Chocolate obsession

Gateau Concorde

IP Lesson IX- Tarte au chocolat noir and gateau concorde

I’m still lagging in my blogging! We made tarte au chocolat noir and gateau concorde last Saturday.

Chocolate desserts are such a great hit aren’t they?

Tarte au chocolat noir is a dark chocolate tart made with chocolate short pastry filled with dark chocolate ganache and decorated with raspberries. I think this recipe is one of the best that I’ve tried. It’s rich, not overly sweet. Dark chocolate lovers will adore this one!

The chocolate short pastry is made with cocoa powder, icing sugar, butter and it’s a much more delicate dough compared to the pate sucree (sweet pastry) that we have been making. Even after resting the dough (like all other pastry doughs) for twenty minutes, it still tears really easily so we had to handle it with care.

The chocolate filling is pretty easy to make. The key to getting a great tarte au chocolat noir (apart from using good chocolate couverture) is to give it plenty of attention. By attention, I mean when you put them in the oven, you need to make sure that the filling doesn’t bubble and boil if not you wouldn’t have a nice smooth surface.

The Gateau Concorde was a joy to make. It is basically chocolate meringue discs layered with chocolate mousse and decorated with chocolate meringue tubes. We made French meringue for this purpose and bake the meringues at a low temperature for about 1.5 hours to dry them out. This results in a crispy meringue that simply cracks in your mouth.

The Gateau Concorde is a little too sweet for my liking! Yes, even for a sweet tooth like me. The chocolate mousse is really perfect on its own. Rich, creamy and really chocolatey. The meringues were really too sweet. If you know the amount of sugar that actually goes into this meringue, you probably will think twice about eating it!

I’m heading off for a picnic in Royal Botanic gardens now. Shall blog about this week’s classes soon. I promise.

For now, I’ll leave you with the tarte au chocolate noir recipe because it’s simply fantastic!

Tarte Aux Chocolat Noir
(Recipe from Le Cordon Bleu)

Chocolate Short Pastry

280g Bakers Flour

200g butter

50g cocoa powder

120g pure icing sugar

2 egg yolks

pinch of salt

Sieve dry ingredients, rub in butter till crumbly.

Add egg yolks and incoporate. Do not overwork the dough!

Roll the dough out into the size of your palm and flattened it. Leave it in the fridge to rest for about 20 minutes.

After resting the dough, roll it out to about 3mm thickness, line it on a tart dish. At this point, you can give your dough more rest if you wish to. If not blind bake the tart at about 180 degrees for about 15-20 minutes, until it is cooked.

Tart Filling

80ml Milk

200ml cream

200g Dark Couverture

1 Egg, beaten

Boil milk and cream.

Pour over chocolate pieces (you will need to chop up your chocolate if it comes in a block) and stir to melt it.

Add egg and stir till well combined.

Pour into tart mould and bake at 150 C till set.

When it sets, it wouldn’t be wobbly if you shake it. Do not overbake the chocolate tart till the chocolate filling is bubbling/boiling. Leave the tart in the tart dish for awhile before removing it to cool the tart in the fridge.

Decorate with fresh raspberries and icing sugar.

Fear no more...

I have overcame my fear of tempering chocolates..

That's enough reason to celebrate!

[reading] Chloe Dutre-Roussel's The Chocolate Connoisser

You can't stop at one

My truffle tower

IP Lesson VI- Chocolate Croquembouche

A croquembouche is a traditional French wedding cake or sometimes it’s used for christening. Its name ‘Croque en Bouche’ means ‘crunch/crackling in the mouth’ in French. The original croquembouche is a cone made with profiteroles filled with crème patisserie coated with caramel (thus, giving it the crunch when you bite into it). It is decorated with spun caramel, almonds or flowers. Can you imagine such a lovely showpiece? I would really want to make one for my wedding. That’s just one frivolous reason why I’m taking this course at Le Cordon Bleu now!

Before I start rambling on about the croquembouche and my wedding, I should get back to the chocolate croquembouche proper. A chocolate croquembouche is a modern interpretation of the French classic. Imagine a cone made from chocolate truffles. I believe that the chocolate croquembouche is heaven for some of you.

What we did was to make chocolate ganaches (with alcohol like kirsch, Malibu, rum) and coat them with tempered chocolate (Dark, milk and white). And all we had to do is to ‘glue’ them together with chocolate.

The joy of building your own truffle tower (that’s what I like to call it) is incredibly immense! It’s such a showpiece you know what I mean. My truffle tower was made from about 80-90 chocolate truffles.

What do you think of that as a birthday cake? You wouldn’t even need to cut into it? All your friends can just pull out a truffle each to munch on. The only problem with it is that you probably need a really tall tower because no one can just stop at a one.

What's there not to love about chocolates?

Chocolate pieces

IP Lesson V: More Chocolates


It was time to coat our pralines and Vienna almonds.

Tempered dark chocolate was used to enrobe these yummy goodies before we decorated them with little specks of crystallized lavender. I really like purple on chocolate. it makes the chocolate pieces look gorgeous!

I thought this would be pretty simple but it isn’t that easy to coat the pieces nicely all round without getting “feet” around the bottom of the chocolate pieces.

I finally realised why handmade chocolates are so expensive. This is a tedious process, really. A few of us only got it right after a couple of attempts which meant that we had more than a couple of ugly but great tasting chocolates!

The best way to do it is to use two dipping forks.

Put the square/diamond-shaped praline pieces into your tempered dark chocolate with a dipping fork. Lift the praline from the chocolate pool and proceed to tap the dipping fork against the edge of the bowl (about 20 times) to knock out the excess chocolate. Then gently place the chocolate coated praline onto a piece of silicon (baking) paper. Use the other (clean) dipping fork to push the praline piece away to remove any feet that remains.

And there you have it. To have pretty chocolate pieces, you would need to get your chocolate properly tempered which isn’t the same as melting chocolate really. Tempering chocolate is a process that stabilizes the structure of the cocoa solids in chocolate. This method is essential for moulded or dipping chocolates which would allow the chocolate to set quickly, to give it shine and a clean snap.

And so we had a plateful of little chocolate pieces to take home. I really had to resist them.
Now, name me a person who doesn't like chocolates?

I can't, honestly. What about you?


***


Tempering chocolates 101:
(My attempt at explaining something really complicated)

The method that produces consistent good results is the tabling/marbling method.
Start off with dark chocolate couverture. Put the chocolate pieces into a bain marie and to melt the chocolate at 45-50 deg celcius.

Then pour 2/3 of this melted chocolate onto a cool marble surface and use a metal scrapper to manipulate the chocolate back and forth to cool the chocolate. You should manipulate the chocolate till the temperature falls to 27-29 degree celcius.

By this time, the chocolate on the marble surface would have thickened and have lost some of its glossiness. At this point, transfer the chocolate from the marble surface into the bowl containing the remaining 1/3.

Stir to combine both the chocolates till you get a temperature of 31-32 degrees celcius. At this stage, your chocolate is tempered and it should be glossy and shiny and sets quickly

Chocolate is our friend..indeed

IP Lesson IV: Pralines, fudge, ganache


It’s back to a week of chocolates.

After my chocolate disaster in Basic, I was feeling a tad apprehensive about class this week.

That sense of apprenhension was kind of eased when I woke up on Sunday morning to find myself in poodles of laughter.

This was what I saw written on the mirror in my bathroom:

“Don’t worry, Joanna…Chocolate is our friend. Once we are done with them, we will eat them!”

To sum up this week, I'm glad to say that the week did not end up in disaster.

After we conquered the chocolates, we ate them, very willingly.

***

We spent Thursday class preparing a variety of ganaches to be used for the chocolate truffles for Saturday's class- Dark chocolate with rum, dark chocolate with kirsch, milk chocolate (omitting the caradamon pods), white chocolate with Malibu.

Chocolate is great. Even better when it comes with alcohol.

Preparing the ganaches is an easy task; simply put a pot of cream to a solid boil before pouring the boiled cream over the chopped couverture pieces, stirring till smooth and incorporated and lastly adding in the alcohol/and butter.

We also made pralines and white chocolate fudge. Fudge is such an English thing. You’ll find shops dotted around the countryside specializing in fudge alone.

As for me, I can never understanding people’s fascination for fudge. It’s far too saccharine sweet for me. The funny thing is that Chef K*aren, who’s an English, doesn’t like fudge either.

Which brings us back to question why we are making fudge at all, white chocolate fudge at that! Fudge is made from cooking sugar, glucose and cream in a pot. You will boil it till it bubbles and thickens (Till about 110 deg celcius). Then, you take it off the heat and add in the white chocolates and stir it quickly before adding a little of butter. That explains why it is so sweet.

Pralines, on the other hand, is another story altogether. My love for pralines begins with my love for all things nuts. Since pralines is quite simply hazelnut and milk chocolate, what’s there not to love.

We made Vienna almonds too- those caramelized almonds..those beautiful almonds enrobed with a caramel coating with dotted flavours from the vanilla bean. It is so lovely that I can eat a bag of those and feel guilty only after I am done with them.

The ability to make caramel comes from the understanding of how sugar cooks and the different stages of cooked syrup (Soft ball, hard ball, soft crack, hard crack and then caramel).For me, today's lesson today cleared up some of the mystery surronding it.

Sugar work is serious business and we will be learning more and working more with sugar when we reach Superior stage. That will be the time when we will be getting our hands dirty (and hopefully not burnt) moulding sugar to create showpieces.

Class was pretty fun. We worked in teams which made class a lot more fun and less stressful. Working in teams did help a lot in terms of completion of the tasks. After all, working in the kitchen, like any other industry, is very much about team work.

Life's a box of chocolates

Chocolate pralines & florentines

Lesson X, XI, XII- Chocolates

Everybody loves chocolate in some form or another.

Be it chocolate desserts like the chocolate tart, chocolate éclairs or just plain chocolates- dark, milk, white ( well, I wouldn’t even consider white chocolate as chocolate. I shall leave this discussion for another day), or hot chocolate on a cold winter’s day.

Many consider chocolates as one of their comfort foods. (it does release endorphins which brings people on a “choco-high”)

Many crave for chocolate from time to time. (Maybe more so for my sister, my dad and I)

So this week’s lessons on chocolates make me hang in great anticipation and expectations.

Over the course of the three days at school, I’ve learnt that while chocolates are good to eat (make that GREAT to eat), they aren’t fun to work with. Before you get the wrong idea, I must clarify: Chocolate-making is fun; however, chocolates can be temperamental, real temperamental which makes it hard to handle. Maybe that’s how the term “tempering chocolates” came about.

Tempering chocolate is an essential step which we learnt over the few days. In short, tempering gives chocolates its perfect texture, its sheen and shiny luster. This step is crucial in chocolate making and the reason why you are paying so much for fine chocolates. It is also this very step that gave me my soiled uniform (imagine my bleached-white coat full of brown chocolate stains. Not yummy at all.)

And did I mention that chocolates are temperamental creatures? I think I already did but just to reinforce that point. First thing to remember, water is an enemy of chocolate so avoid water, even the tiniest drop of water, at all cost!

Next thing to remember is to keep to the precision of temperatures of the three step process of making chocolates. First, heating and melting the chocolate (to 45 degrees Celsius for dark), tempering the chocolate (lowering the temperature to 27 degrees Celsius) and then reheating the chocolate (to 32.5 degree Celsius). By the end of this process, your chocolate should set really easily and have a nice and glossy sheen.

If it doesn’t, then good luck to you, you will have to restart the entire process. See what I mean by temperamental.

On Thursday, we prepared the ganache (think dark chocolate infused with cointreau, milk chocolate with coffee, white chocolate with wattleseed, milk chocolate with cinnamon) for our pralines. Lovely stuff. We even ate some of the couverture during class. (but by the second day, we were quite sick of chocolate.)

We also tempered chocolate and put them into moulded structures. The first one I did was “Miss Bunny”. Chef made it sound easy to mould them.. just brush the moulds with the tempered chocolate and then pour the chocolate in the moulds and knock out the excess. Trust me, while it is easy to do that, it isn’t easy to get a perfect one.
As a result of my impatient self, I quickly brushed the moulds (apparently not thorough enough), poured in the chocolate and knock out the excess and ended up with a bunny with slight air bubbles here and there and tiny holes everywhere. Also, there was slight bloom on the bunny, which means I might have heated the chocolate a little too hot. Not good at all.

“Mr Santa” was my second attempt and this time, I kept chanting to myself “be patient, be patient, be patient”. The chanting worked. For I did every step with more care and precaution than I could muster; brushing “Mr Santa” and all the tiny nooks and crannies. “Mr Santa” must be pretty. No holes..no air bubbles,” I said to myself as I worked at it gingerly.

And so “Mr Santa” turned out way better.

I might have gotten a little complacent by the second lesson. I thought to myself, “Well, haven’t we already done tempering yesterday? This will be a piece of cake and moulding them, shouldn’t be too hard right.”

Wrong. Tempering was a mess. I shan’t get into the details.
Moulding was a bigger mess. I forgot all about my resolution to be more patient and taking it one step at a time without rushing. It was hard to coat the chocolate evenly with the moulds; it was a tedious process to keep coating and then setting the chocolate. I hate to say this but both my attempts at the chocolate pralines were quite a disaster.

Our last lesson on chocolate was on Florentines. A sweet biscuit made with all the goodies (flaked almonds, orange peels, cut glace cherries, honey and glucose to bind them together). On top of that, it was coated was dark chocolate with a swirl design. I love this biscuit for it has my favourite ingredients in it (almonds and dark chocolate).

My Florentines were a little too browned from over baking but other than that it was quite fine. We also made chocolate cigars- those tube-like chocolate garnishing that you often see on cakes.

The week ended once again almost in a flash, too quickly for my liking.
But if there is just one thing that I have learnt this week is patience and more patience.