Nibby mint meltaways

The final piece for my last course assignment had to either be a cream-free truffle or a meltaway. I love meltaways and had never made them, so settled on those. The formula for a meltaway is 2 parts chocolate and one part coconut oil, plus an oil-based flavoring if desired.

Inclusions generally aren't used in meltaways, as they can distract from the silky-smooth melty sensation. But I decided to use cocoa nibs in a mint meltaway base. I enrobed them in a dark milk chocolate and topped them with some cocoa nibs I made myself by chopping up some whole cocoa beans with my trusty chef knife. I had some prepackaged Scharffen Berger nibs, but they had gotten heated up in shipping and the cocoa butter had risen out, settled on the surface and then hardened up again, giving the nibs with an unsightly bloom. These cocoa beans, which are raw and dried rather than roasted, have a deep cocoa flavor with a bright, acidic overtone. Plus, they're gorgeous and without bloom. They cracked apart easily with hardly any pressure from the knife.

I started my meltaway batch by chopping 12 ounces of milk chocolate. Then I measured out 4 ounces of coconut oil and melted it. Next I melted the chocolate to 120 degrees F, let the coconut oil cool to 120 degrees, combined them and added an eighth of a teaspoon of mint oil. Then I added the prepackaged nibs (I did it old-school, judging by sight and feel the correct ratio of nibs to meltaway base). I mixed it all thoroughly, then turned it out onto my slab. Chocolate mixed with coconut oil is extremely fluid. I could barely keep this batch from running off the slab, and I had to table it very quickly and deftly to temper the mass so it would set up properly. Once I got the mass in temper, I scraped it off the slab and into a bowl, then poured it into a frame set up on a silicone mat on my other slab. I cleaned everything up and started another batch of passionfruit caramels, and after an hour had gone by I checked the meltaway to see if it was setting. No dice. After another hour had passed without sign of much crystallization, I picked up the whole setup, slab frame and all, and took it downstairs. Our basement is wine-cellar cool -- an ideal spot for candy setting and storage. Soon the batch had set up nice and firm. It was easy to cut, and then I got to practice my dipping technique. I feel much more comfortable now with my pieces. I'm able to set them onto parchment, move them slightly forward to prevent a foot from forming, then swipe the fork out without leaving behind the dreaded vampire-fang points of chocolate to mar the smooth base. I needed to pause every few pieces to drop a few nibs onto each before the chocolate set up. The big bonus for today is that there was very little humidity, which meant my chocolate was very easy to work with, not sludgy at all. It's been a wonderful chocolatiering weekend.

Fondant, Continued

The loss of my lemon fondants irked me, so tonight after dinner out with some friends, I whisked the rest of the basic fondant batch into the microwave, heated it to 160 F, added a tablespoon of blood orange concentrate, a teaspoon of grand marnier, and a half teaspoon of grated orange peel. Stirred well, spooned it onto waxed paper atop my slabs, and let it set up. Tomorrow they'll get a coating of bittersweet. These are miles better than the lemon basil attempt from earlier today. I'm still not a fondant convert. The super-saturated sweetness of fondant takes the purest of flavors and Disneys them up. Orange is no longer tangy, it's Tang (tm). Not that there's anything wrong with Tang, or Disney for that part, says the blogger who doesn't want to be sued. But it's not a flavor I'm looking for in my candies. Still, I'm counting these as a win because they are pretty, and they are tasty.

Lemon and Sweet Basil Fondant

I finally made a (nearly) successful fondant. I don't have much luck, generally, with sugar work, and so my fondant assignment has been a challenge. Last night I made up the first batch and it got a few degrees to warm. Result: Hot Glue Hell. The batch was so sticky I couldn't work it. So I threw it out and started again. I was up until 12:30 a.m. working the fondant on my slab to get it crystallized enough. Then I let it sit overnight, mixed it with lemon juice, lemon zest, and a little fresh sweet basil. I added several drops of lemon essential oil, stirred and tasted. It was really nice! Very lemony with just a little zing of basil. Then I decided to try balancing the sweet lemony taste with a drop of sweet basil essential oil. The feeder in the bottle top was too generous and before I knew it my one drop turned into three, overbalancing the batch toward the herbal notes. I decided to go ahead and make up the molds, to see if the taste combination with chocolate would save the batch, but no luck. I made the most beautiful chocolates of my life, but threw them away after they'd had their photo opp. I will keep the recipe, sans the basil essential oil.

Gianduja with handmade placed decorations

Gianduja is tricky business for gianduja beginners. It lures you in with "I'm so easy" and then makes you work for it. Work for it I did, and after some struggle I met with success: cashew giandjua (a combination of cashew butter and milk chocolate) covered in perfectly tempered semisweet chocolate (it looks a bit matte here but that's just the lighting. Honest.) and topped with little moon-shaped handmade white chocolate placements.

I started with 350 grams of milk chocolate and 200 grams or so of cashew butter, melted both and mixed them together, then dunked a teaspoon and did a taste test. Nicely balanced nut and butter flavors and textures. Also: Yummy. So I poured the mass onto my slab and moved it around with my spatulas until it started thickening up a bit. Then I did a quick test. It didn't set up. Pooh. So I increased the chocolate by a 150 grams and tempered it on the slab, which took forever because of the fat from the cashew butter. By that time was ready for dinner so I said "screw it," threw the tempered mass into the rulers on the slab and let it set. A couple of hours later I came back to a slab that was so sturdy I could have built a little house on top of it. It was nothing you'd want to cover in semisweet and bite into. I muttered curses, covered the thing up with plastic wrap, and left it overnight to sleep by itself and think about what it had done wrong.

The next morning I melted it down with 100 grams more cashew butter, tempered it again on the slab, put it back into the rulers, and let it set while I worked. The result: Perfectly smooth gianduja that was also firm enough to cut, enrobe, and then top with my little moons and discs (see previous post). The third out of five efforts for my final assignment can now be marked as satisfied. Additional note: I topped a finished gianduja with some cinnamon and tried it out. Tasty! I'll add this variation to my next recipe.

Embellishments

For part of my assignment, I have to finish a chocolate with a "placed decoration" of my choice. So I decided to make discs using a rubber stencil, a transfer sheet, and white chocolate. I'm no big fan of white chocolate, particularly in candy centers. But it's good for dramatic enrobing of dark centers, and  it can be used to make decorations, so I keep it around. The trick is to get the best quality stuff you can afford; the cheap stuff is ghastly. I gathered my ingredients (white chocolate, cocoa butter) and supplies (bowls, spatulas, transfer sheet, rubber stencil, jelly roll pan, bench scrapers, parchment, and both marble slabs), put my hair back under my wacky chocolatiering hat, washed my hands, and set to work.

For this exercise, I decided I'd better thin out the couverture a bit. White chocolate can be vexingly thick and difficult to work with. So I fished out a few ounces of cocoa butter and nuked away until it was liquid. Then I melted the white chocolate and mixed in the heated cocoa butter until the chocolate was the consistency I wanted. I set the cocoa butter aside to be re-tempered and stored, and then I tempered the white chocolate on my slab.

While the chocolate was melting, I placed the transfer sheet, design side up, onto my marble. On top of that I placed my circle stencil mat. Then I poured the tempered chocolate over this set-up, spread it evenly, tapped out the bubbles, and waited for it to set up enough to scrape down. Learning the proper timing on this takes practice, as evidenced by the fact that I didn't do it quite right this first time. I scraped, and some of the chocolate came away from the circles I was trying to create. I'm not sure if this is because I hadn't let the couverture set up enough, or because I let it set up too much. I'll need to investigate. At any rate, I peeled off the stencil and after the chocolate had set, I saw that many of the little discs came out well enough to use for my assignment. Some were raggedy-edged, and I cut them down into sickle moons. If I want to do this on purpose next time, I'll remember to use my circle cutter when the chocolate hasn't fully set. Otherwise, it cracks and you lose most of your hard work.

Notes for next time: Thin the white chocolate more; figure out the correct timing for scraping down the stencil.

Neglectful me.

I broke a promise a couple of posts ago: I did not post the results of my butter ganache experiment. The reason I didn't do this is because the experiment tanked. Why I tried making a white chocolate ganache I can't tell you. I hate white chocolate and so does Bob. But all my chocolate-making reading got me fired up and I was convinced I could make an intense, fruity, zingy butter ganache out of white chocolate. I ended up garbage-disposalling a good pound and a half of white-peach and sweet basil butter ganache, which made my sink smell all fruity and delicious. I was black-hearted and mean-spirited over this development for a good half a day. Then I decided to try the same flavor idea but with a sugar system (fondant) as the base rather than a fat system (ganache). So I tried making peach-basil fondant using reduced peach puree infused with fresh basil. I got something that tasted very sweet but not so peachy. More candy down the garbage disposal. More mopey fuming. I'm now officially determined to create a peach-and-basil-centered chocolate of an intensity that will make people weep with gustatory joy. You watch me. I'll post about it when it happens.

Assignment 2 of 5: Shell-molded ganache

Today I tackled Piece 2 out of the 5 included in my final assignment. I decided to make a ganache and pipe it into a chocolate-lined polycarbonate mold. One of the requirements of my assignment is to use the shell-molding technique, and to decorate the bonbon using at least two colors of chocolate or cocoa butter. I started my recipe design by thinking about the ganache. Bob requested something with coffee, and I adore coffee brewed with cardamom so I landed on that flavor combination for my filling.

I started by heating up some heavy cream and stirring in coffee beans and split cardamom pods. I let that steep for about an hour and a half. While that was happening, I chopped milk chocolate (Peter's) for the ganache and semisweet chocolate (Callabaut) for the shell. Once the cream had infused long enough, I put it through a strainer and added enough whole milk to get it back up to the correct volume. I added a little glucose to inhibit excessive crystallization of the finished ganache, then heated the mixture to boiling, and poured it over the chopped milk chocolate, mixed until everything was nice and smooth, and poured it out into a hotel pan to cool. Next I lined up my decorative supplies: colored cocoa butter (green, black), lustre dust (mahogany), paint brushes. I chose the colors of the cocoa butter and lustre dust because I was hoping for a stone-like appearance for my chocolates. Not that stone has anything to do with coffee or with cardamom, but I'm supposed to be honing my coloring skills so what the hell. I heated up the cocoa butter colors in their squeeze containers, using small heat bursts in the microwave. Once it was just heated enough to be liquid I shook it well. Then I squirted some of the black onto a paper towel, seeing how narrow a line I could make. Argh. The line was more like a series of blobs. I tried again and got a very thick line. Not what I was looking for. I thought "Hm. If I squeeze firmly and move quickly, this might work," so I tried drawing a thin black line down the center of each depression in the mold. Gah! The result was far less than elegant. But it would have to do because I didn't have time to experiment with the air brush system I bought a couple of days ago.

Next I dipped the edge of a stiff brush into the green cocoa butter and flicked it against my nail to spatter droplets into the mold cavities. Fetching. Finally, I picked up the lustre dust with a smaller brush and blew it into each depression so it landed in a fine, sparkly mist. The cocoa butter dried quickly as I tempered the semisweet chocolate. I ladled the chocolate into the mold, careful not to fill it too much, then rattled it on the counter vigorously to remove air bubbles. Next I quickly inverted the mold and let the chocolate pour back out into the tempering bowl. It's a pretty fluid chocolate so it poured out easily. Once the shell had set up, I piped the cooled ganache in, banged the mold on the counter again to get out the air bubbles (good thing these molds are made of thick polycarbonate!) and set the whole shebang aside so the ganche could set up a bit. A mistake: Not scraping the top of the mold enough. See the dried chocolate between the depressions? It ended up haunting me later. With chocolate set aside for the moment, Bob and I teamed up to make fresh fettuccine (Bob's first attempt!) and my late mother's Bolognese sauce, something I'd been craving. This gave us an excuse to open a lovely pinot, which I sipped (Julia Child style) while I finished my chocolate making.

With the piped ganache set sufficiently, I used my marble slab to re-temper the semisweet chocolate and ladled that over the mold, filling over each square of ganache and then tapping (again) to remove air bubbles. It's not that I have a compulsion about this: It's that air is the enemy of shelf life on the inside of molded chocolates, and on the outside it makes unsightly holes in the surface of the candy. Check out the finished product at left -- all that banging away paid off. Anyway, after scraping down the mold I let it sit for 15 minutes to crystallize the chocolate, then stashed it in the refrigerator for another 20 minutes. This contracts the chocolate and makes it easy to unmold. I turned the candies out onto the cutting board, and here is where my untidy mold cleaning, which I mentioned above, told its tale: My chocolates all had skirts on them. Most of them easily chipped off and left clean edges, but it was a far cry from the neat turnouts the pros routinely get. I'm giving these bonbons a B for the following reasons: The chocolate tempered well and came out with a shine, and the ganache is  flavorful and beautifully textured. However, it's a tad runny for comfortable eating, and the decoration of the chocolate is not compelling. Execution of the shell mold was too sloppy, and I could have left the pieces for a little while longer for a smoother turnout. Not a terrible result for an afternoon's effort. And my official taste tester keeps making off with these. He's quite a food critic, so if these candies weren't tasty I wouldn't have to be sneaking aside the ones I promised to mail to a couple of people...