Making chocolate
Do you have any friends that have everything they need and you don't know what to get for them?
Well I have one of those friends and we have sort of made a pact not to buy each other stuff. He has a house full of stuff and I just unloaded a house full of stuff. We both share a love of all things food and he has taken the year long culinary program at George Brown College. So we now try and find food related things to do for our birthdays. For my last birthday in May he got me a gift certificate to go to a chocolate making class. He was out of town and then I had to cancel one because I was out of town so we finally got a chance to go to the class last night. We both had a very stressful day so it was a nice diversion. Although it was about 100 degrees in there it was still fun.
The chocolate making class that we attended was held at the Mad Bean Coffee house on Eglinton Ave. West in Toronto. And it was presented by Chocolate Tales.
I didn't learn too many new things that I haven't learned from watching people like Jaques Torres the New York City chocolate master on tv. I have also taken cake decorating courses and used to many years ago attempt to make chocolates to give as gifts. I have also made chocolate truffles over the years. But I think some of it was new for my friend and it was just a fun thing to do together.
It was really more of a chocolate decorating, rolling and finishing class. The instructor had already prepped melted chocolate, ganache sheets for us to cut and roll and white chocolate to decorate.
The photo above are the chocolates I decorated, dipped and rolled.
We sampled melted chocolate with added ginger, cinnamon and cayenne.
After we finished decorating the chocolates and they were set we were then given some packaging supplies so that we could pack up our chocolates in little gift boxes. If you love chocolate this might be a fun thing to do with a bunch of your friends.
I'm impressed Linda. I didn't know you knew about chocolate making. When I took my advanced chocolate confections class at GBC, I found it stressful because, we were dealing with dark chocolate, milk and white and they each have different tempering temperatures. The instructor was also very harsh with criticism and if we had air bubbles or "feet" she would dock us grades. The worst was when our chocolate "bloomed" and developed a greying fuzzy surface. Still edible but not sellable. As much as I love eating chocolate, I'd rather buy it than make it.
ReplyDeleteWe didn't even temper or prep the chocolate.. we just cut it, rolled it and decorated it. I have melted down chocolates before and made ganache for truffles on my own before... watched a lot of food network and have seen lots of things on chocolate. and I would rather buy it than make it too. eating good chocolate is even better.
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