Just sharing a funny story. Feel free to laugh at my foolish mistakes. I do.

Ok!  So, we just moved into our lovely and wonderful house a year ago. ^.^  We finally have the space to put up a christmas tree, and I was able to put lights outside without them getting stolen or vandalized. And I have just enough spare time, that I have been planning to do some baking.  Now, story of our life, money is rather tight. So I have been watching the sales all summer, and buying supplies when the prices are right. Especially on the more expensive stuff like butter, and condensed milk.

Bakers chocolate was on sale one week. So I wanted to get a box of it, since I knew I would need it eventually. They were sold out of the kind I needed (semi sweet) so I figured... well, I can just go with unsweetened, right? Since it is just used to dip super-sweet fondant in.

So I made my eight pounds of fondant, and formed it into balls, and got them frozen and ready to dip. Bear in mind, this is a three-day-long process, since I don't have enough spare time in one day to do it all. So I melt the chocolate, and it is very pretty. I cheated a bit, and dipped a bit onto my finger to take a quick taste.... and... blech. I mean seriously. BLECH. I'm a milk chocolate lover, so pure unsweetened chocolate was a bit of a shock. (If you have never tried it, do so sometime, just for the experience).

I tried not to panic (I needed the first dozen done by the next day!), and dipped the first fondant. Still figuring that the super-sweet would counter the icky bitterness.

No-go.  The fondant was sweet. But it didn't cover up the bad taste of the chocolate. It was a weird combination of tasting sweet and bitter at the same time, rather than a blending of both. What was worse, was the chocolate got all stuck to my teeth, so the taste just lingered and lingered!

So then I got a brilliant idea! I could just add sugar and turn the unsweetened chocolate, into sweetened chocolate!  So I poured a bunch of white sugar into the melted chocolate.  Stirred and stirred... and then dipped another fondant ball. Ate it. It was worse!  Now it was sweet fondant and bitter chocolate with a gritty texture because the sugar didn't' dissolve!  Who knew. You can't dissolve sugar into chocolate. (I googled it, and apparently it is some long process or something).  So my fondant ball tasted like it had fallen in the sand. Gah.

Fortunately, hubby had volunteered to do the grocery shopping and other errands in town, so I could stay home and finish the baking. I had had the foresight to make sure he took our cell phone so that I could call him if I thought of anything that wasn't on the list. So I called him, and the store was sold out (again!) of bakers semi sweet chocolate. But he was able to find a bar of semi sweet chocolate, no name brand. Brought that home, I melted it down, added a bit of wax to make it more shiney, and... it worked out perfectly. Tasted good, looked good, and made a lovely gift box of sweets.

Hope you enjoyed my silly story. Had a happy ending, but it was abit of a roundabout way to get to it. And I now have a half pound lump of gritty unsweetened chocolate in my fridge because I can't bring myself to throw it away. *snicker*