Chocolate week!
This week we didn’t do any baking as such, it was a week of
playing with chocolate…and the return of the wine lecture.
Monday morning we had a demo showing us how to make 4
different types of chocolates; a caramel cup – little pre-made dark chocolate
cups, filled with baileys caramel and topped with a ganache. White chocolate
truffles – pre-made white chocolate shells filled with a fruit and alcohol
infused ganache, dipped in white chocolate and rolled in a fruit sugar.
Malakoffs – slabs of milk chocolate ganache loaded with flaked nuts (I think it
was either almonds or hazelnuts) and pistachio nuts, allowed to set and then
covered in white chocolate top and bottom, before being cut into bite size
pieces. The final one was moulded chocolates, which we had to make completely
ourselves, using a study polycarbonate mould – it was first lined with piped
white chocolate, then flooded with dark chocolate to create the shell, filled
with a milk chocolate ganache and then sealed with more dark chocolate. The
ones the chef made looked very nice and tasted good, however there was far too
much alcohol in them. They use alcohol a lot at the school and I understand why
a lot of the time, it enhances the flavour in some dishes, however there are
times when it’s just not needed – in the moulded chocolates for example. It
gave a grown up flavour, but where it didn’t need to!
The practical session was straight after and we worked in
pairs. We each had to produce a set of moulded chocolates and then double up to
make another of the chocolates. The paired ones were then shared around the
class at the end to make sure everybody got a bit of everything. My partner and
I made the caramel cups – the Malakoff had already been taken alas! There was
quite a lot to do this lesson, temper lots of chocolate, make a couple of
ganaches and a caramel, piping, filling and also maintaining the chocolate so
it didn’t fall out of temper. All said and done though, my partner and I did a
good job. The moulded chocolates were a good experience, we first had to polish
the moulds with cotton wool, then pipe some tempered white chocolate designs in
the bottom. The moulds were then flooded with dark chocolate, which was
promptly then poured out and the moulds tapped vigorously to ensure the
chocolate wasn’t too thick. They were then scraped over and allowed to set.
Ganache was then piped in the middle (minus any alcohol!) and then they were
covered again in dark chocolate, scraped over, and allowed to set fully.
Got some useful comments from the chef; I hadn’t quite
polished the moulds enough, so they weren’t as shiny as they could have been.
The tempering was good, along with the ganaches, and I’d got the shells a good
thick/thinness, just slightly over filled with the ganache. We shared the
chocolates around at the end of the lesson, the malakoffs were my favourite!
Tuesday morning we were in for a demo on making a 2D
chocolate centrepiece. It was a good lesson, we had to print out a design to
use, or use the ones in the folder. The chef demonstrated a Winnie the Pooh
design, along with a Hello Kitty one! Chef told us this lesson was a tricky one
because not only did we have to temper white and dark chocolate (in pairs), we
also had to maintain the chocolate, i.e. not let it set in the bowls, as it’d
have to be tempered again. The design was placed on a tray and a sheet of
acetate placed over the top. We had to polish this, and a cake card, to ensure
we got a nice shine on the finished piece. The cake card was to pipe and pour
chocolate on to, to create a base for the figure to stand on. The dark
chocolate was used for the outlining and any dark shading, and the white was
used to flood the whole piece with once it had been coloured. The colours were
powdered food colouring added to melted cocoa butter, these were painted on the
relevant parts that required it. This bit was tricky, leave it to set for too
long before flooding and it’d not stick to the white chocolate, however flood
it too soon and the colour risked bleeding into the chocolate – a careful
balancing act!
The chef made a really nice couple of pieces, I’m still not
sure why the chocolate isn’t coloured instead though, as the painted colours
looked a little streaky when you got up close to it. Chef did say you could
flood it with colour too and then the white chocolate, however it’d take ages
to dry – time which we didn’t have in the practical lesson!
After this lesson we broke with tradition and didn’t have
the practical, instead we went into a wine lecture. It marginally beat the wine
lecture in Basic Patisserie, this time we tried 4 wines (2 red and 2 white) and
paired it with different types of food; hot/spicy – chilli flakes, salty –
parmesan cheese, bitter – a chicory leaf, sweet – onion marmalade, sour – lemon
wedge, and smoky – smoked salmon. The point of the lesson was to see how
everything went together, or not. It was an hour before we even had the first
drop of wine poured into the glass. It was quite painstaking. Wine tasting is
such a personal thing, doing it in a class room with different people shouting
out different and contradicting answers was a real time drain, no-one was wrong
of course, but it did seem a bit of a pointless exercise. As with last term, I
definitely rate this lesson firmly at the bottom of the pack so far this term. The
saving grace was sitting next to my friends and managing to see the funny side
of lots of things and laughing a lot!!
An early start Wednesday morning as we had a lesson at 8am,
it was the practical for the chocolate centre piece. I was quite tired, but
once I’d got the chef whites on I was ready for it! I chose to use a picture of
Simba, from the Lion King, as my template. We started getting the chocolate
tempered, I did the white and my partner did the dark. We got it tempered well
and within a minute or two of each other, so that kept us ahead of the game
time-wise. We managed to maintain it well throughout the class as well, which I
was pleased about, because it can be really difficult to work with at times.
The colour was painted on the base and this was then flooded with white
chocolate and allowed to set, before being cut. The outline of Simba was drawn
with the dark chocolate and once that had set I coloured the bits that needed
colouring, and once that had set I flooded it with white chocolate. Once
everything had set I made a support to help it stand up and then assembled it.
Given how completely unartistic I am in general, and how I failed art miserably
at school, I was really happy with the final piece. Not only did it look like
Simba, it also stood up well as well! The chef gave me really good feedback
too, so I was very happy at the end of the lesson. It was well worth the 4am
alarm call!
After a 4 hour gap we then had the final lecture of the week
in the afternoon. This was a lecture on soufflés. Three different types; a hot
pudding one – part cooked in a water bath before being baked, a hot soufflé –
the standard baked ones, recognisable by their high top, and finally a crepe
soufflé. I only tried the crepe one because I was tired by this point and just
wanted to get home. It was nice, not the best soufflé I’ve ever had though. I
was incredibly fortunate to go on a days cookery course at Le Manoir at the
beginning of the year, where we were shown a pistachio soufflé with a bitter
chocolate sorbet in the centre. That one set the bar incredibly high and I’ve
not had one as good as that yet!
That brought chocolate week to a close, it was a fun week
this week. The more I work with, and understand chocolate, the more I seem to
be enjoying it. It may even be an avenue I consider exploring more when I
finish at the school, this week has inspired me quite a lot.
The chocolates; The caramel cups are the tall dark ones, with piped ganache on top. The round white one is the white chocolate and strawberry truffle. The front right chocolate with the white on top and bottom is the malakoff, and finally the dark ones with the white chocolate piped over them are the moulded chocolate with ganache inside. A really nice selection - and very easy to eat too many!
Chocolate Simba! Pure unadulterated chocolate. I'm just waiting for a call from Disney now, with an offer to become a resident pastry chef...in florida...with lots of time off...and free entry to all the parks...I can dream!
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