, I started thinking about those coveted milk chocolate hearts and I had an idea...

What if I bought a couple of milk chocolate bars ($4ea) from the market and a ginormous two-pack of Nutella ($9) from Costco and made my own hearts?  I have two red heart shaped silicon ice cube trays that would probably work as molds...

May as well give it a shot.  Break the chocolate.  Temper the chocolate.  Place an inch of water in a pan on medium heat.  Place the bowl of chocolate pieces over the pan of water to melt the chocolate to 100F.

Let it set/cool to 90F 

Using a paint brush, paint the chocolate all the way up the sides of the heart molds.  You want to leave a hollow enough center for the hazelnut filling.  Make sure the chocolate is spread thick enough so it won't break when removing from the mold.

 You may need to add a second coat of chocolate to achieve desired thickness.

 You can't go wrong here.  Even if you screw up, you can always melt down the chocolate and drink it.

Let the chocolate harden in the mold by placing in the refrigerator for 8-10 minutes and then pop the chocolate hearts out of the mold:

 They're pretty just like this:

Fill a Ziplock bag with Nutella and snip a corner to pipe into the heart shells.  I selected the best looking hearts for the tops and wrote "Tops" on the parchment paper to keep them sorted.  The less perfect or damaged shells were to be used as the bottoms and placed on another sheet of parchment paper labeled "bottoms".  It helped.

 "Bottoms"

Heat a cookie sheet in the oven for a couple of minutes and remove.  One by one, take each Nutella-filled chocolate heart shell and turn it over onto the warm cookie sheet to evenly melt the edges of the shell.  This will melt the chocolate enough to stick the tops and bottoms together.  If you have any shells with low or uneven sides, the chocolate will melt the edge even when you place it on the warm cookie sheet.   The photo below shows the chocolate edge melted down and a little warm Nutella filling in the middle.  Lick it clean.  There you have it.  Easy, easy, easy.  

These impostor milk chocolate hearts with hazelnut filling taste pretty close to the real thing.  They are double the size of the real ones (which is how it should have been anyway).  This is one of my favorite ideas.

My "Book of Love".  Once upon a time, I thought some guy was going to come along and just know to buy me Godiva Chocolates for my birthday and for Valentines Day...

 The moral of this story is to not wait around for someone to bring you chocolates...

 ...you can make your own.  More chocolate hearts.