Willy Wonka's Dream

I am posting a week late on this stuff, this is what we did in our second week in Chocolates and Confections and the first few items are the final result of some "in-progress" photos I posted in my first blog on this class. As previously explained, this class operates individually and by projects. The first was a series of dipped chocolate candies where we learned about tempering chocolate, caramels, nougats and ganache. All of the candies were hand dipped, a technique that is a dying breed, which required a good amount of skill to produce good looking candies.

Chocolate caramel. The first photo shows and entire sheet of the caramels after being dipped. They are supposed to all be 1" square, but evident in the photo, I didn't quite hit that one on the nose. It was really difficult to cut all of the pieces and dip them evenly. The taste of the chocolate caramel was very rich and the texture a perfect balance between chewy and soft.

This was my favorite candy until I had another about 2 weeks later and it hadn't held up. The texture was grainy and the flavor wasn't there as it had been before. I imagine I did something incorrectly in making the caramel causing it to crystallize.



Honey-Almond Nougat. These were delicious! A chewy honey flavored nougat with sliced almonds covered in milk chocolate. I had to make the nougat twice to get the consistency right. The first time I over cooked it making it much too hard, which would have resulted in a candy people could loose teeth on!

Nougat Square Truffle. There was a photo of these last week when I had piped the ganache onto the chocolate disks. After that phase I placed three 1/2" squares of very thin nougat onto the top of the ganache and dipped the piece in dark chocolate. In my opinion this was an awkward chocolate in both appearance and to eat. I didn't think the flavors were exceptional either, although I have to admit here that I am not a huge fan of ganache filled chocolates. I think that there are so many more interesting fillings that can be used and although ganache is creamy and rich, always making a good chocolate, it is much too common for my liking!

Cocoa Vanilla Logs. I don't think this is the appropriate name for these considering they only have a smidge of vanilla extract and really are all chocolate. For these I piped lines of chocolate ganache and cut them into 1 1/4" pieces, dipped them in dark chocolate and immediately rolled them in powdered sugar. They are meant to have a bark-like texture on the outside to look like a log. I didn't even bother giving these a try since it was basically pure ganache.

Three brothers. This is a traditional European candy, a cluster of three caramelized hazelnuts placed on a chocolate disk and then dipped in chocolate. I used white chocolate to dip, which is nontraditional, but they turned out wonderful!

Caramelized Hazelnuts. These were the same caramelized nuts used in Three Brothers, above, however they were separated and coated with dark chocolate and then cocoa powder. A really good snack!

Additionally I made Rochers, slivered almonds with a tad of caramelized sugar and coated in dark chocolate. This is where the Americans came in and substituted peanuts and other ingredients and changed the name to "clusters." So, for us Americans, these basically are almond clusters!

I also made Milk Chocolate Bark. This was a mixture of all mistakes and leftovers folded with milk chocolate and poured onto a sheet pan to about 1/2" thickness. Instead of dumping all of those over-cooked nougats into the trash, they made a delicious bark, and the more mistakes, the better your bark was! A win-win all around!!!

The following are the pieces that we were required to make for the second class project. Again this project concentrated on the same techniques as our first project, however we concentrated a bit more on cooked sugar in this project.

Cassis Fruit Jellies. Made in a similar way that jelly, as in "jelly for toast", is made. We used fruit purees and I used 100% cassis, although I wasn't happy with the resulting flavor. Luckily I was able to taste one of my classmates who combined strawberry accented with cassis. It was amazing how strong the cassis was and how in this combination it tasted more like cassis than strawberry, yet the strawberry lightened the flavor and eliminated the bitter taste that was in mine with 100% cassis.

Dark Chocolate Montelimar. I was so excited when our chef showed us how to make this and told us it was part of our second project. When I was in Rome for my semester abroad (now too many years ago than I prefer to remember) I was there during the Christmas season, which meant I was obligated to try all of the Italian goodies I had never seen before. My favorite was the Torrone, a cousin to the montelimar. Since then I have seen it seldom since, yet it lingered in my mind. I was surprised to find out that this chewy nougat treat is made with egg white. I made mine with pistachio and candied orange peel, which turned out to be a knock-out combination, especially when enrobed in dark chocolate! I can't wait to experiment with this more.

We also made either toffee or brittle, and I made pecan toffee coated in dark chocolate, however I didn't get a photo. It turned out a little on the chewy side and could have been cooked more, although the flavor was good.

The last item in this project was individual choice. This is the end of the line for chocolate candies, a very short week and a half. This made it especially difficult to choose one item out of the hundreds of ideas I has and different combinations I wanted to play with. In the end I ended up squeezing in two, Peanut-Butter Truffle and Strawberry Marshmallows.

The Peanut-Butter Truffles were a milk chocolate shell filled with a peanut butter and milk chocolate ganache. The shell was a pre-made shell that I filled, sealed the fill hole and then dipped in milk chocolate to finish.

The Strawberry Marshmallows used strawberry puree and turned out perfectly! I was surprised how easy they are to make--this being my first foray into the homemade marshmallow world--but very messy! This recipe made a huge amount and because no one can eat marshmallows more than every few months, I had a lot left over. The obvious solution--Rice Krispie treats! Yummy strawberry flavored Rice Krispie treats--I think I am on to something here!