dave's blog

On Sunday afternoon, the NW Demine team met up to do some final planning for tonight's Demine Valentine event at the Eastlake Bar and Grill, and also to make some tasty confections to hand out as gifts at the event.

I'd been wanting to try this crafty way to make custom-shaped chocolates for a while, and Demine provided the perfect excuse.

We used a 3D printer to make positive copies of the shape we wanted. The video below shows the machine building up our parts, layer by layer. The white powder shown is gypsum powder, and the machine spreads a very thin layer of it over a bed that can raise and lower. Then, a print head (just like the one in your inkjet printer) passes over the powder and sprays a binder (colored red in this video) on certain areas of the powder, forming the part.

These red landmines were glued to the bottom of a small container, and we poured liquid food-grade silicone over them to form a mold.

This is what it looked like after the silicone cured, and we removed some of the parts from the mold:

With the molds made, we were ready to melt some chocolate and try them out!

We made some caramel, toasted some pecans, and made turtles, topped with landmine-shaped chocolate.

Until supplies run out, each guest at tonight's event will receive one of these tasty treats:

Saturday afternoon - an unseasonably beautiful one, I might add - found Carla, Sarah and I out in Eastlake, spreading the word about the upcoming Demine Valentine event. So far, community response has been overwhelmingly positive, and on Saturday we added a few more local businesses to our list of sponsors and contributors. We were thrilled, as we put up posters in the neighborhood, to come across a number of people who had heard about the event already, either through word-of-mouth, or via the marquee at the Eastlake Bar and Grill

Seeing our event advertised up there made it all the more real for all of us. It was just a few months ago that this was just a single idea among many. Now it's a website, a flier, a silicone mold in the shape of a landmine (more on that in another post), a message on the big sign outside Eastlake Bar and Grill, and, in fact, only 8 days from now.

We hope you'll join us on the 10th for Demine Valentine 2009! Tickets are selling fast and space is limited - don't miss out!