akickinthehead sent me this at least one year ago, probably two, but I never passed the love on to you, O flist.  As Easter is approaching again, I give you:

Building a Super Cadbury's Creme Egg

That is all.

A few weeks ago, I went to the New York Chocolate Show.  This is my second trip--.  Two years ago, I went to every booth, picked up 100 cards, bought 11 lbs of Guittard chocolate, and loved it.  Last year, I was out of town.  This year, the show moved, but I had a great excuse to go whenenimatique  came to visit that weekend.  And, finally, I'm posting about it so that I don't forget what I found:

• The Chocolate Show website
• Republica de Cacao, an importer for Ecuadorean Chocolate.  Their samples were single-origin, and impressively smooth for their high cocoa content.
• SerendipiTea - They had a bunch of nice teas, including several that involved cocoa or chocolate mint (which is an actual plant, not always chocolate + mint).  They even had one blend that made roiboos palatable to me, which was surprising.
• TCHO - A new bean-to-bar company out of San Francisco which is taking a different approach to retail chocolate.  They're creating several flavors, and are marketing their chocolates by flavor.  The rest of the industry is getting more elitist, in a way: if you are a connoiseur, you have an opinion about the varietals, about South America vs. African vs. Carribbean plantations, etc. etc.  Meanwhile, TCHO is ditching all of that and selling, for instance, a "fruity" bar.  It'll always be fruity, regardless of where exactly all the beans come from in any given batch.  I like the idea.  Unfortunately, I didn't like their overall taste-- their chocolates weren't particularly interesting except for the flavors.
• Pralus - I LOVE Pralus.  ali_wildgoose  gave me one of their sampler cubes two years ago, and it was the coolest thing I've tried perhaps ever with chocolate.  Now, there's a chance that they might be my single-source supplier ... and they're starting an organic line.  Yay!
•   Sweetriot - I've enjoyed their chocolate-covered cacao nibs before.  What stood out for me at the show was that they were taking a very political approach in their marketing --riot, picket signs, motto 'fix the world'-- but I couldn't tell, looking at any of their stuff, what they are doing that is on a moral high ground.  Are they fair trade?  Maybe.  They announce that one of their flavors is organic (what about the others?) ... what about the rest of their branding?
• Crossings - brings over "French Epicurean Specialties".  They're in Whole Foods, and they had some really nice pear chocolates, yum.
• Cotton Tree Lodge - is a sort of mini-resort (eco-tourism, perhaps?) that focuses a bunch on chocolate.  They have bean-to-bar workshops.  They're in Belize.
• R.J.M. Trading wasn't selling anything of their own ... they're specialty food brokers.  They caught my attention because Guittard wasn't at the Chocolate Show this year ... but R.J.M. sells them.
• 5th Avenue Chocolatiere - a little candy and chocolate shop at 693 3rd Ave. (not 5th Ave?  Really?).  They don't do very fancy chocolates, but I think that they do hot chocolate.
• Christopher Norman Chocolates - One of the older New York chocolatiers, and a fancy and good one.  They make BEAUTIFUL chocolates, and the sample that I tasted, a passionfruit creme, was perfectly done-- passionfruit tends to be either too sweet or too tart.  I had a fascinating conversation with one of the founders about chocolate piracy and other sketchy behavior on the part of retailers and rival chocolatiers in NYC.  Who knew?
• Virginie Duroc-Danner, Artiste Chocolatiere - made beautiful, beautiful chocolates.  She claimed that they are all hand-painted, but they had sure signs of being cocoa transfers... perhaps the transfers were all hand-painted before being transferred.  Either way, they were gorgeous, and gorgeously boxed.  I don't know about the taste-- no samples!
• Chocovision - They didn't have a full display out this year (just one of each machine), but I have to give them a shout-out.  They made the tempering machine that my crazy college friends gave me and with which I'm completely delighted.  I stopped by this year to try to buy some extra baffle scraper-blades to replace the one of mine that has worn to the shape of the bowl, and they just gave it to me, and chatted about upcoming products.  Nice guys!
• Mary's Chocolates - You wouldn't expect a company with a name like this to be Japanese, but not only is Mary's Chocolates Japanese, but they are all that is right about Japanese food production.  Their crafting is immaculate and obsessively detailed.  Their flavors have been worked and reworked to perfection (you must try their green tea or plum wine chocolates, they are apotheotic).  Their packaging is so beautiful that it might be a product of its own.  There's just nothing wrong with them, except that they're expensive and only available in Japan, outside of the Chocolate Show.  There's good reason that oneangryrabbit  made a special trip for them while in Japan, and that I gave a box of their chocolates from this show to ali_wildgoose  as an anniversary gift.

That's a shorter list than I had before ... partly I am getting used to the regularly attending vendors, but in addition there were several notable absences.  Guttard was not their on their own.  A fun spice wholesaler that was there before had not returned.  Chocovision reduced their presence.  There were fewer countries with their own booths.  Is it the economy, the change in venue, both, or something else?</li></ul></lj>

I like peppermint bark around the holidays, largely because I like all things mint-- and a good peppermint bark is super-dark chocolate, plus creamy white chocolate, plus mint.  The mint makes the white chocolate worthwhile.

My parents just sent ali_wildgoose  and me some Enstrom's Signature Peppermint Cookie Bark, though, and it has raised the bar(k).  They put cookie into it, AND made a really good peppermint bark with lots of mint in the chocolate.  Something about the cookie really makes the whole thing better.  I don't know whether it has some salt in it, though it seems to, or whether it's just the texture of the cookie bits.  Regardless, this is now what I'm aiming for.

When ikyoto and I make bark again this year, this is *my* target.

</lj></lj>

I know that New Year's resolutions are all the rage, but I've got a more natural caesura coming right now: I've truly finished several projects at work which were demanding occasional revisions to my schedule; I went on my first proper vacation in a year; the season has changed; and a month is a good time period for a small-scale resolution. So:

1. Chocolate Gifting!  I've lost my professional workspace-in-waiting, because Lonelyville Coffee has closed.  So it will be a while longer before I can take my chocolate-fashioning Pro.  However, two years ago, I offered chocolates for people for gifting.  I'll take orders over the next couple of weeks, then make a lot of chocolates, give some out myself and make nice gift sets for other people.  It was fun before, even if it was only a few actual orders.  Good practice, too!  Expect to see a post on this soon.

 

2. It's time to decaffeinate.  For the last two years I've been doing this after each major project that I completed.  It's been hard to keep to that since this spring, when I started getting projects overlapping.  Mornings were just never easy, which made me want to make them easier.  Now, though, I think I have a calm period.  Also, the coffeeshop that I could go to halfway through my park walk on the way to the subway has closed.  No more free mochas.  So: tea time!  I'll do what I've done before, which is to cut back to tea in place of coffee, then back to herbal tea.  Dark chocolate is a given, so the decaffeination can only go so far, but I can take it that far-- and it's nice when I'm back to not getting headaches when I go without, and nice when I don't feel muzzy in the morning without.  I'd even go so far as to say that it makes being a morning person easier NOT to be dependent on coffee.

 

3. File-clearing!  I've got a lot of boxes of stuff that I vaguely feel I have to deal with, but don't have any specific action for: old utility bills, cool articles, things I want to send to people, and likely-junk-mail that came at a time where I couldn't deal with it.  I'm sick of this all lining the walls of my office and weighing on my mind, so it's time to clear it all, box-by-box.  Free time between now and the holidays, while always in short supply, should be sufficient to do this if I'm diligent and agressive.

 

4. I'd still like to do the 100 pushups thing, and I'm just about over the debilitating RSI of the last two months.  I'm pretty sure that it started with a bad mouse-and-keyboard setup at work, and was exacerbated by my work schedule.  Then it continued, embarrassingly, because I was playing "The World Ends With You" on DS, and I get way too into it and tense up.  That's done, now, so I think I'm recovering.  
    

This is not a Big Issue in any respectable sense of the term. However, it's a simple little method/recipe with some easy chemistry behind it. And about half of the baristas (m. barristers?!) that I've encountered have not been taught either the method or the science behind it.

The Making of a Mocha: Better Living Through Emulsion

When you make a drink involving chocolate, you face a classic problem: oil and water don't mix. Because of that, neither do fats or fat-soluble materials (like cocoa solids or cocoa butter) and suspensions (like coffee). If you put chocolate in water, you get wet chocolate. If you put melted pure chocolate into hot water, you get blobs of chocolate in water. Ew.

To, quite literally, 'bridge the gap', you need an emulsifier. An emulsifier is a chemical that's got a hydrophilic end and a hydrophobic end. An emulsifier either bonds the water and the fats or at least disrupts the tendency of the two to slide past each other for long enough to make a smooth mixture. Milk is full of emulsifiers (lecithin). Non-dairy creamers, and all but the highest-end solid chocolates, and many other things have soy lecithin, because it is by far the cheapest alternative.

Knowing this explains a bunch of things, like why some hot cocoas demand that you put them in hot milk, while others allow water-- you need an emulsifier, and they've either given you one in the form of dried milk or lecithin, or they need you to provide one with your own milk.  Milk doesn't just make chocolate taste better, it makes it smoother and mixable with water.

Temperature figures in here, though I'm not entirely sure how.  Perhaps it facilitates the mixing, perhaps it can actually disable the emulsification process?  I'm not sure, except to note that it's better to do the emulsification step when things are hot.

What this means for the baristas in my life

Now. What this means is: there IS a proper way to make a mocha, or a hot chocolate, or a hot cocoa, and especially a cold version of any of these.  There is an order, and if you rearrange these steps, you get something chunky, watery, and not worth the multiplier they apply to the cost of their regular coffee.

1. combine chocolate and an emulsifier.  This could mean making a chocolate syrup that has emulsifiers in it (like Starbucks does), or it could mean mixing chocolate and hot milk first.
2. mix the chocolate liquid, hot, with coffee or water.  This is fairly straightforward ... but so often not done!
3. (optional) : Chill the with ice, or cool milk, or cream, or whatever.

If you put chocolate into coffee, even hot coffee, then put cool milk in, it won't mix as well, and is likely to come out uneven, or with the chocolate settled to the bottom, since it didn't properly mix before it cooled down.  If you put chocolate in the cup, then ice, then coffee, you will pretty certainly have a cup of iced coffee with chocolate-on-the-bottom.  If it was solid chocolate, it'll even still be chunky!  If you drizzled chocolate syrup all over the sides of the glass and filled the bottom, then put in the ice, then the coffee ... again with the chocolate-on-the-bottom.

I've had all of those within the last month.  Yes, this means I drink mochas too often.  Yes, it means that I'm extremely fortunate to have the luxury of ranting about something like this.  Okay, okay, so life is awesome.  But it would be even more awesome if all my mochas were smooth.

ETA: Emulsion is relevant in straight coffee-making as well.  Here's a really excellent page on different brews of coffee, with a bunch about emulsion in espresso -- along with the best espresso-vs-expresso analysis I've seen.

Breakthrough! I HAVE A KITCHEN!

Some friends of mine run a wonderful coffeeshop near my new neighborhood, and last year I made a website for them. It's a great shop, they're wonderful, and now that I'm a short walk away, I've been visiting quite a bit. They've even offered to sell my chocolates once I'm legal to sell them.

WELL, stella_art asked the question that I hadn't been able to-- whether I could use their certified facilities on occasion. YES! Since the space is small, and hard on the dining area, I'll need to do any work outside of their hours, but that's probably manageable, and about the schedule that I was working in my old apartment anyway.

So now I need to get my food handling cert, and ... I can make chocolate! I can even do the course (but not the test?) online. A ridiculous LJ Poll post (locked) for my business name is forthcoming probably early next week.

Whenever I set down a video game for a while, I get better at it. This has come up with almost every game I've played. If I get stuck in Mega Man or Final Fantasy, feeling like I've paced back and forth over the same ground a hundred times; or if I've played and played and played Tetris or Puzzle Quest and just can't beat a certain challenge; I set the game down, usually in frustration, occasionally because something else took my attention. When I come back, weeks or even months later the obstacle evaporates, the challenge is simple, or the exit from the dungeon in plain sight.

I've seen this recently in Tetris DS, which I've picked back up, but I've also just seen it in my chocolate-making. I've been forced into hiatus for several months now by craziness everywhere else-- an office move, working two jobs in one, planning a wedding, and preparing for a summer with only three weekends at home in as many months. And when I came back to chocolate finally ... I'd levelled up.

This latest round I'm mostly retreading old ground --herb and spice-related ganaches-- and so I tried to innovate in technique and productivity. I've prepared more of my ingredients ahead of time. I dug out the tools I needed, and continually cleaned the ones I'd used so that I could use them again on a whim. I used the equipment more freely, tossing out bowls to catch drippings, stretching plastic wrap to protect against condensation on things coming out of the fridge, and cutting parchment paper to whatever called for it. In the past I've been parsimonious with my supplies, but this time around I used what was needed when it was needed, and cleaned it afterward.

The difference has been tremendous. Instead of feeling like I'm navigating chaos, this time it felt like I was conducting an orchestra. I was always busy, every second, and the hours flew by as i worked (this is the third night I've seen 2 or 3 roll around), but it was all in line and all toward the right ends.

Okay, okay, enough introspection. Here's what I tried new this time:

• marbling. I saw some neat chocolates in some shops which had swirls of white chocolate in with the dark coating. After a few autopsies, I decided they'd been done by painting or swirling white chocolate on the inside of the mold before pouring the dark (or vice versa). I tried it myself, and got some neat effects. One tedious point: you don't have to temper the white chocolate, but it really helps. On the second batch, I just melt-tempered the white, trying to keep it cool enough that it never lost its temper. Hubris! That technique is difficult with dark, and nigh impossible with white, and thus on a couple of the second batch, the white stayed behind in the mold when the chocolate popped out.
• larger batches. I got a lot of chocolate, and tempered enormous batches of over a pound at a go. I'd stop the temperer, fill a vessel with half, keep the rest warm in the machine, and put the remainders back in. Brilliant, and it meant I made all I could each time.
• OMG disposable pastry bags. samgrrrl gave me a bunch of them last year, and this time I decided to use them freely. Every ganache went in one, and I binder-clipped the open end (twist tie the back) to seal for storage. I also put the tempered chocolate into a pastry bag to pipe it into the molds, and though it felt wasteful at first it was AWESOME. I was much more precise than when pouring the chocolate from the bowl, wasted less around the mold, and made vastly less of a mess (from trying to clean up the extra). I'm sold. I can probably do the mold-piping with a reusable pastry bag, but the disposables are PERFECT for storing ganache between batches.
• shaking always. Chocolate has a magic property that I've not yet seen properly described. If you have a vessel of melted chocolate, perhaps heaped up or poured into a mold, hold the vessel at the edges, and shake tiny shakes. Make each shake as small as you can, and as fast as you can. After five or six vibrations, the chocolate will settle, form a smooth glossy surface, all air bubbles will rise to the surface, and the mold will be perfect. It's completely magical, and the closest I've seen it described is with the bare instruction, "tap the mold a couple of times to shake loose air bubbles".
• marzipan. I've done some marzipan squares before, but this time I next-leveled it and won. I kneaded flavors in --grenadine in one, orange liqueur in another, and another plain-- then rolled them out into sheets between disposable chopsticks on the sides, which kept my rolling height constant. I stacked the sheets with a thin layer of chocolate between, chilled it, cut into perfect squares, and am dipping them tomorrow. When done it will be a confection that will ensure that my fianceé does not get cold feet before the wedding. They are works of art.

Okay, bed calls, and another batch in the morning before work. Whee!

crypticpress pointed me to a Han Solo in Carbonite chocolate bar. What could make that better? IT IS A HOW-TO, that's how.

The world may not be prepared for an emsariel armed with the secret techniques of mold-making.

It has been a few batches since my last chocolate post, and marionv encouraged me the other night by saying that she was really enjoying my chocologue. So here we go.

I made a big batch of chocolates for the holiday season, and enjoyed having a sizeable collection to distribute and sell. The really good ones went to stella_art's purchased collection, and the almost-theres got given out, mostly to my office and to apartment visitors. That worked pretty well. I then made a few batches in hopes of getting Valentine's Day batches out to people, but scheduling and weak discipline lost me that goal. I blogged about that in despair, but with more time and perspective, it looks better than it did.

I rounded out the batches that I posted about before --fresh mint in milk choc, Rosemary, Lavender, Coffee, and Nibby Madness-- with a couple of liqueurs: Bauchant, which is a milder (and much cheaper) Grand Marnier, and amaretto (Disarrono, of course). The last few ganaches were all very soft and required molding, which increases the challenge and time exponentially. This time, I tried to make the ganaches firmer by using the firm recipe and increasing the chocolate content, and mostly succeeded. I then rolled them, and they're still soft enough that they darken their powder coatings, so I'll have to figure out something to do about that, but they do hold their shape.

I'm beginning to ramble, so here's a pic of the latest batch ( behind the cut )

Things I learned from this round:

• I need to clean my molds more thoroughly. I've been babying them so that I don't scratch them up or leave soap in the nooks and crannies, but I think trace cocoa butter is remaining through the soapy rinses, and screwing up the temper on the next round-- that's why the round coffee chocolates in the picture look marbled.
• molded chocolates take a while even if you're good at them. I still haven't figured out how to get the chocolate to cool enough to make the shell without cooling enough to require re-tempering.
• For the time being, I need to make-then-offer. This attempt to make-to-order didn't work because of time and skill.
• The rosemary worked, and the mint-in-milk worked, and I didn't think either would.
  

Today is ending on a high note.

I've been reading about Blue Monday, and how last week is supposed to be the most depressing of the year as the weight of the darkness of the year, the cold, broken New Years Resolutions, holiday overspending and overeating all come home to rest. This was quite a surprise! Snow and cold have a bracing and invigorating effect on me, almost every time, and this week has been no exception. I have been too busy this week with work and too preoccupied, separately, with staying warm to ruminate unhealthily. And now it is snowing, not just the dusting we've awoken to on scattered mornings in the last few weeks but big, alley-filling flakes which show in the streetlights outside my window. Thanks to jlh for calling immediately after leaving the apartment to tell me. I don't think she knows how giddy snow makes me, and she called anyway.

So today is ending on a high note. I was only mildly productive today and that can really get me down-- it's usually a failure of discipline when a weekend passes quietly. I was going to make a flurry of chocolates today, but wound up playing Avatar on the Wii for longer than I intended, and a short night had me groggy much of the day. Then I made dinner, a successful veggie Shepherd's Pie from the Low-Fat Moosewood. So tonight is only about getting ganaches ready for rolling and coating tomorrow, and while that's something, it's not what I intended for the day.

However, I do have a collection's worth of ganaches, especially if I end up with time to make one or two more tomorrow. Input on the last call for requests was enthusiastic but unfocused-- I have my freedom for tastes with only single preferences for 'not coffee' and the Lady Grey. That and my latest curiosities makes a collection: Herbs in the middle of winter. Lavender in dark choc, fresh mint in milk choc, Lady Grey tea in dark choc, coffee for thems that wants it, rosemary in soft dark choc, and the madcap nibby one that went over so well before. If I can then also make a few liqueur truffles, all the better-- orange (Bauchant), lychee, and amaretto (mit almond) are the top of the list.

So, per samgrrrl's suggestion: poll! This isn't strictly an order, but if you are interested in a $20 assortment, I'll do my best to arrange it to your request. It'll depend on how much of each I can make. Fill in the number of each flavor you'd like in an assortment.

Poll #916045 Want a piece of the (chocolate) action?
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

Lady Grey

Lavender

Fresh Mint

Rosemary

Double-chocolate with Cocoa Nibs

Coffee

Bauchant (like Grand Marnier)

Lychee

Amaretto with Almond

Other from the site?

I'm working up to another heavy-duty round of chocolate making, and I'd love to cater to my lovely friends. We're within range of Valentine's Day, and anything made in this round will easily keep until then. Failing that, I just want to make stuff-- so that people say yum, so that I get practice, so I have more to give out.

So tell me what you want! It's easier for me to make people happy and put together sets in certain quantities, so check out this page from my infant chocolate site, then discuss here!

On Sunday I got to hang out with the wonderful folks at Lonelyville Coffee in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn, and they gave me some great advice on how to get certified for food handling, registered as a business, etc. I think I have a plan, and though it costs, it's manageable.

But I need a name before I can get very far with it. So far the list is not very good. Brainstorm time!

• Priceless Chocolates
• Scott Price Chocolates - boooooring. This only works if I have a fancy french name like Jacques Torres, or Michel Cluizel, or Guittard.
• Scottolates - UM?
• Ali says I should just admit that the name will eventually incorporate "grendel". My problem is that it conjures images of ridiculous hairy beasts, albeit ones torn apart by poetry. Not very conducive to savoring dessert.
• Ermaldrine Chocolates - some of my flist will have a field day with this; the rest won't know how to pronounce it.

... Little help?

There won't be too many entries about chocolate for a while after this, honestly. SO I got my first commission for chocolate. I can honestly say that I have sold chocolates that I made! Yay!

There are a few things that are very dodgy about considering this the start of a business, though. My commissioner, stella_art, is a good friend, good enough to offer a fair price. Bespoke-like commission is not a very smart way to make chocolates unless you have somewhere to sell the extra, as one can't really make batches small enough to satisfy just a commission. And there are no prospects for further commissions in the future, even from this.

However, it is a step. Stuff I make is good enough for other people to give as gifts. ^_^ And I made this reasonable by tailoring what I could offer to the recipes that I was interested in trying or had made already. It turned out well. Each of the truffles from Cookie Day were available --cardamom, five spice, mint buttercreme--, plus:

• Double chocolate ganache with cocoa nibs in dark chocolate coating, a refinement of an earlier experiment. It went *very* well, and I think I've almost got it down.
• Coffee ganache in dark chocolate. This ganache far exceeded my taste expectations, but because of an error with the cream, it is liquid. So I filled molds with it rather than dipping truffles.
• lavender/vanilla ganache in milk chocolate. Straight out of a recipe book I have, these turned out quite well except that they, too, were too liquid. Again, I filled molded chocolates with them and they worked. They do, however, remind everyone of your grandmother's soap, because the lavender taste is strong and where but the French countryside and grandma's bathroom do you encounter lavender like that?

I have some extras of the whole set, which I'd love to sell. There has been a bit too much experimentation lately for me to write the lot off as freebies, but we'll see. This is an expensive hobby, but could be a decent business; I'm just caught in the middle still.

Another thought is that I think I know enough recipes now to arrange collections if I tried. For instance, there's a floral/herbal theme with cardamom, lavender, fresh mint, lychee, rosemary, and rose; there's a spice set with five spice, cardamom, cinnamom, coffee, and rosemary; there are the common liquors with rum, grand marnier, kahlua/coffee, and the uncommon lychee; and there's the canonical coffee, dark chocolate, peppermint, milk chocolate. I can't bring myself to work with gianduja yet, though a canonical set should have that.

After thinking about it for about eight months, I finally made Lady Grey truffles. One key factor was discovering that Tealuxe sells Lady Grey as a loose tea. They call it "Blue Flower Earl Grey" as I suspect Twinings owns "Lady Grey", but some searching shows that it is the same thing-- Earl Grey with particular variety of bergamot oil and then Blue Mallow flower.

As several experiments have proved, making ganache with loose tea is much, much better than with bagged tea. Teabags don't allow enough circulation, and so steep too lightly. De-bagging the finely cut tea, though, results in too strong an infusion and it's much harder to strain out the tea afterward. So finding loose Lady Grey, and a regular supplier for it, was key.

I followed a simple recipe, as I am out on Cape Cod in a minimalist kitchen without my snazzy tools and staples. I tried a regular ganache with semi-sweet Baker's Chocolate and some butter, and that turned out perfectly. I don't have the supplies to temper (i.e. a thermometer, at least), nor do I have cocoa powder or enough of a need to buy a whole can, so I shaved some of the Baker's and rolled them in that. That worked fairly well, but next time I will use the roughest grater I can find. Shaving finely creates a fine powder which covers but doesn't really protect the ganache. They'll still mush a bit. I tried the largest holes on a cheese grater instead of a rasp and the resulting shavings are both more elegant (curls rather than dust) and form a more solid coat.

I then tried the same recipe with white chocolate, and was again confirmed in my distaste for white chocolate. The first time I dropped the loose tea while straining it and had to hunt for the bits; the ganache also cooled too quickly and hence just didn't melt smoothly. I threw it out. The second try smoothed out, but even with 1/3 the butter the recipe called for, the resulting ganache was too gooey even after chilling in the freezer overnight to roll or, for that matter, to peel off the plastic wrap. It will become a soft filling, but even so the taste isn't great. As jlh said, "there's clearly something besides white chocolate there, but it's not clear what it is."

So I will be continuing to search for a non-cocoa filling medium that lets the taste of Lady Grey come through as tea.

Last year I made a wish list for a group of college friends with whom I exchange gifts annually. As I was getting into making chocolate, I put a bunch of related items on the list-- a chopper, some angled spatulas ... and a tempering machine. The last was a joke because the cheapest model is well beyond my means. At this year's Chocolate Show I went by the booth for Chocovision, makers of the tempering machines, and refined my crazy dreams-- if I were going to get a tempering machine, perhaps someday when I had made some money already making chocolates, I would want the next model up, which is a third again as expensive as the cheapest model. That model is pretty serious-- it could hold chocolate in temper for hours or even overnight, it lets you change the temperature to within a few degrees, and so on through minutes of feature descriptions that bore all but the obsessed.

I forgot to update that wish list, though, and my friends had worked through the reasonable items. At this year's gift exchange they kept me on pins and needles throughout the exchange, joking that they'd gotten me nothing, only to hand me at the end ... not just a tempering machine, but the model that I'd silently decided I wanted rather than the one I linked to.

So! Awesome! I have friends who are resourceful, kind, and know me well.

Seriously, this may be the difference between me being able to try making chocolates on a semi-professional basis and having to keep it as an expensive hobby for another few years. With this machine and my other accrued equipment, I could probably spend a carefully-planned single day each month making chocolates to sell for the remainder of the month. That level of time commitment (and money for renting a certified kitchen) might be manageable for me. Without the tempering machine, I don't think I could make quality chocolates in sufficient quantity and variation in a single day.

So what did I make yesterday at Cookie Day? Mint Creme filled chocolates and (with ikyoto) Peppermint Bark. Both turned out quite well, I think, and were possible in the midst of 12 people all baking in a small apartment due to the assistance of the tempering machine, which took the white chocolate we gave it, brought it to temper, and didn't bother us again until we were ready. White chocolate, which I find harder to temper! Yay!

I did learn several lessons, despite the incredible luxury of the tempering machine's help:

• while it is okay to put mint extract into tempered chocolate (since it is not water-based), you must still be careful that the extract isn't so cool that it makes the chocolate lumpy.
• even with a machine which maintains temper, you need to prepare truffle centers ahead of time to avoid letting things cool or dry
• chocolate is quite expensive if you don't know exactly what brand to get at what store
• when chocolate is properly tempered, it's quite fluid and needs more time to set in molds.

Peppermint Bark, btw, is ridiculously easy. Melt and temper dark chocolate, and pour it into molds (which could be bread pans lined with plastic wrap). Cool it while you prep the rest. Put some candy canes into a ziplock bag and crush them. Temper white chocolate and put in some peppermint extract until it tastes good despite being white chocolate. Pour the white chocolate on top of the dark and sprinkle on the candy canes. Cool. Cut. Yay! You've saved yourself ~50% on Trader Joes' bark even if you use really really fine chocolate.

I've been "getting serious" about my chocolate-making aspirations, but it has been a long time since I LJed about it. I've learned a few things, though, and they're worth recording for posterity (i.e. so that I can forget them almost instantly and make headspace for Avatar). I've just now put three large batches of truffles into the refrigerator. Each of them is about 70%-80% to where I'd like to be in my truffle-making. They look good. They taste quite good. And I can recreate them or better reliably. Rock on.

( Double Chocolate Truffles and the One True Ganache Recipe )

( Five Spice truffles and Cardamom truffles )

( Other secrets to success: forks, piping, buttons, and movies. )

Finally: no, I didn't make the strawberries in my icon. They actually freak me out a little bit, because while they are awesomely made and require skill (and tempering machines) I can only imagine having, they also look like little fat men whose heads have exploded leaving only little green tatters behind. Boom. That's what happens at quarter-to-4 when you're hopped up on chocolate.

Today, samgrrrl and oneangryrabbit took me to The Chocolate Show, and it was excellent. This was my first year, so everything was new.

I stopped by the L. A. Burdick booth to pay my respects, as their Cambridge store is where I got interested in chocolate in a serious way. They, like many other exhibitors, were interested in HotChA. HotChA was a great conversation starter. I found a number of other places that might be good to visit this year, including Payard New York, INTenT New York, Tribeca Treats (which is opening a retail space on Jan. 3rd and may feature hot chocolate)

Quick notes and links on many booths:

For my last birthday, Alison gave me a sampler set of chocolates from around the world. Pralus, the maker of that set, was exhibiting near where we entered. I found Chocolatier Magazine, which may focus too (for me) broadly on desserts in general, but is worth checking out.

DeBrand had a great booth with a set of cinnamon truffles that I am going to have to get for my father sometime soon. Their catalog is pretty great, too. They have an $84 "S'more Tray" gift pack, though... please!

Cosmic Chocolate, from Walnut Creek CA, had some very beautiful truffles on display that I think would fit in an Apple Store aesthetically. John & Kira's, out of Philadelphia, makes neat truffles from Valrhona chocolate. They also seem to be doing some good responsible business-- working with area schools, organic farmers, and coffee cooperatives. Românicos Chocolate had some fairly tasty truffles with the catch: "38 calories per truffle! NO Preservatives NO Butter NO Extra Sugar". I'm wary of desserts like that because, really, what's left?! Their samples were reasonably tasty, though. SerendipiTea had a nice "Once Upon A Time" tea with cocoa and mint in it.

Chocopologie, associated with Knipschildt Chocolatier, had a neat product-- a set of full-sphere molds with one set of hollow chocolates in them. The idea is that you'd fill the hollow chocolate shells, then dip them. I noted that you could probably re-mould another round with their nice plastic moulds, but that seemed to be more than the guy behind the table was ready to be asked about. I met the SweetRiot people, and they were a lot of fun, as expected.

Cocoa Locoa was another possible Real Find. They're a new (started Thursday!) New York chocolatier started by Karalee LaRochelle. They make truffles, but also offer a "Bespoke Chocolate Service", which includes chocolates customized to your taste after an interview. I'm curious about their wonderful-sounding mojito truffle. While the Bespoke service looks expensive, I'm going to talk to them about HotChA.

I stopped by the table for the Institute of Culinary Education, picked up their newspaper flyer, and met Ruth, a recent graduate who makes desserts from the far side of Prospect Park (Roxy B'Sweets). We had a great networking session about resources, from nice cheap bulk chocolate at Sahadi's in downtown Brooklyn to possible coffeeshop retailers and whether tempering machines are worth it.

Right now, they're not. The tempering machines on (significant) sale at the Chocovision aisle are the standard for hobbyists and demi-professionals (and probably professionals), but when the base model starts at $350 it's still out of range of my hobby. I did buy a box of dipping forks from them, though, and I'm quite excited to use them.

My only purchase other than the admission was at the Guittard table, where I picked up a 5 kilo box of chocolate buttons (or buitton or something). That's 11 lbs, FTR, and should easily last me through the holidays. If I got it elsewhere, like through a distributor, that particular chocolate would've been ~$8/lb rather than the ~$4.50 I got it for (and which is within good chocolate range).

I'm not afraid to say it: I love Twinings' Lady Grey tea. And I think that it could make for a really nice filling for a (semi-sweet) chocolate. What I'm not sure about is how to make that happen. Perhaps you can help, dear flist.

I want to make a tea-flavored filling, and I'd like the taste of the tea to come through as loyally as possible. I'm not sure whether to do this through some sort of firm cream, a syrup, or even a gelatin. And I'm not sure which of those (or how to treat any of those) so that what comes through is the flavor of the tea, not the medium it's in. It's a delicate flavor, and putting it in something (even something with a milk flavor) might overwhelm it.

Gelatin with a tea base? Green tea chocolates often use a white chocolate ganache or something, but I think even that might overwhelm the lighter flavors in the tea. Perhaps there's a way to make a carmel without too much caramel taste, or to thicken simple syrup without caramelizing it? Admittedly, I will be wrapping the whole thing in regular chocolate, but I think keeping the tastes pure and separate until you chew it is a good idea.

Thoughts?

Anyone have any scuba gear?

I've been holed up in my apartment a lot lately, but am enjoying it after weeks of holiday travel. It is nice to curl up on a sunny couch and type-- here to my friends and flist, on some Christmas card-inspired renewed correspondances, and over on my various sites.

The last few weeks, despite the travel and not being around, have seen some nice creature comforts come into my life. I just took five minutes from my computer to toss a turkey burger into the Foreman Grill I got for signing up for a local bank account, covered it in Tonkatsu Sauce, and YUM. Last night ali_wildgoose and I installed some more shelves in the office and got some floor space back. The shelves also make the office much warmer by breaking up a big blank wall. We tossed up a few more posters and pictures we'd been meaning to hang, too.

I've been cooking and eating at home a lot more, too, and have enjoyed the pleasures of 'earning' my meal and having home-cooked food, too. Ali got a pasta-maker for Christmas and we've made some linguini. The grill has helped. There were cookies from the Cookie Collective, and the last of my CC truffles (fresh mint ganache in milk chocolate and cardamom ganache in dark chocolate) are just about gone. (Fortunately I did not eat even most of them, this time.)

Friends passed me some delightful Christmas presents that are providing good eating or will soon, too: two friends gave me the Vosges Collection Italiano, which lived up to its promise to 'deconstruct what you know about chocolate and its companions'. I have can now appreciate that not only can things like olive oil, balsamic vinegar, fennel pollen, sea salt, and taleggio cheese be put in chocolate, but sometimes they should be. tromboneborges fulfilled a wish of mine and passed me a chocolate chipper and offset spatulas for the next round of chocolate making, too. The chocolate chipper is especially timely-- after the CC truffles I let the milk chocolate cool in the double boiler and wound up with a 4" thick dome of well-tempered chocolate which will not respond well to my usual knife.

I have some slight sadness about not being out and about more. College friends are gathering in DC this weekend for birthday celebration, and Boston friends are holding about fifteen different sorts of gatherings right now. But after the last month of traveling, holidays, and hence expenses, it is nice to be home recouping financially for the new year. And I'm not merely recouping-- my local friends have certainly represented NYC properly. Friday I worked from my sister's place for the day; Friday night multitudes came over for gaming (incl. online friends akickinthehead, calloocallay, chibideath, goraina, jlh, samgrrrl, and yaytime); Saturday saw brunch with erinfinnegan, N, and epathamerkerson; and tonight I will be attempting a Bloody Kiss with the best of friends at my side.

Oh, new icon! Thanks for the link from thoroughbass. Now, back to FMA d20, from which I am determined to wring a project timeline and basic chapter pages by the end of the day.