Spent the morning mixing up ganache, an emulsion of cream, cocoa butter, and butter. 12 batches in all: cinnamon-pistachio-white chocolate coffee-milk chocolate blue chanterelle mushroom jasmine tea rose geranium Mandarin orange marmalade goat cheese + honey caramelized banana lemongrass fennel and basil Xocopili, a spiced chocolate from Valrhona and, uh, one flavor I’ve forgotten. The [...]
Well, after losing the temper on the milk chocolate, I lost my temper at my previous thermometer. After some research (and appealing to my Caltech alumni mailing list for help in locating one), I now have a thermometer that is accurate to about 0.5 degrees. I used it to temper the milk chocolate, and lo [...]
Started filling the chocolate molds today, with the milk chocolate ones coming first. It’s been a long time since I tried tempering milk chocolate – normally I work exclusively with dark chocolate – and despite careful attention to temperature, I botched it. I got pretty close, so the molds do release cleanly (well, most of [...]
I took yesterday more-or-less off from chocolate, making only two fruit gels and reboiling the coffee fudge (which had come out grainy). Instead I read through a couple chapters in a book about Web 2.0 technologies, prepping for a phone screen this morning with a company in San Mateo. (Which went very well, thank you [...]
Did up three final batches of fudge today: chocolate ginger coconut lime tequila coffee spice (cinnamon + vanilla) The chocolate ginger came out more or less as I wanted – deep, dark, rich chocolate spiced up with a good healthy dose of ginger, with bits of candied ginger mixed throughout. I took the “classic” fudge [...]
