Chocolate Projects: Fairy Tales

This week I posted on Food 2 about our final chocolate projects. You should check it out there! Our theme was fairy tales, and I chose my favorite fairy tale - Little Red Riding Hood. My piece weighed about two and a half pounds and was made entirely out of chocolate. There were some challenging moments during the course of the project, but overall, it came out pretty close to how I envisioned it.


Initially, I had wanted to make the characters out of modeling chocolate (it's pliable like clay), but Chef Peter called that a cop out. Using various molds and piping techniques, I managed to make Red and the Wolf entirely out of solid chocolate. The only elements that were made out of modeling chocolate were the roof shingles, Red's hair, quilt, cape, and the pillow "cases." I hand-painted the quilt and pillows using luster dust mixed with vodka.


This project was a big deal for me because like I said in my Food 2 post, I had built up a lot of anticipation for this assignment. Plus, chocolate was never really my strength during Level 2, so I felt like this was a particular achievement.

Week 28-29 Chocolate II

Week 28 brought the return of the dreaded chocolate unit. I did not enjoy the first chocolate unit - it was messy and tempering chocolate proved to be challenging. Surprisingly, I really enjoyed our second chocolate unit. I now have a feel for the tempering process, and the whole thing went much smoother.

Spiced Caramels

This unit we got to make a bunch of candies - both traditional and some not so much (beer ganache anyone?). In the first unit, we did hand-rolled truffles which have a less uniform look than their molded counterpart - bon bons.

Chocolate-dipped Butter Toffee

Peanut Butter Nougat - Soooooo good!

When I think of bon bons, lazy housewives lounging on the sofa eating them comes to mind. This is probably because whenever my dad would come home from work, a frequent refrain from my mom would be "What do you think I did all day? Lay on the couch and eat bon bons?"

"Paint-splattered" Dulce de Leche Bon Bons

My Glitter-ized Dulce de Leche Bon Bons

Bon bons are great because there's so many different fillings you can make. Almost any flavor can be used. One of the best class days in this unit was when our class had free rein to make a filling of our choice. I made a passion fruit caramel filling and a beer ganache filling. Some of my classmates fillings included caramel apple, tiramisu, wasabi, fig, peanut butter, and so many more. In the locker room after class, the culinary students just descended on the beer ganache bon bons, devouring almost all of them.

Gold=Milk Chocolate Bon Bons with Passion Fruit Caramel
Red= Dark Chocolate with Beer Ganache

Inside the Passion Fruit Bon Bon

In the chocolate unit, we also made our first 2-tiered cake, a chocolate cake with a delicious chocolate raspberry mousse filling, and a chocolate buttercream. Using cocoa butter colors as "paint," we made transfer sheets and poured chocolate over them. When the chocolate was partially set up, we bent the chocolate strip around the cake. It's a pretty cool technique, and the finished cake looked pretty good. The picture's deceiving though - it was way tinier in real life - just a 3" and a 6" cake.

Week 23: Chocolate Candy Stands

Chocolate I feels like it was ages ago (over a month ago!), but I'm just getting to post the pictures of my finished chocolate project now. The task was to create a candy stand, complete with a bowl that held the chocolate candies we made in a theme of our choice. With the start of the summer, to me it seemed like a good idea to go with an under the sea theme. Chef Toni allowed us to use some coloring, and I decided to take full advantage of this. Brown is one of my least favorite colors, so a stand made entirely out of chocolate seemed a little "blah."

Close up of the bottom of my piece

My stand was made up of four white chocolate "waves" that supported the white chocolate shell bowl. Using a couple molds I bought, I made the fish and shells using a copious amount of disco dust and chocolate. Using a new technique Chef Toni showed the class, I also made some glittery chocolate seaweed to attach to the base. The work spanned over two days, and it was a rush to get it done. Despite our relative inexperience working with chocolate and the time crunch, my classmates made some pretty incredible pieces.

Me with my finished chocolate piece after class

Sidenote: You know those cans of compressed air you use to clean out your computer keyboard? We use those to instantly set the chocolate (the air comes out freezing cold). Because of people "huffing" them, the manufacturers have started including a bitter taste to them. In fact, when purchasing my canned air at Target, I even got carded! Unfortunately, with a class of 16 people all spraying these cans, it was inevitable we all got a taste of this truly revolting airstream. Nothing ruins the taste of chocolate faster than an accidental swallow of this air, and those classes had a lot of intermittent bursts of "Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwww."

Display of our finished pieces

Start of Level 2: Weeks 21-22 Chocolate

Chocolate fruit cake with chocolate leaves

Level 2 started with chocolate. I've never been much of a chocolate die-hard, and given the choice between chocolate and vanilla, I would choose vanilla any day. That fact didn't stop me from eating probably pounds of chocolate during the 2 weeks we spent on the first chocolate unit.

Somehow my ID got dipped in chocolate without me realizing

Before we could do anything, we needed to learn about chocolate. We got to try a bunch of different types of chocolate, including a 99% cacao chocolate. You can't even imagine how bitter that was. I used to be a strictly milk and white chocolate person, but in the past couple years, my tastes have changed and I've developed a real appreciation for dark chocolate.

Chocolate Orange Truffles

After learning about the history and manufacturing process of chocolate, it was time to move on to tempering chocolate. Tempering chocolate is the process of melting and cooling chocolate to a certain temperature then creating the proper structure required for chocolate to be hard and strong when it sets. It sounds easy, but it took a while for a lot of us to catch on to the process. And it was really, really messy.


The mess of working with chocolate was the primary reason I disliked it so much. After every class, I would leave totally covered in chocolate. We did get to make some pretty cool things with it though. Our first project was was a box that was entirely made of chocolate and held chocolate orange truffles we hand-dipped. We also made a bow on top, also out of chocolate.

Week 8: More Puff Pastry

Puff pastry continued into last week. I'm starting to get the sense that when it comes to puff pastry, it's a love it or hate it thing for my classmates. I'm firmly in the "love it" category. There's just something soothing to me in all the rhythms of making the dough. That said, I was not a huge fan of a new puff pastry we tackled this week - chocolate puff pastry. It was a huge pain to make, didn't produce as much rise as even the rapide.

On Tuesday, we made poires en cage (pears in cage), conversations, and fruit galettes. The poires en cage looked really cool and were fairly simple to make. We poached the pears in a caramel ginger spice liquid, which was delicious.

Poires en cage

Conversations are a pastry that is made using puff pastry, almond cream, and royal icing. It's all put together and baked. Out of the three desserts from that night, this one was my coworkers' favorite. I tried a bit of it (I'm not allergic to almonds, just hesitant to eat them) and thought it was really sweet. A little bit more than my liking.

Conversations - traditional on the right

A galette is a free form tart, and we used puff pastry to form the base. The fruit compote was made with a combination of cherries, blueberries, plums, and a touch of brandy. Nothing like some liquor to up the ante of breakfast.

Mini galettes

On Thursday, most of us braved the beginning of the snow storm to get to class and make jalousie, pithivier, and tarte tatin. Jalousie, pronounced "jealousy" is a puff pastry dessert made with a layer of almond cream topped with a layer of raspberry jam. It's made to resemble the Venetian blinds a baker always witnessed his neighbor peeking through, spying on his wife to catch her cheating.

Jalousie

Pithivier, also known as king's cake, is made with puff pastry, and frangipane - a mixture of pastry cream and almond cream. Traditionally, this pastry is made hiding a plastic baby inside the cake. I have no clue what the significance is, but I'd be freaked out to find a tiny baby in my dessert. Whoever finds the baby though gets to be king for the day.

No baby in this cake

Tarte tatin is one of my new favorite things to eat. It's so simple - just caramelized apples and puff pastry. With a splash of Calvados. First you caramelize the apples in a skillet using butter and sugar. Once you have a good color to the apples, you throw some Calvados (apple brandy) in the pan to flambe it. I poured a little bit too much in and ended up with a HUGE flame shooting up from the pan. Really, really scary. Fortunately, I still have my eyebrows. After the apples cool, you cover them with puff pastry and put it in the oven to bake. Once the puff is baked through, you take it out of the oven and immediately flip the skillet over to release the tart. All the snow made it impossible to get into work on Friday, so I was trapped in my house with this tart. At the end of Friday, there was no tarte tatin left.

Friday's breakfast, lunch and dinner

On Saturday, we used the chocolate puff pastry we had made the class before. We made and plated some banana tarts. Chef Joseph made some peanut butter ice cream to accompany them, and it was amazing. I'm not a huge banana fan though. It's just something about the texture I don't like.

Banana tart with peanut butter ice cream and chocolate sauce

We also made a chocolate Napoleon strip. The recipe called for only a creme d'or (a fast chocolate mousse) with the chocolate puff pastry, but our instructor felt it was just too much chocolate, so we also used a lightened pastry cream for a contrast of colors and flavors. The end result was really beautiful.

The crowning glory of the week

My 25th Birthday Party

Mini pumpkin cupcakes

On November 17, I turned the age that when I was much younger I considered to be officially "old" - twenty-five. I was not psyched to be passing this age milestone, so I decided to deal with it in my favorite way - plan a big party. With the party to look forward to, I happily started planning all of the details of the party - most notably the desserts.

Center of the top cake tier

I decided I really wanted a birthday cake - like a big birthday cake. I've been really wanting a Wall-E shaped cake, but decided it didn't really fit with the theme I was going for. The color scheme was purple - my favorite color, and I decided to go all out.

Top chocolate cake tier

From the outer space order I did, I used the remaining pumpkin spice batter to make two dozen mini cupcakes in bright purple liners. Once I topped them with cream cheese frosting, I sprinkled them with purple sugar.

Cakes chilling in the refrigerator with the party beverages

The next piece of this was the cake. I baked a 6 inch chocolate cake that I filled with chocolate frosting and chopped Reese's. I then covered it with more chocolate frosting. The 9 inch cake was vanilla bean, frosted and filled with vanilla frosting. After refrigerating both cakes, I covered them in a lavender fondant. The cakes were then refrigerated again. I stacked them using wooden dowels as support in the 9 inch cake. Then I painted the cakes with an edible sparkly paint and wrapped a darker purple ribbon around the bottoms of both cakes.

Sugar cookies set up on the table

I also made some sugar cookies cut into circles. These were iced with royal icing and covered in purple sugar. Everything came out really well and looked really nice set up. The party was as much of a success as the desserts were.

Side view of the table

These Cupcakes Were Out of This World

White chocolate spaceships

Really terrible subject line, I know, but the second order I had last week was for five dozen assorted flavors for a surprise 30th birthday party. The birthday boy is apparently a big fan of all things outerspace related, so I brainstormed with his fiance to come up with cupcakes to reflect this. She was able to find a chocolate mold online of tiny spaceships, and I used this to make white chocolate rockets.

Box of space cupcakes

The flavors of the cupcakes were red velvet, cookie dough, chocolate Oreo, vanilla, and pumpkin spice. On the pumpkin and vanilla, I piped a swirl of dark blue frosting and sprinkled some edible gold glitter and silver dragees over top before putting on the spaceships. I thought these looked pretty cool, although again I had the same issue with the edible glitter migrating all over my face when I accidentally touched it. I looked like Edward stepping into the sun (geeky Twilight reference there...).

Close up of the space cupcakes