Chocolate Covered Squid - Valentine's Day Candy From the Sea

What better way to say "I heart you" on Valentines Day then with chocolate covered squid?

I happened to be cooking some squid today and realized that in just a few simple steps I could make some really awesome and super romantic squid chocolates. It took only a minute to boil the squid and then just a few more minutes to coat them in a delicious spicy chocolate mixture. I actually ended up eating my seafood chocolates instead of giving them to my valentine, but its probably for the best, because I don't think squid travel very well in the mail system.

Covering squid in chocolate is actually pretty easy and quick.

The Squid

Instructables gourmet chef and experimentor Canida let me use some extra squid she happened to have. You can buy squid at some super markets and at most fish stores. Squid are cheap, so these one of a kind chocolates won't cost a bundle unlike some other "seafood" chocolates out there on the market. If you get them pre-cleaned it will save you some time.

Each chocolate is made from the tentacles of one squid. You can cut the body of the squid up into little rounds to make more. I got two sets of squid tentacles from Canida and one squid body section so I made three squid chocolates in total.

I took my squid bits and threw them into some boiling water for a minute or two. Cook your squid however you like. I didn't want to impart too much flavor onto the squid during the cooking process so I thought boiling them would be a good route. The squid cook really fast, so as soon as you see them turning white and firming up its time to take them out of the water and let them cool.

The Chocolate

I made my chocolate sauce by melting half a chocolate bar spiced with chili together with about a tablespoon of butter. You can use heavy cream here if you like, or just use the chocolate straight, but I find that diluting it with something helps it flow better. Higher chocolate to butter ratios will yield thicker chocolate while lower ones will make the sauce thinner. I chose to use about twice as much chocolate as butter.

Put the chocolate mixture into the microwave and cook it in 15 second bursts, stirring in between, until the butter and the chocolate are melted. Remove the sauce and stir it until everything is mixed together evenly.

With the squid cooked and the chocolate mixture ready to go it was time to coat the squid. I placed the squid on some tin foil and then began to drizzle the chocolate over the squid tentacles making a little pool for the squid to "swim" in. I then flipped the squid and continued to drizzle them with chocolate until it was thoroughly coated.

I then took the squid out of the chocolate pool and set them on some clean tin foil to let the excess chocolate coating drip off.

I put the chocolate covered squid into the freezer for half an hour so that the chocolate could harden. The fridge works too, but just takes a little longer.

With the chocolate sauce hardened and the squid nice and firm from the freezer the chocolates were pretty much done. I placed them onto a plate with some valentines day garnishes (many thanks to Canida for creating the blood orange skin heart) and then put the chocolates on the table to let them enjoy the view of the bay area sunset.

These were originally intended to be a Valentines Day super romantic present, but unfortunately my valentine is far away from me these days, and since squid don't travel very well in the mail, I ate them myself.

Happy Valentines Day.