Dipping and Flowers

This semester is almost over! One more week and it'll be winter break. Is everyone enjoying this seriously cold winter? :)

This week we moved onto enrobing chocolates. Enrobing is like the opposite of moulded chocolates. Instead of filling a cavity of chocolate, you take the filling and dip it in chocolate. It is actually pretty tricky to dip the bonbon and put it down without getting a "foot" of chocolate.

Making a transfer sheet to decorate my chocolates

Dipping a cherry marzipan filling

Here are some pictures of a method of tempering called tabling, or marbling. It is much faster than the usual seeding method, but requires a cold surface such as marble. Wood or steel tables heat up too fast and hold the heat. Tabling involves melting all your chocolate to 45C then pouring 2/3 of it onto marble. Using a palette knife or paint scraper, you spread the chocolate out then scrap it all back into the center. Continue this until the chocolate starts to get thick. Scrap all the chocolate back into the bowl with the remaining 1/3 and when stirred together, the resulting chocolate should be, ideally, at its proper working temperature. Tabling can be a bit messy, but I like it for its speed. And its a lot of fun.

Spread

Scrape

The final in this class is to make a chocolate box and 12 chocolates to fill the box. We had the chance to practice the chocolate box this past week. The box itself is fairly simple - cut out the top and bottom pieces then wrap a piece of chocolate covered acetate around the base to create the walls. I found it hard to make the petals uniform and nice but I think it turned out fairly well. Just after taking this picture, I broke off a few petals trying to package it. Frustrating!

So fragile!

In the upcoming week we'll finish up enrobing fillings and other confections as well as make our chocolate boxes. This time, I'll be sure to be more careful with my flower. I do not want to be attempting to mend it on the fly. :P

So many chocolates!