I’ve wanted to make a dark & white chocolate slab to call Zebra chocolate. This was my first attempt. It is interesting to look at, but not what I was going for. I think I can do better. I’ll have to develop a different technique. Maybe using a pastry bag? I should probably look at some photos of zebras! I don’t know if I will (eventually) make it a flavored concoction, or not. Maybe just getting really contrasting chocolates would [...]
I have been researching affordable chocolates today. I did order some more Bada Bing Bada Boom chocolate because it is tastie and easy to work with. But, it is a compound chocolate. I’d also like to get more familiar with what I am tempted to call “real” chocolate. The difference is that what I am calling real chocolate has cocoa butter in it. It is the cocoa butter that makes tempering chocolate so tricky. That leads me back to the [...]
Oh! Very Good! Inspired by Vosges Haut Chocolat, I mixed bacon into my 60% dark chocolate. I’d say there were about 2-3 slices of bacon which I cooked until completely crunchy. (95% Fat Free Turkey Bacon is my favorite!) Then I used my mini food processor to grind the bacon to a fine ground. I melted about 5 ounces of chocolate. I poured the melted concoction onto a sheet of textured plastic… Look what happened! It is textured! It came [...]
I came up with my first 2 recipe entries in the Jots & Tittles book. 1) Coconut Curry & Caramel in milk chocolate. It was pretty good. I’ll keep it in the line-up with some adaptations… maybe raisins instead of caramel. The milk chocolate wasn’t perfectly tempered. That was a disappointment. It was hazy. 2) Strawberry & Walnut in white chocolate. I used the freeze dried strawberries, which are slightly sour & crunchy, too. I was very pleased with this [...]
Some of the tools and supplies that I ordered have arrived. Here are some photos of my first round of experiments. I was fairly pleased with the items in the top photo. In the future I will try crushing the strawberry into powder. I think that will be more attractive. I was in a hurry. I’d like to let the chocolate drip more next time so the foot of the nugget is smaller. On the left is a 1/2 marshmallow [...]
I am overwhelmed by chocolate. The outrageous number of people making fine chocolates around the world is incredible. Visit the chocosphere.com website and stand in awe with me. •Bringing Fine Chocolates from Around the World to your Doorstep! They feature 49 chocolatiers from around the world, including my favorite: Vosges! Share on Facebook
Oh me, oh my… look what the Amateuer Chocolatier would like to buy. It isn’t even that I want all the chocolate. I love the packaging! Pralus Pyramide des Tropiques “A very special dark chocolate treat (or gift!). Ten 50-gram bars of Pralus’ single-origin 75% chocolate, each festively wrapped then bound in a cube. The stack contains one bar of each of the following varieties: Papouasie, Indonésie, São Tomé, Trinidad, Venezuela, Tanzanie, Ghana, Madagascar, Colombie, & Equateur. Plan your around-the-world chocolate-tasting tour today!” I saw this [...]