Tempering Chocolate (Crystallization)
The process of tempering chocolate (also known as crystallization) is the alignment of stable cocoa butter crystals (Beta V) in melted chocolate, allowing those crystals to form, grow and set.
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“Aero”, Aerated Chocolate at Home
Who doesn’t love an Aero Bar, am I right? I’m not sure who came up with this technique… I first learned about it from John Placko many years ago when I was helping out with one of his modernist technique workshops. It’s a pretty easy technique: melt chocolate, thin it out, put it in an ISI, add nitrous oxide, dispense, and vacuum. But in order for you to do all those things, you need some equipment…
Read MoreMaking Your Own Cocoa Butter Colours
My motivation for making my own cocoa butter: I used to buy coloured cocoa butter, but in addition to the price of each colour, I’d often end up having to pay a cost associated with shipping and customs, increasing the average price per bottle. To bring down the price, I would end up getting a few more bottles, which I likely did not need in the first place. The other issue with buying coloured cocoa butter is that most companies offer the same range of colours, so if you want something different you’ll have to mix your own colours anyways…So why not just start with primary colours and mix small batches?
Read MoreMaking Chocolate Moulds (Using a 3D printer and Mayku Formbox)
The idea for these chocolate bars came from Rachel and Jess at Hailed Coffee. In order for us to push forward and strive to be better, we need to be uniquely different. It’s important that we keep thinking and inventing. More often than not though, these ideas go straight to the bin and don’t ever get to the implementation/testing phase. This one was different! It started from our work on creating new flavours of chocolate bars. We had recently started testing a lemon crunch bar which led to a lemon, blueberry and meringue bar. Throughout the iterations, we thought about separating the crunch component and the flavour component. This led to the idea of making bars with ice cream flavours and crunchy, cone-like components. Better yet, what if these chocolate bars actually resembled an ice cream cone? Eureka!
Read MoreChocolate Violin
Backstory: During the first COVID lockdown, with the stay at home order, I thought it would a good idea to improve my chocolate skills by making multiple showpieces at home: an iceberg with a polar bear, a queen bee on top of her honey box, and a large chocolate animal. Most of the showpieces were not as good as I’d imagined them to be, but with each of these projects I was able to learn something and improve my skills a little along the way.
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Smoothies & Sundaes 