Articles by Karen H

Well, it’s not really so big. Nobody was able to take their chocolate showpieces home last week because they were so fragile. In a rare act of recycling, the students leaving later could hear the smashing of the pieces readying them for remelting as they were leaving…. a weeks’ worth of work and angst 🙁

The project started with a paper drawing which we had to scale up, and the process was as follows:

1. convert paper measurements to scale for piece to be created.
2. Draw Trident on drawing paper, cut out.
3. Create chocolate layer on plastic and cut out two pieces of the trident while it’s still soft enough. Let them harden.
4. Glue them together (with chocolate), smooth edges.
5. Make chocolate disc for base.
6. Make and add layers of chocolate chunks to create base rock.
7. Sculpt out piece in rock to receive tip of trident then mould to be an exact fit.
8. Spray rock with grey cocoa butter and then darker grey tones.
9. Make stem of trident and ornaments for stem.
10. Glue all of 9 together with chocolate.
11. spray paint stem gold (cocoa butter spray).
12. Make tentacles for jellyfish with chocolate masse (ground down small bits of milk chocolate which need to be kept workable by constantly massaging in hands, rolled into tapering strings).
13. Make more tentacles, and more tentacles, and more tentacles.
14. Fill balloon with cold water, dip in chocolate bowl, invert to dry then puncture to remove water. Let harden.
15. Trim, then fashion ridges/spines with chocolate masse.
16. Make and fit chocolate rings for inside of jellyfish for attachment of tentacles. Discover that your smallest jellyfish doesn’t fit even the smallest ring and brainstorm how you’ll get the tentacles to attach.
17. Make a skirt for the jellyfish opening with dough sheeted molding chocolate gifted to you that is impossibly short to be visible once the tentacle ring is inside.
18. Spray jellyfish with white (primer) then pink, then the inter ridge areas with purple to give it contrast. Add red colour in dots to the top to give some contrast, then heat with blowtorch to meld in. But don’t hold the blowtorch there for too long or your jellyfish will look like it has exposed brains….
19. Attach tentacles to chocolate ring and thank the tentacle maker in your pair who made multiple extras in case of breakage.
20. spray tentacles with cocoa butter colour (purple).
21. insert tentacle rings into jellyfish, and glue (with chocolate) already sprayed tentacles into smallest jellyfish with GREAT difficulty. No skirt for this one!
22. At point of attachment to trident, carve out a hole in the stem corresponding to the jellyfish shape to be attached, strengthen with tempered chocolate, attach jellyfish, and pray. Reinforce attachment with external tempered chocolate. (and do remember to put gloves on so there aren’t fingerprints on the gold paint on the stem – oops).
23. Realize that there isn’t enough room for three jellyfish, so attach one upside down (and artistically) to the rocks.
24. It’s presentation time! Take sculpture up to front table, and watch with horror as your bottom jellyfish detaches and bounces on the marble counter breaking even more of the tentacles irrevocably and one of the trident tips snaps. {insert emergency trident repairs}

Doesn’t that inspire you to do this and other sculptures? Today we learned that our efforts were actually pretty good, the last class did a phoenix and many of them reportedly looked like chickens. I suspect next class will hear how many of our jellyfish looked like inverted flower pots….

Pictures below, and you can watch the process on video on instagram @amauryguichon and on @amauryguichon with a couple of pictures of our classmates – Zoé from Paris/New York on the left (my partner a couple of weeks ago, delightful girl who is only 19 y.o. (very mature 19), and Cef from Guam (who grows passionfruit in her garden at home!!!) featured.

I certainly learned a lot about construction with chocolate, which I may or may not ever use again – definitely won’t be doing chocolate showpieces but may be useful for other decorating. It was an inordinate amount of work for something that is theoretically edible as made entirely of chocolate – but nobody would want to eat it. Which defeats the purpose of being in the kitchen, if you ask me! Showpieces are big here as the casinos produce them for the big spenders/gamblers, and are now a phase in chocolate competitions to show mastery of chocolate technique. My partner thought the entire week was “awesome”. Many of the rest of us, however, were glad to see the end of that week….

Ours is second from the right…I do maintain that up until the moment of final breakage, our trident was the best of the bunch, straight and symmetrical … and I also admit our jellyfish looked edentulous at the end as so many tentacles fell off or were broken so badly they had to be removed.

Interesting to see one of Amaury’s instagram posts put together, and I sincerely admire his talents in this area, but really have no desire to do showpieces myself going forward so not super engaged in this week. Happily my partner is having fun, so is making up for it. My philosophy is that if you can’t eat it, it’s not worth the time and effort – and all those who know me know that it is death to be paired with me in Pictionary, I have no artistic talent whatsoever. Debbie would be in her element this week and I’m sure, would be having a lot of fun sculpting with chocolate!

We are doing a piece with several parts to be put together (all to be revealed on instagram and blog pictures on Monday ) and there is a lot of working, and then adding, then remodelling. Amaury is working it out as he goes, and we follow, and some of the techniques are ingenious- making chocolate spheres with balloons today for one was a hoot. My role has largely been to make and hand materials to my partner, so that he can utilize his artistic talents on our piece. Though I must point out that I had superior tendril making abilities this morning, bowing to Nori’s more patient and talented ridge making in the afternoon. I’m definitely learning some tricks which can apply to other things – and who knows when next I’ll need to make tendrils? I’ll be ready! The lightest moment of the day was when Nori’s balloon slipped out of his hand and leapt into the chocolate bowl where mine was still dipping – requiring a quick brainstorm of how to do a second take for both as apparently balloons were in short supply??? I do get why showpieces are popular – they are beautiful when done well, and a thorough understanding of chocolate is needed to make them. Though we are all doing the same basic steps, each one of our sculptures will come out looking very different….

So no pictures this week, and likely little content. We’re going dark….

Saturday, with friend Richa from home in tow, we travelled to the Valley of Fire (about an hour’s drive north of LV). It was an adventure getting there, as the signage for I15 changed to Hwy 215 as it is wont to do around here and after missing the exit we were headed towards Tonapah. Fortunately it was picked up fairly quickly and we were able to navigate back towards the correct valley despite some very confusing signage in a construction zone (some VERY big road construction projects going on here).

I had thought I’d never been to Valley of Fire, but as the park entrance loomed it looked very familiar… and once we started on the White Dome hiking trail the memory was prodded – have definitely done that little loop previously. When, and with whom, I am not clear – with parents a few decades ago?? Anyway it is lovely country and despite making (another) directional error (yes, a theme is emerging) we had a lovely hike – we had meant to connect two loop trails but turned left instead of right. All’s well, we connected with a different trail eventually after following a wash for a while. The slot canyon at the beginning was like the entrance to Petra on a smaller scale, and the red rock and sand reminded me a lot of Jordan. Though the parking lots were full, once away from the main trail we had the place to ourselves and the temp was very pleasant to hike in, sunny and 17C. Truly lovely country.

Sunday morning I went for a bike ride to test out the mechanics of “LaTrek”, my Moulton travel bike which got assembled last weekend and rim retaped. I never feel too confident about my mechanical abilities and half expect a wheel to come off, or the gears not to change…. happily all worked well and I did about 35 km on the ironically named “Wetlands Preserve” trail…. (I guess because it starts in the Wetlands Preserve?). Humidity about 21% here, so guzzling water is a must. The trail was surprisingly hilly, with a couple of real hills and several very steep albeit short- a couple I had to walk up as the grade suddenly ramped up going around a corner and I didn’t have enough momentum. I will know better for next time – it is a decent workout and very pretty and peaceful.

Detoured on the way home to an Indian grocery store which had a fabulous selection – one of the best I’ve seen outside Asia though I admit I haven’t explored the stores in Surrey very thoroughly. TJ’s sucks in this department so I was very happy to obtain better options, with an immense choice- always limited however by the freezer space which is still at a premium despite some help from Richa this weekend. No additions this upcoming week, so the reprieve may enable some freeing of space…. Just liberated this one below from its’ icy exile and can endorse it for sure; breton sablé base, raspberry mousse topped with raspberry macaron with raspberry ganache filling and topped with chantilly cream and a fresh rasp. Yumm.

Note revision and veggie prep for the upcoming week will occupy most of the rest of the afternoon with the possibility of sitting down at some point to read a book, a rarely occurring event. And so we head into chocolate showpiece week next…

And so chocolate week concludes with the usual buffet, after a morning enrobing and decorating many of the bonbons.

We footed the bonbons decorated with coloured cocoa butter yesterday and were suitably impressed with the results of the different colour combinations and techniques. The contents of the bonbons were a wide variety of ganaches, as well as layered ganaches and the bars were snickers, bounty, Decadent bar, Winter bar (with cinnamon) and Turtles, and one called “Millefeuille” that resembled a nanaimo bar in cross section. All were shared around so we have a large variety of flavours to try at home. The citrus jelly was very discernible in the layered ganache and holds promise for further experimentation.

Hmmm. My partner reappeared this a.m., and it was very interesting. He drove up to the parking lot at 7:40 (most of us arrive at 7:30 to do the kitchen set up chores and scale ingredients for the day) – and then drove out again. He reappeared at 8 o’clock panting like he was out of breath, when all the scaling and chores were done – and no, he doesn’t live close enough that he went back to get something he’d forgotten. True to form. (Our table faces the parking lot otherwise likely wouldn’t have noticed). One day left, and at least today there wasn’t much actual partnering as we worked on chocolate molds, our own tempering and about the only thing we had to do together was a recipe of pecan ganache which got divided in two for piping. Not a very collaborative guy, happy to get a change on Monday (and I’m positive he’s also looking forward to a change, likely hoping next week’s partner doesn’t call him on his half of the dishes and table cleaning….).

It was a fun day in the chocolate kitchen today, sorry no pictures as lots to be finished tomorrow! and the buffet should be pretty. We worked with colour and spray today and did different colour combos and spray techniques. We tempered coloured cocoa butter for spraying which was great practice, and used some lovely vibrant colours (regal blue is my favourite). Tips on spraying equipment and uses, learned how to pan nuts (coat with chocolate, feuillitine and salt – yummm) and covered and rolled Swiss Rochers and rum truffles. Layered ganaches with citrus fruit jelly, will be very interested to try that out for taste as it enables use in molded chocolates whereas my fruit jellies have only been able to be made for dipping/enrobing as I’ve used the classic hot jelly technique up to now. Then more tabliering practice, something I was already pretty comfortable with, and we put it into a bar mold to leave overnight to check the temper tomorrow. My goal everyday is to work more cleanly, but the jacket went into the laundry again today and my shoe now has a lovely regal blue spot on it which will be there forever more as a reminder of my favourite chocolate colour…. let’s face it, I’m as unlikely to change from being a spatial klutz in the kitchen, as I am to becoming a competent Ikea assembler….

Cold today, only up to 12C and snow appeared on the mountaintops. The valley evaded the forecast of “possible showers” but it was really gusty again – had to wrestle the car door open against the wind. Should be back to normal temps again in the next couple of days though and back to t-shirt weather.

More tempering practice to produce that perfect temper that sets the beta crystals to “crack” when chocolate is bitten into…

First thing we made chocolate shells to fill later with pistacho and cointreau caramel ganache. How easy is that process when the tempering machine produces tempered chocolate for you in a stream, the vibrating table is directly over the tub, and there is an attached blade for scraping… wow. Equipment envy…. Picture me in my kitchen with a ladle filling the mold with chocolate, the chocolate tank needing to be moved back and forth to catch some of the drips from the vibrating table, and hand scraping the mold upside down. Somehow I get there in the end, but what a delight doing it quickly and cleanly with all the bells and whistles! In my dreams…

Happily, my partner stayed home sick today so it was peaceful at our station. Despite having to do double the work I’d take that any day (and it’s debatable if it’s actually double given his lackadaisical contribution). Two others were back, asymptomatic and still testing negative so were given a crash course in chocolate tempering.

The morning was taken up with more chocolate confections – we made Bounty, Snickers bars and Turtles, and the marshmallow layer for the Decadent Bar that we had started yesterday. We made the ganaches for our mold fillings and I was having a puzzling time with my caramel, finding an unexplained white crystallization process going on with white lumps I was finding impossible to incorporate/dissolve – explaining the problem with my pan up front to the chef I held up my spatula out of the way to show these strange white strands and mystery revealed – the spatula had melted into the pot in pieces. I had apparently picked up a non-heat resistant spatula. We had a good laugh about that and I started back at the beginning, though we agreed there was potential in the mix as one could floss at the same time… Because I was then last finished and had twice as much piping to do with my partner away, I rushed to finish and being focussed, didn’t notice the piping bag was open at the top on the final mold – result, caramel coated front of white jacket. Tick two. Why do they make these jackets white, anyway??? It seems to attract coffee and my lunchtime balsamic vinegar like a magnet as well…

Tick three was when I decided to eat lunch in the car (avoiding the lunchroom these days) instead of the area I normally head to across the road as it was too windy. To avoid spilling coffee in the car, I cleverly decided to fill the travel cup up inside and carry it out – it got knocked over onto its side in transition and I spent some time before I got outside mopping up a trail of coffee drips from the lunchroom, along the corridor and down the stairs…. Sigh.

Happily three was a charm and the day went uneventfully from there; we had a caramel party in the afternoon making multiple forms, combining flavours on top of each other and finishing the bonbons after footing, with spray and lustre. (Pistachio, green and Cointreau caramel, textured red; photo below alas doesn’t do them justice as the light was fading by the time I got home and took the picture).

And so another day done. We have a whole week of confectionary later on where we will learn (I am certain) 16 ways of making marshmallow and nougat, but an interesting introduction this week with the Snickers and Bounty bars. Some of the other layered ganaches were delicious as well…. enrobing later in the week and more for the freezer! My lucky visitor this weekend will be feasting.

Of course I’m on special equipment cleaning detail this week so guess who got to clean those chocolate machines? I had lots of conscripted help and will not complain, having watched the kitchen manager spend the better part of week two deep cleaning the four machines, taking apart the vents and cleaning them, plus the spray hood and all the fridges and freezers….

Some useful stuff in chocolate week, but not super impressed with the teaching in this module. Lots of shortcuts from ways I’ve learned previously in chocolate courses (everything linked to production and profits, understandably). However the shortcuts which might work here in these conditions (eg very cool marble tables) are unlikely to translate to different circumstances and because the basic principles are being shortcutted and not discussed, the students won’t have the ability to figure out why it’s not working. Already I am noticing the chocolate going out of temper during enrobing with some of the students.

And that brings me to my partner this week…. yeeesh. Young guy from Florida. Everything with him is a race, which means slapping through everything as fast as possible with less than lovely results and “oops – I forgot that step”. It was a struggle today getting the opportunity to check the temper of our shared chocolate pot…. grrr. When done, instead of helping others without partners or cleaning up, he grabs the better half of the products off the shared tray and disappears, or stands around. I’m not your elf, cleaning up after you like the interns for the chefs, honey…. I gather from talking to previous partners this is a trend which has equally annoyed others. Yesterday he was overheard talking to another student about his scratchy throat so I had hoped he might be off today but no such luck, he reappeared sans mask today. So tried to keep a distance, and as little interaction as possible but not always possible to bite my tongue hence the countdown….

2 more positive covid tests amongst those who were showing symptoms but testing negative yesterday.

Today, the emphasis was on production of things that didn’t require a lot of equipment which was great; more tabliering practice with chocolate and ganache, some really good ideas and some delicious results (see below).

We dipped ganache squares cut with a guitar – another piece of equipment only specialist chocolatiers can justify – we made coffee (Arabica), Earl Grey tea and Palet Or (plain chocolate) ganache to dip and traded for all. My old lady taste buds found the Earl Grey too subtle, but the Arabica gave a great shot of coffee and got a thumbs up. Will be interested to do a side by side taste test when I get back as the ubiquitous use of the hand mixer in the ganache makes me cringe, but so far no split ganaches – the jury is out if it is as silky as the fractionated addition approach.

We ended polishing molds in preparation for making molded chocolates tomorrow, and made layered ganaches with the pralinés which we made yesterday. These will go onto the enrobing machine later in the week. Love the recipes that use smashed speculoos cookies as an ingredient (can you tell that the chef is Belgian?).

12 people arrived for class today out of 20. Last week’s covid positive student is still not back, and 4 others have tested positive. The remaining students off are symptomatic but are testing negative – could be a false negative or just a cold. We share a small room together, so not surprising that it is spreading. The delay in spread is the more surprising given that the first student tested positive last weekend, so was likely brewing towards the end of the week before.

Chocolate week started with tempering practice (tabliering), then seeding in the afternoon. Not a challenge given this is my bread and butter, but my self-imposed challenge was to complete the tabliering with minimum mess and none on my jacket. Tick for the jacket, not so much for the surface which needed some scraping afterwards.

Learned a different way to handle ganache for dipping, a very neat trick to chablon (spread a very thin layer of chocolate). Even more usefully, learned how to make my own praline; I have been limited heretofore by only being able to purchase large quantities which inevitably separate if not used frequently and are hell to reintegrate. Tomorrow we learn how to dip – LOL (how many thousands of those have I done?). I am certain I’ll learn something new though!

Spain won the world chocolatemaster competition – but all of the finalists were absolutely amazing, such interesting ideas and interpretations of the different tasks, more than one deserved to win!

Not sure if fireworks are legal here (would be surprised if not) but not too many going off yet. Here’s to a quiet Hallowe’en for all the pets around, who are almost uniformly disquieted by the weird antics outside.

Goals for the weekend: Get an eggcup and some teaspoons small enough to use with a boiled egg. Put bike together and go for a ride. And chores, of course (clean up notes from last week, laundry, groceries etc).

Didn’t suceed in either! Well, partial success…

-Eventually, after four stores, managed to get some small spoons in the fifth (they are called “appetizer” spoons”?). It was also the only one that didn’t look at me like I had two heads when I asked for an eggcup, and although they didn’t have any in, they are being sent. Doesn’t anyone around here eat boiled eggs? I sure miss Amazon – I don’t have an address I can get deliveries to (not able to use the mailing address here) so am back to picking things up in person which is nasty especially when you don’t know the stores around.

-Put bike together Saturday while listening to zoom conference – assembly looked good, and planned to go riding today. However when I picked the bike up to put it in the car this morning, saw it had a flat (on the back, of course). Not uncommon after it has been packed in the suitcase, so I pulled the tube and tire off to find that the rim tape had shifted and needed retaping. Sigh.

Reboot the day: wait for the bicycle shop to open after finding one with good reviews online, and then head out for a hike instead (was expecting to have to leave the wheel at the shop). The shop surprisingly taped it on the spot at a very reasonable price, another patch kit picked up (no glue in the one I brought with me) and I was headed for my first visit to Red Rock Canyon. It’s mandatory to reserve a time October to May if you want to go on the scenic drive, which is where all the trails leave from, so after researching which trail looked good, reservation on hand, google map directions obtained, it was going to be a smooth go – right? The cycle shop was very near the highway to Red Rock.

Some special event, which wasn’t showing up online when I checked in the bike shop and which nobody working there knew about, closed the exit from the highway that I needed (in both directions – noted on the way down). No problem, I worked out an alternate route using the exit further south. Got up to the highway – turned around again. Hmmm. How could they completely close down the only route into the Canyon?? No detour provided, just “turn around”. Okay, let’s try one exit north, it’s the last option – winding through a maze of a residential area where there are multiple dead end streets and no grid layout in sight, GPS amazingly managed to navigate far enough to get past the “special event” and finally onto the highway.

Lots of cyclists! Good looking bike lanes in this neck of the woods (Summerlin west) and the highway though fairly busy had a very wide shoulder. Had a lovely hike up Calico Hills, where there were also a lot of people bouldering – looks like great rock to play on. Trails were busy around parking lots but quickly tapered off as few people actually hike, and were well marked. Finally got some exercise!! and some beautiful scenery.

And now back to chores, reassemble the wheel and remove bike from living room, and get ready for chocolate week!

Not much to say about today. Tiring – assembling, decorating with different techniques and the discovery of whipped ganaches, deep clean of the baking kitchen and moving to the chocolate kitchen next door for next week. More familiar territory, at least. We started some chocolate decorations this week, which was fun. Our head teacher is away acting as chief judge at the World Chocolate Master competition this weekend (sorry, can’t figure out how to include the link but google World Chocolate Masters and you will get there!).

The number and variety of products from this week was huge, as evident from the buffet pictures below: from banana bread and lemon poundcake to fruit flan, poached pear tart (my favourite), and every variety of puffed pastry you could imagine. Tarts galore – and lots of fruit flavours. Imagine this: breton sable base, topped with a layered ring of crispy hazelnut feuilletine/raspberry ganache, glazed with chocolate mirror glaze then finished with piped chantilly cream and fresh raspberries and sprinkled with pistachios…. or black forest mini cakes. Or tart with almond cream on the base, a layer of soft caramel, then chocolate cremeux ganache topped with pecans and whipped chocolate ganache… Enough to induce a diabetic coma just with the pictures – no wonder our fridges are freezers are groaning just now.

No calories here…..