Pastry Course Day Ten: Chocolate Showpiece
Last Monday the big day had arrived, it was showpiece time!
During the previous weekend I already prepared a few things so on the day all I had to do was combine that to create one showpiece.
In the end I decided to make this simple, dark chocolate and white chocolate which I colored pink. So dark brown and pink were the colors of the day.
I immediately started working on the base of the piece and the ring. I wanted to create 3 layers of chocolate, two brown with a pink layer in-between. Making the dark chocolate layer went fine, tempering the chocolate went well, neatly poured it into the molds and on to tempering the white chocolate. That’s when things went a little pear shaped. My white chocolate was a little too warm and it took a very long time before the chocolate was cooled down and then tempered and colored. As a result, the dark chocolate had already hardened too much and there was a little overflow from the pink chocolate over the brown edge of the dark chocolate instead of it being nice and tight against the brown edge. Too bad, but for a first try, I still thought it looked pretty good.
Due to the considerable amount of time I lost I unfortunately didn’t get around to creating some nice curls as well. At that time however, I had already made so many things, I didn’t mind. For the showpiece I had also made some chocolates which I finished of with piping chocolate so they resembled little cupcakes. I made quite a few, but ended up using only a handful. I also made a shape that was supposed to be at the back of the showpiece, but in the end I thought it would be too crowded.
All in all, I had made quite a lot, but used a little. I thought it looked nice as it was, simple, retro and a little modern.
I’m very happy with the end result. In retrospect, if I did had to add something, it would’ve been the curls, I could have incorporated them, nothing else though!
I really am very happy with the end result. Making this showpiece has really triggered some great new chocolate ideas!
What do you think of the end result?