It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these. I’m not even sure I remember how to start. So, if you’ve been around a long time (going back to 2019 now, which, as we all know, was only a couple years ago) you’ll maybe remember that back when I had another blog with the same URL I used to create food from stories.
When I say this, I don’t mean that I made food that was IN stories. I mean, I took a story’s basic concept or character and made food that I believed best represented it. In the past I’ve made: a Grey Panna Cotta with Roasted Pineapple Ice-cream for Charles Dickens’ ‘Hard Times’, made an Afternoon Tea celebrating Lewis Caroll’s ‘Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass’, baked a dessert representing Anne from L.M. Montgomery’s classic ‘Anne of Green Gables’, cooked a pork main course with multiple accompaniments representing different facets of Frank M Baum’s ‘The Wizard of Oz’, and created different ‘Nightmare Before Christmas’ filled ravioli dishes. You can find all of these if you go to the Food, ‘Stories Into Food’ section on this site.
If you check the dates you can see how long it’s been since I’ve made one. Truthfully, when I was fighting depression this was the furthest thing from my mind. Doing anything was hard, let alone putting the time and effort that it takes to create one of these… But, post-depression (or at least getting better) I finally felt ready to try one again… And I had the perfect idea in mind.
Over 2020 I finally sat down to read the Percy Jackson series that I’d purchased years before. I’d enjoyed (but not remembered) the films that came out years ago. Yes, shock and horror, I’d enjoyed the Peter Johnson films. Now, having read the books, I understand why there’s so much hatred for them. It’s not that they’re bad. They’re certainly not badly acted. They’re not badly written… But they aren’t memorable. If anything they’re a generic YA film and, thus, are nothing like the books they’re inspired by. Annabeth was reduced to a side character with little personality beyond being the romantic lead. Grover lost all depth and became the comic relief friend of the main you’d see in a lot of YA or children’s fiction at the time. It was enjoyable but, yes, it wasn’t Percy Jackson.
Since starting to read the Percy Jackson books (by Rick Riordan, since I forgot to mention that earlier) I fell down the Rick Riordan Rabbit Hole. I read Heroes of Olympus (my favourite) quickly after and met my favourite character (who I didn’t manage to represent in this dish but am considering a sequel for later with other characters). I’ve also read the first couple of the ‘Trials of Apollo’ series, the first ‘Magnus Chase’ book and onto the second now, the stand-alone Ten-Thousand Leagues Under the Sea inspired book I’ve currently forgotten the name of but really enjoyed (and want a full Disney film of/they can add it’s story into the walk-through ‘Nautilus’ attraction at Disneyland Paris) and I’ve also started reading the series on Egyptian Gods. In short, I really fell down the Rabbit Hole.
So, of course, when they announced that the Disney Plus Percy Jackson series was starting at Christmas I wanted to create a dish for the occasion. Originally it was intended to come out at Christmas, when it started, but due to the time it took to plan and prepare the different parts I didn’t manage to complete it for then. Instead I decided to get it ready for near the end of the series, as a celebration of the full Series/Season 1. It also was beneficial to bring it out now as one of the ideas, and the reasoning behind it, would be big spoilers for those who hadn’t read the books. With that in mind, I’m going to say to you now—if you are yet to finish the series/the first book, DO NOT continue reading. There will be spoilers. Thank you and I urge you to go and finish either the book or show and then come back here and finish this post.
Did they leave? Great. Okay, so I can start talking about my dish. Or should I say dishes? Knowing that the show was coming out at Christmas I wanted to incorporate something Christmas-y/Winter-y into the food. Yes, Percy Jackson is set over Summer, but I figured I could still make it work. The first thing that came to mind was to create a dessert where I would lock a pudding of blue chocolate chip cookies inside a dome, pour blue custard on top that would melt it to reveal the inside. I considered this for a long time. In fact, I’d been thinking about this dish since I started reading the Percy Jackson books and assumed that it was where I was going to go with it. But then a trend started online that changed the idea completely.
I don’t know if you remember it. I can’t remember if it was a trend last year, the year before that, or even the year before that… but they were all the rage online and a lot of people were making them specifically for Christmas. I’m, of course, talking about Hot Chocolate Bombs.
They still featured some of my original plan: create a ball that melts to reveal something, but now they added that extra Christmas element I was looking for. Hot Chocolate screamed Christmas and the Hot Chocolate Bombs could easily be perceived as Christmas presents. I mulled it over a bit more and figured, okay, I’ll try and make a Percy Jackson (the character) themed Hot Chocolate Bomb that turns the hot chocolate blue.
And then I thought some more (and read some more Rick Riordan) and went: ‘But I don’t want to do just Percy. Percy might be the title character but one of the best things of these books is the sheer quantity of characters that I love and other people love. As well as the fact that the books represent so many different people’. I wanted to represent more. I wanted the dish to be more.
I did some research, looking for any reference to food inside the books, or any clue as to the different facets I could represent with something as simple as a Hot Chocolate Bomb. I remembered the importance of Ambrosia and Nectar. Of course, one of the first things Percy does at camp was drink a liquid that tastes like liquid blue chocolate chip cookies. With further research I found that Annabeth mentioned her Ambrosia/Nectar tasting like popcorn, her own favourite food. Grover, of course, eats pretty much anything—from T-Shirts to Tin Cans. Luke makes no reference to his favourite food, as far as I could find, so his flavours would have to be entirely associated with the facets of his character.
You might be thinking, but LO, you said that you wanted to represent a lot of different characters—but you only focused on the main group? Correct. Did I plan a Nico, Leo etc. one? Yes, I also did that but that’s a story for another day. With the new Disney Plus series coming out, and knowing how much work they would be, I decided to focus on the core characters that make up the first book: The Lightning Thief. And those core characters are Grover, Percy, Annabeth and Luke. They both drive the book and are the heart of the book. So this dish would be based on them.
Percy’s was the first one I worked on. Being the title character I figured his was the most important to finish. At first I considered making homemade blue chocolate chip cookies to put in the hot chocolate bomb, but then I realised that a regular cookie going into hot milk would disintegrate and make a mushy mess at the bottom of the cup. Then I considered making the cookies and dehydrating them so they didn’t lose any of their shape. In the end, I decided it was better to go the safer route and stick with what I knew would work: Cookie Cereal. Unlike a regular cookie, the cereal that was made to taste like cookies, is made to float in milk and wouldn’t mush down at the bottom of the cup. They wouldn’t be blue but I could add some blue to the chocolate bomb that would make the actual Hot Chocolate turn blue.
I decided on white chocolate for the outside of the bomb for one reason: white chocolate wouldn’t affect the colour. If I were to add dark or milk chocolate, with blue colouring, then the colours would mix and I was less likely to reach the desired effect. As a bonus white chocolate has a very vanilla-y flavour you often find in a homemade chocolate chip cookie. To create the blue, I did some research, and after one-failed, very-gritty attempt, I purchased a selection of oil-based food colouring online that specifically stated it was good with chocolate. If you want to have a go at making these that’s a big tip I discovered—use oil-based blue colouring.
I melted white chocolate, added enough blue colouring to reach my desired colour and then spread it out on a silicon mat to set in the fridge. After it was set, all it took was breaking it into little bits to put inside the chocolate balls. If I were to make these again I would choose a darker blue as, though I did manage to get an okay blue-y-green-y colour I think it could have been brighter.
Percy’s Hot Chocolate Bomb has an entirely white chocolate outside, and a filling of the blue white chocolate bits, mini marshmallows and the Cookie cereal. It’s simple but it’s tasty. For added depth and to fight a bit of that sweetness you can add a tiny pinch of salt (as a bonus this would also aid the liquid chocolate chip cookie flavour I was going for in my initial idea). I topped one of the bombs with plain melted white chocolate and the other with some of the melted blue white chocolate. I can say now, after having used them both, that the one with the blue top was the better choice for really getting that blue colour into the hot chocolate. I also added some metallic blue sprinkle on top for decoration to really give it that pop of blue on the outside. In the future I would prefer to use a non-metallic blue as they floated quickly to the bottom in a lump but at the time they were all the sprinkles I could get hold of online that didn’t cost a massive sum of money. Still, I’m proud of how they turned out. They were probably the most basic of the ones I made but were extremely tasty (and my Dad’s favourite).
The second idea I worked on was a Hot Chocolate Bomb that would represent Annabeth. I knew it needed to taste like popcorn but, because popcorn would also melt down in hot milk and create a horrible texture, I again had to break down the flavour of popcorn to it’s base elements. I settled on trying to get a salty, buttery flavour inside the hot chocolate.
My initial thought, almost instantaneously, was salted caramel. Living in Brittany, you can’t escape the stuff. Most menus in most restaurants here have something with salted caramel on it. They sell jars and bottles of it next to the always-popular Nutella variants in every supermarket. They also put it on popcorn. And I was right. The salted caramel added that salty, butteriness that I was looking for… But I still wanted more. Another element that I could use to add to that overall caramel flavour I was going for.
I’d discovered caramelised white chocolate a couple months ago: white chocolate you overcook in an oven or microwave so that it caramelises and goes a light brown colour with a caramel-y taste. I figured that, if I used this for the outside of my hot chocolate bombs, not only would it stand out next to Percy’s it would also aid that buttery, caramel flavour I was going for.
My original plan was to make the caramelised white chocolate myself. I even attempted it and failed because I’d used the wrong type of white chocolate (not enough cocoa percentage). But when I was looking around the supermarket for the right white chocolate I stumbled upon a ‘blonde chocolate’ for sale that was either equal to or cheaper than the actual white chocolate. If I could save myself a job, and help the money in my pocket go towards other projects, I wasn’t going to turn it down. I ended up using the blonde chocolate bar (and yes, it tasted, as far as I could tell, exactly like caramelised white chocolate) for half the ball. You might say, but why? If you’d used it for the full ball wouldn’t you have increased the caramel flavour even more?
I actually used it for only half for aesthetic reasons. My plan for Annabeth’s Hot Chocolate Bomb was always to pipe the New York Yankees symbol of her iconic hat on top and I discovered that the symbol didn’t look that nice or special piped on top of a pure block-brown-coloured ball. It actually stood out best on white chocolate. Which is why I decided to make the top half white chocolate and the bottom half blonde chocolate. Did it hurt the flavour at all? Not even close. Annabeth’s was my favourite of the hot chocolates as it tasted sweet, salty, buttery and rich. It was a hug in a cup—which, ironically, Annabeth would be very reluctant to give you. I tasted it and, yes, it was pure Ambrosia—food of the Gods. I suppose I should’ve poured it in the fire as an offering to Apollo (my own Godly parent according to an online quiz) but I have to stand with Luke on this one. Let me enjoy it for myself.
Annabeth’s bomb also contained two large marshmallows, some hot chocolate powder mixed with the salted caramel and another pinch of salt to really aid the salty-sweet flavour I was going for. The design on top was created by melting dark chocolate, putting it into a plastic bag and cutting off the tip—and then a lot of hoping and praying that I wouldn’t fail at piping the symbol. Truthfully I tried to pipe one of Annabeth’s a few days before and, because the chocolate wasn’t fully melted in the bag, completely messed it up. I also practiced once on a plate before doing the final versions but it was mostly by sucking it up, trusting myself and praying to Apollo (who apparently didn’t hate me for refusing to share) that I wouldn’t mess it up again.
Of course, having done Percy and Annabeth’s, I had to complete the golden trio and do Grover as well. There were actually many ideas thrown around for Grover. At one point I considered using a tea bag to get a herbal/fruity flavour to represent his life as a Satyr and Pan, the God of the Wild. I also considered using Ruby Chocolate (a very fruity, expensive chocolate) for the outside of the ball to add to that wild flavour. In the end, I decided on the day. After tasting some melted Ruby Chocolate in milk it was decided that it would be too overpowering for the Ruby Chocolate to make up the ball—and, even more so, I couldn’t think of any way to represent Grover in the decoration on a Ruby Chocolate ball that felt right for Grover. Yes I could’ve made chocolate leaves or flowers, and really go into the ‘creature of the Wilds’ idea but it didn’t feel right to me.
Grover wasn’t just a satyr. He was Percy’s best friend. He had a personality, more than just being the creature he was. His Hot Chocolate Bomb needed to be him, just as much as what he was. I don’t know where the idea came from. I came up with it whilst eating lunch before going to make his Bomb. An idea flashed into my mind of: ‘Well, if you want it to be him. Just make it be him.’. A flash of brilliance came through my head to use a fork to create a hairy-type pattern using dark and milk chocolate for the base of the Bomb. It was a pure gamble. I didn’t know if it would work. But luckily for me, it was perfect. The base became Grover’s goat legs that Percy was originally so shocked about. The top half was made of plain milk chocolate for Grover’s top half and then I used the same melted dark chocolate from Annabeth’s decoration to pipe two horns on the top of Grover’s head. It wasn’t just beautiful but it was recognizably Grover. For a last minute idea, and a risk, I was so happy when I saw the finished result.
The Ruby Chocolate did, however, make it into the final product. In a similar fashion to Percy, I melted some ruby chocolate (with a little milk chocolate as it wouldn’t melt without it), spread it out on a silicon mat and after cooling, broke it into bits of flavour to put inside the Bomb. I also added (as well as some cocoa powder) some salt and black pepper to enhance the richness of the chocolate and the fruitiness of the ruby chocolate. Originally I considered adding some form of herb or natural growing element to represent Grover’s connection to nature but, after trials with a few, settled on using the black-pepper to create that Earthy, natural flavour I was looking for.
Luckily, in the supermarket, I discovered chocolate and biscuit covered marshmallows that looked like hedgehogs and I added one/two of these to Grover’s Hot Chocolate Bomb to represent all of the creatures that Grover had a close connection with—as well as his connection to Pan, the God of the Wild. Grover’s hot chocolate may not have been any of our favourites but it was still a tasty hot chocolate and one I would definitely make again.
The final Hot Chocolate Bomb I decided to work on was also one of the quickest I came up with and that was Luke’s (A REMINDER AGAIN, IF YOU HAVE NOT FINISHED THE SHOW THERE WILL BE SPOILERS HERE).
Okay, hopefully they’ve definitely left now.
Luke is an interesting character as he walks that fine line between villain and hero—and if there’s one thing you can be sure about, it’s that I love a complicated villain. If I can empathise, or better yet be unsure whether I would follow them or not, with a villain then they’re going to be one of my favourites. Especially ones like Luke who have such a large following among the Half-Bloods, and yet it makes a lot of sense that people would follow him. He’s charismatic, kind, well-meaning. He truly has everybody’s best interests at heart. He really believes what he’s doing is right and, the thing is, is he wrong? The Gods sire their children, abandon them to the world filled with monsters, expect their children to deal with their parents decisions/problems and overall are uncaring, unempathetic parents. It’s not a surprise that Luke would want to overthrow them. There’s plenty of times that our protagonists want to do the same, or that we the reader want to join Luke in his battle against them. In books told from Luke’s perspective he would be the protagonist. The only thing that makes him the antagonist is he went about his plan the wrong way. He trusted the wrong person to help him.
Kronos played to Luke’s pride, sadness and trauma. He persuaded him that he could fix all the issues the Half-Bloods have. He persuaded him that Luke could make the Half-Bloods lives better by removing the Gods and placing himself on the throne, like Zeus had done to Kronos. Luke trusted the wrong person/titan. He believed, like all battles in Ancient Greece (looking at you Troy), that his war was just. That all happy endings came with a cost and he had to be willing to pay it if he wanted to improve the lives of people like him (people like Annabeth, somebody he also loved deeply).
With that in mind, I decided to create a sort-of Yin and Yang effect on his Bomb. A white chocolate side that would represent Luke’s good intentions and all the sides that make him a hero. A dark chocolate side to represent the pain that Kronos fed on and led to his fall into darkness (or Tartarus, since that’s where Kronos is). Not only is Luke a character with a dark and a light side, a villain and a hero, he also sees things in a very black and white way when it comes to the solution to their problems. Get rid of the Gods and everything will be better. Help Kronos and defeat the evil that’s kept the Half-Bloods and all of humanity in their hold for generations.
When it came to decoration beyond that, I always knew I wanted to create some kind of scar across the surface of the Bomb, to represent the trademark scar across Luke’s face. At first I considered piping it on but I wasn’t sure it would end up looking like an actual scar, or more like a Harry Potter mark or a piped line. I wanted it to definitely be a scar. Again, I had a flash of brilliance as I was making it and decided to make an actual scar in the chocolate. Before the halves had fully dried I used a small knife to create lines down the centre. I then filled the white chocolate halves with a little dark chocolate to fill in the scar.
The dark chocolate halves I left as an empty scar. Did it work the way I wanted to? Not even close. I took the dark chocolate halves out of the mould and they broke in half, as to be expected on reflection since I had cut a fracture down the centre of them. However it was quickly rectified when I put them back in the mould, filled the centre with white chocolate and set them again. Ultimately this ‘fix’ worked better at creating the scar than the fully intact white chocolate halves did. Because the dark chocolate halves had actually broken, the scar left behind on the finished product looked like an actual scar, deep and empty. The white chocolate halves were fine, and you could mostly see where the dark chocolate scar was, but the dark chocolate halves were better. I would, in the future, do it this way by choice—not by accident.
The filling for Luke’s was also one of the first ones I came up with. I added cocoa powder, some light brown sugar to create a caramel/sweet note, some instant coffee granules (decaf as that’s all we had in) to represent the bitterness inside Luke and Kronos, a pinch of salt to heighten those flavours, and the zest of half a lemon to really elevate the flavour of the Mocha/Hot Chocolate. This was the least sweet of all the Hot Chocolates and was my Mum’s favourite by far. The only thing I would change about this ball in the future (beyond the one mentioned above) is that I would use large marshmallows rather than small ones. The original idea was to use the small marshmallows to represent all the followers Luke would gain but, honestly, the bigger marshmallows hold up better in the Hot Chocolate. The smaller ones disintegrate a lot whilst stirring the chocolate into the milk.
Overall, I’m really proud of these. They turned out looking even better than I’d hoped for and the flavours were fantastic. Of all the ‘Stories Turned Into Food’ I’ve done, this is probably the one I’m most proud of as everything went so well. Usually when I create a dish there’s something that doesn’t quite go to plan, or could be improved upon, but this idea just—worked. It was bizarre… and hopefully a good sign of how these kind of projects will go going forward.
I hope you enjoyed this and I didn’t bore you too much. I know I have a lot to say about these books and characters so I had to fight myself from rambling about them too much. And if you did enjoy my rambling then don’t you worry a review of the Percy Jackson series will be coming out after the final episode. Believe me, I have a lot to say about that as well (including the lack of mention of Ambrosia or Nectar which I was realised whilst writing this). For all those who wish to make these Hot Chocolate Bombs yourself, don’t you worry. I plan on getting the recipes for all of these out before the final episode premieres. If I fail to do so, feel free to write a comment reminding me that I need to remember to post them. In total this project took about 4 days to practice and complete (with many more months spent thinking and planning them), as well as plenty of money spent on the chocolate etc. to make them, so if you want to leave a donation to help aid future projects below it would be much appreciated (only if you want to and have the means to, of course).
I hope you’re having a great day, wherever you are, and happy eating/reading/listening/watching whatever Riordan-themed work you’re eating/reading/listening/watching.
Signed,
The Literary Onion
P.S. Shoot. I gave away that I was Apollo before this point. I was originally going to have you guess what cabin I belonged to. Does it surprise you or would you expect that I would be an Apollo child? Truthfully, my favourite Greek God, since studying them in University was Artemis and I think if I were to exist in the Percy Jackson Universe I would be pretty happy hanging around with the Hunters of Artemis. As for the picture below, yes, it’s a joke. I do own a Camp Jupiter shirt, along with my much faded Camp Half-Blood shirt, but I’m not sure if I’d survive at Camp Jupiter. Their formality and structure is not something I’m sure I would ever gel with, since I tend to work on the ‘moments of brilliance’ that happen randomly, like during making the Hot Chocolate Bombs. However, I love the Heroes of Olympus books and they are above the Percy Jackson books for me—and definitely not just because I love Leo, Reyna and Calypso more than Percy and Annabeth (though I love Percy and Annabeth too, but just a little bit less). Anyway, I’ll stop rambling. See you again when I review the show next week sometime.
The Literary Onion 