Chocolates & Confections Week 1

Chocolates, Confections, & Centerpieces Week 1

School started! I'm very excited and stoked...school prevents me from getting too bored. At the same time, I'm kinda bummed that this is going to be my last quarter here. I know I'm gonna miss it. After graduation, I'll apply to a few different jobs and see what happens. As much as I would like to open my own place, I have way too little experience in this field to make it work (at least that's how I feel). Eventually, someday, somewhere, in my dreams...

Anyway, this quarter, I'll be taking a class focused on making chocolates and confections, something that every pastry chef ought to know. Chocolate can be quite temperamental; handle them incorrectly and they can turn into a nightmare.

Day 1, we spent half the class going over the syllabus, and the remaining class time was spent on chopping a HUGE quantity of chocolates...

This is just 10oz. We chopped a total of about 24 oz. My arm was getting tired and a guy in my group pulled a muscle in his forearm while chopping.

On Day 2, Chef instructor showed us how to properly temper chocolate. It must be melted to 122F (for dark chocolate), then seeded with room temp chocolate to cool it down. During this whole time, it has to be stirred constantly while monitoring its temperature.

Chocolate will set within 3 minutes when properly tempered, like the one on the right. Undertempered chocolate will take forever to set, and will not look pretty (i.e. grainy)when it does, like the one on the left.
Then we prepared liquor ganache filling to make truffles. Each of us got to choose our own liquors; I chose Bailey's, although I was hoping we had whiskey, port wine being another option I wanted to try.

Once the ganache cooled, we tabled it to smooth it out, then piped them into mounds. It's too bad they look more like a pile of turd...
We let the mounds rest for a bit more before rolling them into pretty balls.

Now they're ready to be dipped.

Chef showed us how to dip the ganache balls in the chocolate using the dipping fork. There IS a proper way to dip them...we can't just toss them into the melted chocolate and fish them out.

Excess chocolate must be dribbled off to make the truffles perfectly spherical. The one at the top is properly dipped, the one at the bottom is not--characterized by its "foot".
Another thing we got to work on is the pastillage plates. Pastillage is a mixture of gelatin, vinegar, and powdered sugar, similar in texture to fondant. They are not as flexible, and once dry, turns into a ceramic-like object. And although edible, fondant is much, much more palatable.
After being mixed, the pastillage is rolled out onto a dinner plate...

We'll allow them to dry out, which takes about 4 weeks. Once dry, they can be painted with food colors.
We finished our truffles with appropriate garnishing. Since mine was Bailey's, I just did a white chocolate drizzle.

Lovely, aren't they? The top and bottom ones are mine, the center ones are done by a classmate. She used spiced rum in hers.

Next week, we'll be making Anise sticks (which I'm not too excited about...), Dark & Stormies, and Lavender ganache.