Le Chocolat

The week before Thanksgiving was tough because we only had three days to do anything.  Since the am class and the pm class have different schedules so that chefs do not have to teach both in the morning and in the night, all the projects are week long schedules.  So we had to fit a week's worth of work into three days.  Fortunately some of the stuff was pretty simple and Chef Scott did some for us "in his spare time" which he has none since he is constantly teaching or practicing for the World Pastry Competition (in July....crazy I know.)  So it was a rushed week but we were able to finish.  I was not very excited about working with chocolate as I am actually not a fan of chocolate, especially dark and white chocolate which is all we worked with.  We learned how to temper chocolate.  Basically if you melt chocolate and then try to pipe or use it, it will never harden.  You have to melt the chocolate to a certain temperature to melt down certain crystals, then you have to cool the chocolate  a little so that different crystals form which harden up at room temperature.  Also interesting fact...when chocolate has a white powder on it, it actually hasn't gone bad.  You can still use it.  All that has happened is that it is out of temper and the cocoa butter or solids have separated from the chocolate.  If it is a candy bar- EAT IT!! If it is chocolate that you want to use for a baking purpose, retemper the chocolate and it is perfectly good.  I can't image how much money I have wasted by throwing away perfectly good chocolate.  It saddens me. 

So we did a few different things this week.  We made a half sphere ball of chocolate to build the chocolate pieces on.  Another cool thing is that a hollow sphere is actually stronger than a full sphere because when the chocolate is moved much, the shock is displaced in the space whereas when it is solid, the force has no where to go so it breaks the chocolate to get out and be released.  Then we made a butterfly by casting (or pouring) chocolate onto plexiglass and then cutting out a butterfly in dark chocolate and then again in white chocolate but this time cutting out the center pieces.  Chocolate is one of the best glues for anything cake related and so you put things together just by adding a bit of chocolate in between.  Then we made the flower which is the most simple thing ever.  Basically you take a half hollow sphere to build on.  Then you take two chocolate
candies and glue them together and them dip it in yellow cocoa butter.  From there, you just take a small pointed knife, dip it in the chocolate, and make the leaves.  There is a special way of using the knife so that there is a vein going down the petal which makes it really realistic.  However, being as it is so simple, if I tell you this technique, I wouldn't be very skilled anymore.  Then you just take the petals, dip them in chocolate, and attach to the half hollow sphere.  Crazy simple but such a cool look.  Then we made the leaves and the stems.  This is all white chocolate and colored cocoa butter which is blended up until it forms a paste which you can them form into whatever you want really and it hardens completely.

     Earlier in the day my friend Alex who is from Chicago but lived with me in Australia came to tour my school.  Chef Scott was teaching both the morning and evening class and doing chocolate in both.  We sat in during his demonstration of other cool chocolate techniques.  I was the first to finish my cake so I was able to work on a few of these and was very excited about them.  It's amazing how simple some of this stuff is but just how cool it looks.  My favorite were the chocolate plaques which look awesome.  What you do is take colored cocoa butter and brush it onto acetate then pour chocolate on top.  The fats in both are attracted to each other and so the cocoa butter sticks to the chocolate.  You are supposed to cut it into shapes while it is waiting to harden but I forgot so I had to crack mine once it hardened all the way.  So cool.  And then the sad tale...since I was leaving for the airport right after class, I couldn't take my whole cake with my so I was going to take apart each chocolate part and put it in my locker.  So I asked Chef Scott how to take it apart my

chocolate piece since its all glued together and so he came over and pulled it off the cake, flipped it upside down, and smashed all of it into pieces.  I literally shrieked while everyone else gasped and I just looked at him like he was crazy.  And all he said was something like this, "Isn't it great destroying these showpieces."  And I responded with, "When you've done 1000 of them, sure its fun.  But when this is the first and only one you've ever made....not so fun."  Very sad, but I do have plenty of pictures.
Then I got to go home and have a wonderful Thanksgiving with the fam.  We skyped with Sally and ate a wonderful meal with some great pies.  It was a perfect holiday and then I went shopping on Black Friday and got about 15 DVDs.  Thanks fam for a great break!