Chocolate

Sexy. Unctuous. Sumptuous. Frustrating

To the casual consumer, chocolate is just a sweet (often cloyingly-so) confection that comes in bar form at the convenience store checkout counter. But "the good stuff" (about 10 pounds of which, I brought back to New Hampshire from Vancouver) is just a magic elixir. High end dark chocolate (called couveture) has no milk solids added (check out the ingredients in a candy bar sometime). Ingredients: Cocoa solids. Sugar. Chocolate itself is intensely bitter, so even the "darkest" of chocolate has between 25% and 35% sugar added.

Where's the frustrating part? Chocolate is cocoa solids, cocoa fat + sugar. In order to use it successfully, it must be tempered. This means carefully melting the chocolate (to about 110 degrees F), which melts the sugar crystals. Then it must be brought down to about 75 degrees (this is tough if the kitchen is 80) THEN brought back to about 90 degrees, and kept there, within a degree or two, for all the time you work with it. Chilled too much? It solidifies. Start over. Heated too much? The crystals that formed when bringing the temperature down melt. Start over.

Working between stoves of simmering water, and our individual stations, we would sometimes spent a couple of hours getting the chocolate into temper. The way you check is to dip a small item (like a knife tip) into the liquid, and allow it to dry. If it loses its sheen and sets hard, it's tempered. If not -- start over. We did a lot of "starting over".

The results, however, were amazing. We made truffles (the perfectly round ones actually have poured fillings into pre-formed chocolate shells -- who knew?) with a half dozen different fillings, and pralines (which most people would call simply "chocolates") in another half-dozen or more combinations of shapes and flavors. We made filled pralines as well (where you line plastic molds with a thin layer of chocolate, then add the filling, then flood with chocolate for the base. We sprayed chocolate -- a mixture of melted, temperature couveture and cocoa fat -- using your basic Wagner Power Painter.

Then there was the chocolate art work. Its one thing to make "simple" chocolates and pralines. But we also made a concoction called "modelling paste", which the chocolate is mixed with glucose (corn syrup is a form of glucose) and additional sugar. This gives is some additional strength as well as flexibility -- you can still eat it but it isn't quite as nice.

Once equipped with these "tools" (modeling chocolate, temperating, truffle and praline-making skills) we spent a day putting together a "chocolate showpiece". I was working with Alex and we made a relatively simple bud vase, which was filled with a modeling-paste flour and surrounded by chocolates. This is the hardest part for me -- "go! go be creative!". We did fine.

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