Cocoa CRAZE!

Woo HOOOOO!!!!

Now, I know many of you are obsessed with chocolate. (And may still be in denial, but I already know. And it’s okay) So I need to have a little talk with you about the drooling factor that will be rampant as you read this post:

Just make sure you have a towel handy, okay? You’ll get your keyboard wet.

Whew! I’m glad we had that talk. Alright. Moving on :) This week was our first week of CHOCOLATE CANDIES! Now, chocolate is not exactly my friend, if you remember from my last chocolate week in the cake program, so I was a little nervous about this week…it’s just so…MESSY! and STICKY!! and it gets EVERYWHERE!!! blech. BUT this week was soooo much better than I anticipated. Yay!

We also have a a new Chef instructor for this class, Chef Josh. He’s super fun and has lots of…interesting…stories to tell :) Mostly quite funny. Anyway, we started off by watching a few interesting videos about the production of chocolate and tasting little pieces of chocolate with different amounts of cocoa content. (I know, school is SO HARD)
Now, I promise you, this stuff is the good stuff. But I still don’t like chocolate much. I hate the bitter taste. And this dark chocolate is definitely bitter… But the milk chocolate we tried was the smoothest and creamiest I’ve ever tasted. YUM.  

This week was actually mostly prep week because we have another week of chocolate candies next week and next Thursday we’re told is the massive enrobing (as in, candies on a belt through a wall of melted chocolate – kinda like Krispy Kreme…you follow?) and packaging day…we’re talking THOUSANDS of candies here. That’s going to be way fun :) But anyway, what I’m getting at is that most of the pictures and things are candies we haven’t finished yet, with the exception of one or two…and sadly, I didn’t bring any home this week. John was really sad. ;) But anyway, you’re definitely going to want to be at my house next Thursday. Just sayin’…

Okay, now on to the good stuff. We learned how to temper chocolate using a couple of different methods. And we made lots of ganaches. (guh-NAH-shez) Lots and lots of ganaches. Oh my ganache. We started of with my favorite, the Creamy from Normandy. It’s mostly milk chocolate and butter. Oh yeah. We then cast them into a frame to make it easier for cutting into square candies later.

We also practiced a little bit of chocolate piping and writing. We touched on this briefly during basic skills class our first week but we didn’t really get to it. So we got a chance to do it this week.
Chef Pierre (another Chef Instructor – we’ll have him later in the program) has said “writing with chocolate is a little bit like a dance”
eh…I prefer royal icing… ;)

We made some caramelized hazelnuts for a hazelnut trio candy. And I had a temperamental induction stove…so they came out a little dark…But aren’t they cute in their little groups of three? ;)

Now, because these are mostly French recipes, a lot of the ganaches we made this week had alcohol in them. And, as I may need to remind some of you, being Mormon entails not drinking alcohol, tea and coffee or products including them. So after making rum truffles, earl grey tea ganache and a coffee ganache…I was getting a little sad I wouldn’t be able to eat anything!! But don’t worry, there are other yummy things coming up :)
But anyway, we made rum truffles

Before you say anything, I know what you’re thinking. I agree. They kinda look like poo. But we shaped them into little balls and rolled them in cocoa powder. Now they don’t look so bad, right? ;)
 
After we’d finished coating the rum truffles, my lovely gloved hand looked like this:
So found the closest sheet of parchment paper and made some artwork. You better believe I brought it home ;) I call it “Hands On Chocolate” Copyright 2011 Ashley M, all rights reserved. ;)

Then we made the earl grey tea and coffee “Colombian” ganaches. And sorry if you like it, but I think the smell of earl grey tea is one of the most nauseating smells ever. Oh well.
 
My favorite thing we made this week was Gianduja (zjee-ahn-DOO-zya – and I don’t think that is the right way to write it phonetically…sorry, i’m doing the best I can) It’s basically chocolate mixed with hazelnut paste. And then we mixed THAT with butter. Oh yeah. We made little chocolate discs that we would pipe the gianduja on once they set.
I may or may not have been licking my tools afterwards in the dish room. I’ll never tell…

We made pear caramels, which are caramel filled chocolate cups. So of course we had to make the chocolate cups. Messy business, my friends. But I have become skilled…so it actually wasn’t too bad ;)
Don’t worry, we were supposed to dump the excess onto the parchment like that ;) Here are the cups:
We then made a caramel ganache to go inside. Yum! So smooth and creamy…
Once they had set, we capped them off and unmolded them. They turned out pretty nicely, don’t you think?  I like the little fluted swirly design going on ;)

We also made something called Butter Masses. We have yet to find out if there is a more appealing French name for these. I mean…butter masses? Yes, it is basically butter and chocolate, I’m not gonna lie. But We should dress up the name a little. ;) We piped them into logs and let them set, then coated them in chocolate and cocoa powder like the truffles. MmmMmmmm….butter masses…just thinking about it makes we want a salad… ;)

And lastly we made nougatine. It’s basically chopped almonds in caramel. Then we dipped them in chocolate. Naturally ;) It was so we could practice dipping, which I’d never done before. I think it went pretty well…for the most part. You want a nice smooth even surface :)

And that concludes part one of the Cocoa Craze!! Next week we’ll be finishing up more candies – and I think we’re making PEANUT BUTTER ONES!!!!!! Oh man I’m so excited for that!!!!!!!!!!!! Stay tuned! Thanks for stopping by!! :)

Plated Desserts Pt 3: Jams and Exams

Oo! My rhyming title is almost as awesome as my alliterations! ;)

Okay, after a slight crisis with my aging computer and great frustration and fighting urges to throw it out the window I finally got my pictures from my camera card to my computer. WHEW! So now I can share with you the last bit of plated desserts and tell you about my exams! YAY!

Now, you remember that blizzard we had a few weeks ago? We missed 3 days of our plated desserts class. Chef En-Ming is a part time visiting chef instructor and still had to leave at the end of the two weeks scheduled for the class, so this last week we had Chef Sébastien for Monday and Tuesday to finish up the class. Which I LOVED because I had him in the cake program, and he’s AMAZING.

So we had one more dessert to finish – the chocolate-tea cremeux (crem-ONH) I think it just means “creamy” and yes…it was very creamy. Now, I’m going to be completely honest with you. This dessert was not appetizing to me at all. But hey, obviously someone likes it, but it’s definitely not my thing…

Let’s see, we had chocolate cream, lemon cream, chocolate crumble, lemon jelly and earl grey tea flavored ice cream. Hm. I wasn’t exactly digging the lemon chocolate combo…but for this dessert we had to come up with our own plating. Eek! Before, Chef En-Ming would demonstrate a nice way to plate it, with good proportions of all the components. This time, we had to come up with it ourselves. So here’s what I did:
I ended up putting too much chocolate cream and lemon jelly (MAN that stuff was tart!!!!) But I had a nice presentation :)

The last part of the class was jam making! I was pretty excited, I’ve never made jam before! But I’m not really a jam person, to be honest. But it was fun to make :) I learned that jams are made with whole or pieces of the fruit, and jellies are made with just fruit juice. I don’t know if you knew the difference already, but I sure didn’t. That stuff at the store…all kinda looks…the same…

Each table made two flavors. I made blackberry and fig. I have yet to try the fig…I’m a little nervous ;) While we didn’t make any jellies, Chef showed us how in a sweet copper pot

Then he showed us how to make apricot jam
It’s that cool?! It’s upside down so that the air pocket in the jar travels up through the hot fruit and gets sterilized. Nifty, huh?

Then we got to work on our flavors. Here is my blackberry concoction
The kitchen was filled with the yummy smells of cooking fruit :) nom nom nom

So like I said, every table made 2 flavors. When all the jams were done, there was bartering for different flavors. My partner wasn’t there that day, so I had much more jam to barter with (but don’t worry, I still saved her some!) Then I had my little army of jams to take home:Let’s see, I have raspberry, red currant, strawberry, fig, apricot, blueberry and blackberry! (anybody know that reggae song that says something like “we’re jammin’”? Yeah, I had that stuck in my head for these two days…) John tried the strawberry today on his waffle after church. He said it was good, but I know his grandma’s are his favorite. (but I’m okay with that :)
Then, starting Wednesday, we had EXAMS. And I actually don’t have any pictures, I was too busy making my product. But you’ve seen it all before ;) We were tested on items from Sugar Candies Class, Ice Creams and Sorbets Class, and Plated Desserts Class. By Wednesday I had taken the splint off of my hand (remember how I gouged it?) and had it wrapped up with a glove on and it worked really well. The cut is looking great and it is just about all healed up! I was REALLY glad I could use two hands for my test…that was really nice ;) I think exams went really well for me, I finished up early on the last day (exams went through till Friday) and I think my product turned out very nice. So all in all, a successful week!

I tried my hand at my own plated dessert on Saturday for the ward talent show. I had some premade chocolate cups that were leftover from the For The Love of Chocolate Foundation’s Annual Gala that I volunteered at and so I knew I wanted to try something with those. And of course, what better place to showcase my pastry making talent than at the talent show? ;) They didn’t actually turn out quite the way I’d expected visually, I would have liked it better if the cups had been more oval shaped and shallower, but they sure tasted good! They were a hit last night and I got lots of compliments. *warm fuzzies* I filled the cups with raspberry mousse (I found the recipe HERE – and it was super easy, if you’re feeling brave, you should try it…it would be AMAZING with fresh raspberries) and then topped it with homemade whipped cream and put some chocolate candies (also leftover from the Gala) on top. nom nom nom…

I also made some (that are not pictured) with hazelnut ice cream in them with the whipped cream and schtuff – I had leftovers from plated dessert class and I LOVED being able to get rid of some of this stuff! Then I just filled some cups with the chocolate candies and topped with whipped cream once I ran out of mousse and ice cream. It still worked…and I wanted to use more cups…I still have about half a box left of them…

I have a couple pictures from the talent show…but they came out all dark and blurry. Sorry. Otherwise I’d show you. But I didn’t do anything on stage and John was the MC (and kind of in charge of the activity). Oh, here’s one that might work:
Eh, still pretty blurry, but you get the idea. It was good fun, we had some instruments and singing and some very fun valentine poem readings and I think it went really well!

This next week we start chocolate candies!! Oh man…we’re going to have so much chocolate… ;)   

Valentine’s, Baking, and the Epic Cake Pop FAIL

Okay, so maybe the cake pops weren’t so bad. You be the judge ;)

I hope you all had a lovely Valentine’s Day. We celebrated Valentine’s on Saturday, since Monday is, quite honestly, a lame day to have a celebration. ;) I’ll get to that later. During the day on Saturday, however, John had Klondike with the Boy Scouts and was gone most of the day. Don’t be sad though, because I went to see my crazy aunt Michelle and we did some Valentine’s baking! So we both stayed busy until our night out :)

At Michelle’s we had a pretty ambitious to do list:

• Decorate Sugar Cookies
• Homemade Oreos
• Oreo Truffles
• Cake Pops

I had brought the cookies, so I started with those. I’m also very proud of myself, the ONE HANDED WONDER!!!!!! Hee hee. I got all the royal icing done and frosted our cookies. I was going for a ‘conversation hearts’ look:
We then had to wait for them to dry before decorating. We finished up the homemade oreos and covered them in sprinkles to make them more festive :)
MmmM those look tasty. THEN came the crazy chocolate dipping. Michelle had made some oreo truffles, so we dipped them in white candy melts and then decorated them in black candy melts. The dipping was quite the adventure! Michelle and cousin Makenzie hard at work…
Thanks to cousin Logan for snapping pictures of us :)
Once those had set, we did a fancy little drizzle on them :)
See? Faaaaancy :) After they set we broke off excess and put them in mini cupcake liners. So pretty!
  
By the time we had finished those, we molded our cake pops and I finished up the cookies. I got these AWESOME edible ink pens and they were PERFECT for making conversation heart cookies!! I think they make for a really easy project if someone wanted to try royal icing for the first time. Cute, huh? I LOVE THEM! hee hee I thought “facebk me” was clever ;) These we made for someone as a joke. They’re for my uncle James. yeah, if you’re related to me, you get the one on the left now, doncha? ;) hee hee

THEN came the cake pop fiasco. Michelle would like me to point out that these were NOT easy. And she thinks you should NOT try these at home. But that’s her opinion, not mine ;) I think i’d still give it another go. But stick with a simpler shape next time. Because we tried to make owls. Because Michelle and Makenzie are obsessed with owls. So between the strangely shaped owl bodies (I was molding them. with one hand) and then the chocolate chip ears falling off when they were getting dipped in chocolate, and then the excess chocolate dripping off of the owls once they were dipped and on their stick…and losing one or two to the depths of the chocolate pot…well…let’s just say when I look at our little owls, I get a very strong urge to laugh hysterically. ;)
See what I mean?
This one is my favorite. Hands down. One of his ears fell of while he was taking a dip and then the other somehow moved to the center of his head. And his facial features were put on in somewhat of a rush. He looks ridiculous. ;) “why are you looking at me like that?”
This one comes in close second. Apparently his chocolate coating wasn’t finished dripping when his beak and feet went on. oops.
 
So we still had lots of fun with our deformed little owls. But I don’t know if I’ll be doing those ones again ;)

When we finished up we packaged our yummy goodies and I headed home. Because I had a hot date that night! :)


John and I went to dinner at a place called 100 South not too far from our apartment. I was really excited because on Friday nights getting off the train I can smell the yumminess coming from there and I’d also found a gift certificate for us to use on restaurant.com. We had a very nice dinner, except for when they gave John the wrong order and we found out that our gift certificate wasn’t good for holidays and that Saturday was considered a holiday for Valentines. Oops. Thankfully, John still liked the shrimp he got instead of the Mahi-Mahi he ordered. And we’ll have to go again when we can use our gift certificate. Oh darn. At least then John can get his Mahi-Mahi ;) We also exchanged gifts at the restaurant during dinner. I made John some fun bumper stickers reflecting his love for surfing and mountain biking using vinyl and my make the cut software (MAN I love that stuff!!!)

And John gave me a beautiful hand stamped necklace with our names on it with a heart charm. It’s gorgeous and I love it!

I sure do love him! So, did everyone have a good Valentine’s day?