Pastry Course Day Six: Chocolates!

We started our second module this week, Chocolate. We learned how to temper chocolate.

You ‘temper’ the chocolate in order to crystalize the chocolate. You melt the chocolate to about 45°C. Next you bring down the temperature of the chocolate to about 30°C by adding some unmelted chocolate. When done correctly you can use this chocolate as decoration or to make chocolates.

When you’ve used the tempered chocolate you’ll see that it will get shiny after it has dried and it hardens nicely. When you haven’t temperered the chocolate correctly, you won’t see this nice shine nor will it harden properly. It will lose it’s shape.

It may sound relatively easy, heat up, cool down et voila, you’re good to go, it isn’t that easy though. It turned out to be quite challenging.

In the end we didn’t quite manage to temper the chocolate properly, but we were warned that tempering chocolate wasn’t easy. It isn’t something that always turns out perfect at the first try. I hope I’ll do better next time, because in a few week’s time I have to create a chocolate showpiece!

This week we made a few lovely chocolates, covered chocolate marzipan and chocolate truffles. It may not have looked all that pretty, but it tasted great again!

Next week there won’t be a lesson, I’ll be spending my time looking for some inspiration for a showpiece instead!