I've resolved to make chocolates for everyone this Christmas: my secretaries, my landladies, and Lisa's family. Last Christmas I made truffles, as I've done several times before, and brought them to Lisa's aunt's house as my contribution to dinner. In the intervening year, I've been to Jacques Torres' Chocolate in DUMBO (just a stone's throw from my last job as a clerk in the Brooklyn courthouse), and he's got a novel approach to specialty chocolates. Instead of the spheres or cups or bars one usually associates with such treats, Mr. Chocolate makes little squares of tasty fillings and enrobes them with chocolate.

This is pretty clever. You can basically spread your ganache or caramel or buttercream or what-have-you out in a big sheet, cool it, cut it at regular intervals, and then pour tempered chocolate over the pieces. Much more efficient than the traditional hand-rolling of ganache into little globes that then get rolled in cocoa powder or hand-dipped in tempered chocolate.

I plan on making six different varieties of chocolates, and have purchased six little throwaway rectangular aluminum pans -- which I will line with parchment -- to try to recreate the Torres System. Here's the menu:

• Raspberry-Dark Chocolate ganache coated with white chocolate
  
• Mint-Dark Chocolate ganache coated with dark chocolate
  
• Hazelnut-Dark Chocolate ganache coated with milk chocolate
  
• Spiced Rum Caramels coated with milk chocolate
  
• Lemon-White Chocolate cream coated with white chocolate
  
• Grand Marnier-Dark Chocolate ganache coated with dark chocolate
  

We'll see how many of these I actually get done tonight. I've already got all the ingredients, so from here on in it's just a question of willpower.