Dragees. Dragees or panned products have been made popular for the past couple of years. Pastry chefs around the world are trying to enrobe, tumble, anything and everything. No longer will your chocolate covered just almonds, peanuts, and raisins and come in small confectionery packages called Glosettes. Nowadays, pastry chefs and chocolatier will try to pan cereal, puffed grains, toffee, gummies with various flavour combinations and finishing them with different colours making them very attractive and appealing. In many instances, taking something that is done in the commercial world and trying to refine it usually have a few issues:
1) Public perception. Why would I pay $12/ jar for chocolate covered raisins when I Glosettes
2) Time. There are limitations to the batch size since we are using small tabletop panners
3) Money. Nuts are expensive, and unless you’re buying hundreds of kilos
4) Lack of knowledge. We are still missing some trade secrets to get the ultimate shine.
5) Exposure to resources. Glazes and polish are sold by the 10s of gallons.
6) Co-packing. But there lies an issues of – is it artisan any more? Continue reading
For some time now, I have been debating whether or not it’s worthwhile to polish panned products. The approach of making your chocolate panned items shine is becoming more and more popular recently. This process is sometimes finicky, the final shine is very much dependent on time, temperature, relative humidity, and even batch size – many variables as you can see. I guess it comes down to a preference, what do you prefer?
Before polish and shellac
Not too long ago, Royce and I were talking with my mum about food (no kidding eh?) and mum “casually” mentioned that for a time she had really liked black forest cake.
With her birthday only a couple of weeks away, we knew a hint when we heard one (or at least, we figured we did). This year for my mum’s birthday, we made her a black forest cake. I know mum loves anything chocolate, so she’d like this. And I have really fond memories of the grocery store version of this cake that my grandma used to buy for us…So why not?! Continue reading
Whiskey Caramel Truffles (makes roughly 22 truffles) Continue reading
On June 15,2015, John Placko, Rodney Alleguede and myself, with the help of our friends from Cacao Barry, offered a free demo for pastry chefs in the city at George Brown College. Each one of us had a task, a idea to present, for me it was chocolate with modernist techniques.
My concept was a modern chocolate smores. The bonbon had multiple components that would require several new techniques: a smoked ganache with the smoking gun from Polyscience, a caramelized chocolate component and an edible wick that is torched in front of guests.
Smoked Chocolate Ganache
160g Heavy cream
110g Dark chocolate
50g Milk chocolate
20g glucose
40g butter
1. In a saucepan, add heavy cream and glucose
2. Using a smoking gun, smoke the cream and let it sit for 20 minutes
3. In a stainless steel bowl, add dark and milk chocolate
4. Using a smoking gun, smoke the chocolate mixture and let it sit for 20 minutes
5. Heat the cream to a simmer
6. Add it to the chocolate and let it sit for 30 seconds
7. Mix until combine, add butter at 37C
8. Pipe into moulds
Once the bonbon is capped, it is inverted to have the round side facing down. A caramelized white chocolate disc and popping candy is placed on top, along with marshmallow and the edible wick.
Chocolate Coral
150g dark chocolate (Ocoa)
10g freeze dried pineapple powder
10g freeze dried passion fruit powder
10g dessicated coconut
Temper/ crystallize chocolate and transfer into cornet.
Pipe chocolate into icy water.
Strain and coat frozen chocolate with freeze dried pineapple powder.
Repeat with passion fruit and coconut.
Honey Mushroom Meringue
100g egg whites
145g sugar
65g water
12g honey
In a sauce pan, heat sugar, water and honey until 121C
In a stand mixer with a whisk attachment, whip egg whites into a meringue with soft peaks
Slowly pour sugar mixture into meringue while mixing on low speed
Whisk until stiff peaks, pipe half rounds and stems
Dehydrate at 70C for 10 hours, or until completely dry.
Combine orange oil, ash and malto.
