Week 41 Moulded Chocolates

Finally it is time to start the next stage which is also the final stage. It is about chocolate work and sugar work. First week back, we started with chocolate. Michelle is back and I am very happy that she will be teaching us chocolate and sugar work. She is an amazing chocolatier herself and she is generous with her knowledge. 

After a whole term of theory, I almost forgot how to put on my full uniform. Haha. The first day was a full demo day where we were shown how to temper chocolate. I have to say there were so much to learn about chocolate. The amount of theory on it itself was overwhelming. I felt a little intimidated by this "food for the gods" but I was also very excited about it too.

Well on practical day, we were to make chocolates with fillings in it. We made salted caramel, raspberry ganache filling and another one is a buttered fondant with liquer in it. 

First off, we need to make the fillings and chill it so that it is ready to be filled into the chocolates. 

Raspberry and cream to be boiled 

Salted Caramel filling

 Then we melted the couverture chocolate over a double boiler but had to make sure that the temperature doesn't exceed 50˚C. It is harder than I thought. I think chocolate work is also about learning to be patient. You just cant rush it and since it was my first attempt with chocolate, obviously our chocolate exceeded that temperature. Well then we had to cool it for much longer than we planned. Got to learn to be more patient. 

Tempering chocolate, I dont even know how to explain it. All I can say is you heat it up to 45˚C to 50˚C then cool it back to 27˚ to 29˚C then warm it back up to 30˚C to 31˚C. 

The moulds are all polished with cotton ball before the chocolate goes in. This is to give it the shine. A tip that Michelle taught us was to brush the chocolate into the mould first before pouring the chocolate into it. That reduces the air pockets. Then the messy part was to pour the chocolate into the moulds and tap it out again. This makes the shell of the chocolates. This has to be done quickly so that the temperature of the chocolate is still at 31˚C and not too cool. Otherwise the chocolate will set too quickly. 

Chocolate is brushed into mould

Tempered Chocolate ready to be poured into the mould

After the shells have set, then we filled it with the prepared fillings. I like the salted caramel and the raspberry filling more than the fondant, so I only made 2 fondant fillings and the rest were the yummy ones. 

Make sure not to overfill with the filling

 I was not too happy with my tempering as there were some streaks on the inside of the chocolate shells. It is so hard to temper so little chocolate. We were given 300g for 2 people, so meaning I had only 150g to temper. Once the chocolate touched the marble slab, it got cooler than the wanted temperature. Plus with zero experience with chocolate, I was slow and that made it harder. 

Michelle said I could give it another go, so I quickly grabbed the opportunity and melted another batch of chocolate. This time, I wasn't going anywhere, I was standing there with my thermometer and checking the temperature every minute. Once the temperature got to 47˚C, I took it off the heat and poured 2/3 on the marble slab. Michelle showed me the technique on how to cool the chocolate and I gave it a go. Then quickly poured the cooled chocolate back into the warm chocolate and once the temperature got to 31˚Cm it was ready. 

Filling in with Chocolate

There weren't any more of those deep moulds, so I was left with the shallow ones, I got a disney cartoon character mould. I still practised how to do the shells before actually filling it up with more chocolate. Then with the rest of the tempered chocolate, we did the back of the filled chocolates. I think it is called backing off the chocolate. The chocolate had to be slightly warmer than 31˚C, ideally 32˚C to 33˚C for backing off because the filled chocolates were a bit colder and it won't stick on if the chocolate has already set. 

Everything has to be done rather quickly. Pour the chocolate on, scrape off the excess with the spatula and not to mess with it too much. Then chill to set. 

Backing off

 Once it is set, we knock them out on a baking sheet that has a tea towel underneath. The moment of truth! They all just popped out beautifully, much to my surprise. Then the edges were trimmed off with a small knife. 

Yay! It is a success!

Popped out from moulds

My first batch of chocolate

Chocolates anyone?

It was so nice of Michelle to bring us packaging boxes for our finished products. I hope the school reimburses her. With some beautiful boxes and our chocolates looked like they were from the shops. Well, mine needed a bit more work done to it like some ribbons and labelling. 

Packaged Chocolates

 The disney ones had some air pockets in it, got to tap them more to release the air next time. Now, how does it taste? Hmm..... tasting time. It was lovely. It had the crisp snap of tempered chocolate and the couverture chocolate was a 53.8% cocoa mass which was dark and smooth. The filling was silky smooth and the flavour was beautiful. I gave some away to friends and took 10 of the filled ones home. After 2 days, they are all gone now. Can't wait till next week's lesson.

Plain Disney Chocolates

Raspberry filling chocolate

Vanilla Salted Caramel Chocolate