Student Diary: Advanced Pastry Arts, Day 7
Chocolate box ...
... filled with goodies ...
... with tasty Kahlua innards.*
The folks at Serious Eats say innards to discuss the inside of any food, and it cracks me up.
I used to read about tempering chocolate and think the process would be tiring, but it really is a piece of cake. If it cools down too much and falls out of temper, just put the bowl back over simmering water and melt it down again. So many ways to do it--nuke it, seed it with "chocolate seeds" to cool it, use the oven, just melt it ... if it weren't so hot here most of the time, I might work with it a lot more for decorating.
So we had the standard truffles (cream, some butter, liquor, chocolate) with a tempered shell, Rigi peaks (they look like Hershey kisses--chocolate mixed with fondant, butter, and Bailey's, all piped onto a tempered chocolate disc and dipped in tempered chocolate, then sprinkled with sugar, named after the actual Swiss Rigi Peaks), Knackerli (which everyone kept thinking was called "knackeril," which rhymes with "mackerel"--basically just tempered chocolate circles with dried fruits and nuts on top), chocolate-covered caramels (my teammate, Frank, loves making caramel, so he brought some in for everyone and he and I dipped them in chocolate because, well, why not?), and chocolate balls made in a gold-dusted form.
What I learned:
- It's easy to fix mistakes with chocolate ... some of them, anyway.
- It's sturdier than it looks ... most of the time.
- Gloves are your friend when your hands are naturally warm.
- Gloves that are too big are your enemy.
- Really big truffles make me giggle, and also glad that I didn't make our truffles too big.
I gave the chocolates to the farmers and volunteers at the Public Market because they should have chocolate. I didn't give any to the chocolate vendors because their chocolate kicks my chocolate's butt.
This week, we're supposed to have a quiz on chocolate, which shouldn't be hard thanks to Chef's continuing slideshows of awesomeness, and tomorrow, Day 8, we work on more chocolate techniques.
... filled with goodies ...
... with tasty Kahlua innards.*
The folks at Serious Eats say innards to discuss the inside of any food, and it cracks me up.
I used to read about tempering chocolate and think the process would be tiring, but it really is a piece of cake. If it cools down too much and falls out of temper, just put the bowl back over simmering water and melt it down again. So many ways to do it--nuke it, seed it with "chocolate seeds" to cool it, use the oven, just melt it ... if it weren't so hot here most of the time, I might work with it a lot more for decorating.
So we had the standard truffles (cream, some butter, liquor, chocolate) with a tempered shell, Rigi peaks (they look like Hershey kisses--chocolate mixed with fondant, butter, and Bailey's, all piped onto a tempered chocolate disc and dipped in tempered chocolate, then sprinkled with sugar, named after the actual Swiss Rigi Peaks), Knackerli (which everyone kept thinking was called "knackeril," which rhymes with "mackerel"--basically just tempered chocolate circles with dried fruits and nuts on top), chocolate-covered caramels (my teammate, Frank, loves making caramel, so he brought some in for everyone and he and I dipped them in chocolate because, well, why not?), and chocolate balls made in a gold-dusted form.
What I learned:
- It's easy to fix mistakes with chocolate ... some of them, anyway.
- It's sturdier than it looks ... most of the time.
- Gloves are your friend when your hands are naturally warm.
- Gloves that are too big are your enemy.
- Really big truffles make me giggle, and also glad that I didn't make our truffles too big.
I gave the chocolates to the farmers and volunteers at the Public Market because they should have chocolate. I didn't give any to the chocolate vendors because their chocolate kicks my chocolate's butt.
This week, we're supposed to have a quiz on chocolate, which shouldn't be hard thanks to Chef's continuing slideshows of awesomeness, and tomorrow, Day 8, we work on more chocolate techniques.
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