temper, temper!...chocolate that is...

i wonder if that's why they call it tempering. because you need to have a cool, calm temperament... or not much of a bad temper? or maybe you have to be a passionate hot-head... must have something to do with it...because it brings out the secret, hidden temperaments of a person. eh..just a theory, but guess what? i love LOVE tempering chocolate.

it's so scientific! i mean, different types of chocolate have different temperatures to which one must heat it. dark chocolate for example, must be melted and heated to 122 degrees F, cooled to 81 degrees and then warmed up to about 86 degrees in order to be tempered. we made some pretty incredible things too! milk and white chocolate have a slightly different temperature scale.

it's like a dance. like a tango. you heat it up, cool it down, heat it up a little bit. and then you get the payoff of a gorgeous chocolate, with a lovely shiny surface, a little bit of play time during which you can manipulate it to do a variety of things, and a perfect contraction and delicate "snap" which is chocolatese for "yup, i'm perfectly tempered." by the way... i have a deep respect for Mr. Chocolate, Jacques Torres..and a new found understanding for why he is Mr. Chocolate, and why he does what he does. OH, the things i can get obsessed with. what a perfect siren doth chocolate make. and i MUST take a trip to his shop soon and pick up some of my favorites. nope, not much of a sweet tooth, but give me something deep, dark and so chocolatey you can actually taste something foreign and rainforest-ish ... i'm in heaven. add some ginger, or something hot and spicy or something exotic and i will love you forever. (just ask my husband).

but back to tempering in class...

so there is something called the "chocolate belt." the area of the globe on which we live that is the exclusive area from which chocolate comes! 20 degrees both north and south of the equator, in tropical areas is where one will find the three varieties of chocolate producing trees: forastero, criollo, and trinitario. chocolate pods are harvested (BY HAND) from a tree, which can carry as many as 40 at a time! each pod contains up to 50 seeds which must be allowed to ferment and develop that taste, and color and chocolatey smell that i adore so very much. eventually those beans are roasted, add to that some cracking, grinding, mixing, refining, and conching and voila... chocolate!

i took a little photo to show the various stages and components in the life of a piece of chocolate. i bet you never realized exactly what you were putting in your mouth, how much time, love and labor that goes into a piece of Jacques Torres chocolate! i bet you'll thinking about it now, take a nibble. for the love of chocolate: learn to savor!! :o)

we learned a few methods of tempering... tabling, ice bath and seeding. i enjoy the ice bath method best... i feel most in control of the process with use of the ice bath.

but a word of caution: DO NOT EVER get even a single drip of water, be it in a bowl, on a tool, or heaven forbid directly in your chocolate or alas, you will never temper it because the water will cause it to seize. once that happens, you will have to use that batch to make brownies or something (there are worse things i suppose)... but for the purposes of tempering, be MINDFUL of the water. beware the water! even tempered chocolate has a foe it seems...

i was quite proud of my first attempt at tempered chocolate! it contracted beautifully, curled up at the edges, had a gorgeous shiny coat and had a perfectly lovely little "snap" when you broke off a piece! [taking a moment to pat myself on the back.]

once we played with it, we used sheets decorated with colored cocoa butter to create curls and tiles and things...

and whoa, talk about a chocolatey cake! check out my finished product!! it was a german chocolate cake complete with an amazing filling that is filled with pecans, coconut and a delicious caramel. my favorite view was of the candied pecans that decorated the top. just gorgeous to look at.

we also worked on and completed a black forest cake!! (a long time favorite from my childhood). think whipped cream, think creme d'or, think cherry compote, kirsch...think all things indirectly related to the deep, dark, magical, mysterious german black forest. then we even got to decorate it with a chocolate band that we painted with a tinted cocoa butter and even sprayed the whole cake with chocolate giving it a velvety finish. i particularly loved making the butterflies!

that being said, both of those cakes made it home, through my nightly jog, my subway ride, my train ride, my car ride, my trip up the stairs... with little more than a dent or ding. not bad. of course...they didn't survive the onslaught of neighbors, friends, relatives and friends of friends twice removed... wasn't but a crumb left really. that...and a lonely little chocolate butterfly. i ate that myself.

more to come!

xo

m

how do ya like them carrots?!

so the long awaited post about the most amazing carrot cake known to earthling-kind. is that a word? if not, it is now. my blog, my rules :o)

seriously, if you even THINK you like carrot cake...even if you're one of those people that eats it for the cream cheese frosting... this carrot cake with convert you to a believer...in carrot cake. for the cake. in a "i'd scrape off the cream cheese just to get to the cake" kinda way. i kid you not!

it's tender, light, delicate, filled with a sweet, nutty, subtle-spicy, buttery flavor. just everything you want in a carrot cake. another HOME RUN by the chefs at FCI. nice job! (they are the yankees to my cake school - yup, yankee fan!)

so why the video from my last post?? one bite...well, it makes me sing and hum the barber of seville with great fervor - it's the kind of cake that inspires a triumphant solo of the french horn or happy duet of a clarinet and flute or piccolo to dance in your head. it's all very synesthetic for me. that's what playing classical flute for over 20 years will get ya i guess. you taste the cake with your brain. at least i do. i see the smells as explosions of color and hear the flavor as a great passionate symphony - a great culmination of the passion, talent and vision of the great chefs that i'm learning from and all that i am putting into school.

...how's that for a preface? i think i should be writing celebrity intros! haha

so the cake:

bakes beautifully...makes for some cool shots too!

you know what else MAKES this cake so good: candied carrots! candy the carrot slices until they are shimmery, translucent rays of sweet sunshine. they are gorgeous! and easy to make! you just have to be careful to slice them evenly and carefully remembering that the shape you make them, will be the same they are once they are prepared. a good chef has to have a vision from start to finish.

the slices must also be laid flat and inspected so that you can choose the best examples to showcase on your cake.

the rest involves the most amazing delicious, sweet (but not overly so), lemony cream cheese butter cream. remember not to over-do it... this cake doesn't need too much of any thing. like i said...read my intro again, if you must.

the finished product features the candied carrot slices, and even a few of those marzipan carrots i filmed dancing in my last post.

behold: my carrot cake :o)

more to come!

xo

m

ps- it's probably best to read this whilst listening to the barber of seville...just sayin'

and now...a little video for your entertainment

this is just a teaser... i wonder why i made marzipan carrots?? hmm...

** music rights belong to: Munich Symphony Orchestra & Alfred Scholz available from iTunes**

petit fours and OPERA CAKE. note the emphasis on OPERA CAKE.

did i mention i'm excited to tell you about OPERA CAKE?

now it's a shame to post about anything AND opera cake, because honestly, opera cake will win. if you said "new born baby or opera cake" i'd pick opera cake. if you offered me a bag of gold, or opera cake...i'd probably pick the opera cake. it has gold leaf on it and it tastes better. but i digress.

i sacrifice the petit fours to this post...i'll force them to stand in the ambient light that gleams around the opera cake. mostly because they are good, but painfully sweet and sticky. sticky as anything i've encountered. and of all the things i've made so far, petit fours are my least favorite. i mean, that's like trying to pick the least most amazing thing i've learned,or the least cutest kitten... but ...someone's gotta occupy the base of the totem pole, no? so it's not in disrespect, just with MILD excitement that i talk about petit fours first.

we coated the bottom in a quick-setting chocolate known as pate a glacer and used an apricot filling between the two layers of amazing almond sponge. we finished them by laying a layer of marzipan across the final layer of apricot before we covered them in a meltable fondant which my partner and i tinted pink. the process is quite simple: you cut the little cakes up, set them apart from each other on a cooling rack and pour! and i am amazed at how much fondant must be poured to cover a single little cake. suffice it to say i know why petit fours are expensive and yet so yummy. worth the $$ if you ask me

little pink cubes of sweet, sweet heaven. but for me? one is PLENTY!

but really, let's just get down to it. let's talk about opera cake.

for someone who considers herself somewhat verbose, it's actually pretty difficult to describe this tiny little morsel of perfection. it's... layers of ...well it's elaborately layered. filled with rich, indulgent layers of ganache, coffee butter cream and thin almond sponge. it's, well it's topped with a poured chocolate. it's cut into cubes. it's decorated with gold leaf (or in some cases chocolate piping). i mean...it's... well look:

i can only tell you that this is like mana from heaven. literally, if you looked up "food" in a cookbook of the gods... you would see a photo of opera cake. i imagine they must lay around, listening to harps, frolicking amidst waterfalls and soft breezes, eating little bites of opera cake every so often, whenever they feel they are running low on secret, god-powers. or whatever. this isn't religious, it's just amazing. literally, just amazing.

again, you can only eat a bite. it's small, but it packs a punch. an indulgent, rich, sinfully amazing punch. but one cannot fill up too quickly on opera cake. one might get gold poisoning or something. though, if one were going to pick their poison: may i suggest gold? and specifically, the gold leaf found atop a little decadent square of opera cake.

maybe that's how that 'fat lady singing' got to be overweight? must've been the opera cake.

mini-mousse cakes, dobos torte and nougatine...

so it goes without saying that i adore school. it's become my life. consumed me. i rather like getting to put down my 'build-the-business' hat for a while and just focus on the acquisition of new skills! it's hard to imagine all the things i've learned in the past two months, but even harder to imagine what i still have yet to be taught. i'm exponentially better than i was two months ago, and i'm enjoying the evolution of my passion-to-profession. i mean, my unofficial business is getting busier and busier and soon, i'll need a real, honest-to-goodness, space from which to work. that's so encouraging to me! that's excitement at its best!

we made a very cool cake! it required the piping of pate a cornet onto a silpat, which we had to freeze to set. we then poured the buscuit d'amande over the top in a thin layer in order to just cover the stenciled/piped designs. additionally, we learned the the trick to keeping this thin cake from drying out during baking is to bake it in a hotter oven since it is so thin - doing so will help it to bake quickly and therefore stay more moist.

the finished look is pretty stunning.

the overall goal for this cake it to cut it into strips, which we then used to line small uniquely shaped cake rings and then into which we would pour an amazing chocolate, vanilla or berry mousse. it assembles quickly into a very fancy, modern looking plated dessert. while i don't see myself working the pastry chef circuit, i do see myself wowing my friends and family at my next bbq!

what was also great fun was learning how to candy flowers! taking beautiful deep red rose petals and fresh multi-colored pansies, gently (and LIGHTLY) coating them in egg white and dusting them with a fine sugar. totally amazing finishing touch.

we garnished the mini-mousse cakes with fresh creme chantilly, fresh berries, candied flowers, deco-chocolate and/or curls of gianduja (that hazelnut cream and chocolate combination from earlier in the course).

we also spent time making the components for the dobos torte. think layers of chocolate butter cream flavored with rum, a delicate sponge, and a layer of caramel coated sponge to decorate the top. ... it's harder to explain, easier to see:

of course one of my favorite things to make was the almond nougatine. it's just a delicious candy of caramel and sliced, toasted almonds. it reminded me of being in my nana's kitchen - where often you'd walk in to visit and something amazing and simple and beautiful was waiting for you. something old-timey and delicious. nougatine is one of those things that transports me back instantly to my childhood. for as much as i ADORE making cakes, i don't have much of a sweet tooth. BUT i do have a little space reserved for such refined, simple treats such as nougatine. lovely. tastes like home.

and wait until you see what we used it for!!

by the way... speaking of waiting to see more... two words: opera cake.

more to come!

xo

m