Last Sunday, I attended a class in making chocolate bars at Ganache Chocolate. I have a little trouble with tempering chocolate and hoped to pick up some tips on getting it right.
Arno Backes, the chocolatier at Ganache Chocolate, took the class, and discussed his background as well as demonstrating how to make chocolate bars. As you would expect, in a commercial chocolate shop, chocolate is tempered by machine, referred to by Arno as the Italian way - that is, by his "girlfriend":
He also demonstrated two methods of tempering with which I am already familiar - the "French" way of running a spatula through the melted chocolate on a hard cold surface until it thickens:
and the seeding method, which I use, and which Arno called the "German" way because it was more efficient than the French way. One tip that I did pick up was to test the temperature of the chocolate on your bottom lip - if it feels cold, it needs to be reheated, if it feels hot, it needs to cool down, and if it feels the same as your body temperature, it's about right to use.
Here is Arno with one of his favourite caramel pots:
Arno gave us each one of these almond bars that he demonstrated:
We all had a go at using a piping bag to fill chocolate bars. I missed out on one of those to take home, but I got two of these instead:
This is just moulded milk chocolate studded with my selection of fruit and nuts. We "made" it by pouring chocolate from the chocolate machine into a mould, scraping off the excess and then putting on the decorations before allowing the chocolate to set.
You can't hate a class all about chocolate, complete with tastings, and Arno's story was interesting and his passion for his art was infectious. However, as far as having the key to the door to tempering chocolate - well, I think I need to keep practising what I have already been doing.
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Very interesting, that bar with the nuts and fruits looks very pretty. Hmmm...putting that chocolate on your lip to discern the temperature, I'm thinking this is not the class for me, so it was very good that you went and enjoyed it for me and learned a lot and brought it all back to talk about in this post, that's as close as I will get to a chocolate class. Now, Mark and Matt would be more than willing to go with you the next time!
ReplyDeleteWhat a fun post! Julie loves chocolate making classes and all sort of cooking classes. That was one generous chunky bar :)
ReplyDeleteJulie & Alesah
Gourmet Getaways xx
At least it's practice that will be quite tasty :-) This sounds like a fun class and the bar you created looks delicious.
ReplyDeleteI would love to have a go working chocolate like that - molten chocolate always looks so tempting!
ReplyDeleteThat sounds like such a fun class. There are a couple of places that do similar classes in Vancouver and I've been thinking about doing them, or perhaps a pastry class or two.
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