Thursday, July 30, 2009

Chocolate Overload

Last week was a big chocolate-making extravaganza, the occasion being a surprise treat for Emily's birthday. Her sister-in-law Katie went to visit them in Switzerland this week, so I made the chocolates and then drove them up to her in Tacoma before she left. July is not a great month to ship chocolate overseas! Also not a great month to make them unless you have good air conditioning, which I don't. But I survived by pointing our portable AC into the kitchen all week, and it turned out OK. I don't know if that would have even worked this week, with temps at 106 outside.

After much trial and error (and tantrums) I finally got a pretty decent handle on molding the chocolates. I think the biggest mistake with the previous batch was letting them set up in a warm kitchen. When I put them in the wine cooler right away, they set up nicely with no streaks and released from the molds easily. Some were shinier than others, though. I also got better results with tempering the chocolate a little bit longer. Before I figured all this out, though, I had to throw away a whole batch of passion fruit chocolates. Sorry, Pat! The filling was kind of grainy anyway...still need to work on that recipe.

I made Jasmine tea chocolates, recipe from Michael Recchiuti's cookbook. The ganache was a mixture of dark and milk chocolates:

Then my own recipe for strawberry:

The filling could have been more intensely strawberry flavored, so for my marionberry ganache I increased the berries and decreased the cream. Much better:
I put a bright pink lustre dust in the molds, and it didn't show at all on the dark chocolate. It did look very nice on the milk chocolate for the strawberry, though.

I have finally perfected my key lime chocolate...better than Godiva! The trick was to use key lime concentrate, which I got from the Perfect Puree of Napa Valley. The green lustre dust also looked particularly nice.

One of the chocolates I really liked from Recchiuti was his Star Anise & Pink Peppercorn (milk chocolate). The recipe said to steep the spices for 5-8 minutes, and I unfortunately left them in the cream for 8 minutes. Yikes...way too strong licorice flavor. I can only stand a bite or two. I think you need to be a big licorice fan to appreciate them...hopefully Mom will take them off my hands.

And the last batch was a rose caramel in white chocolate with a dark chocolate base, also Recchiuti's recipe. That was my favorite from his store. The recipe called for rose geranium oil, but I already had rose oil, which was expensive, so I used that instead. It was good, but of course I'm curious to taste the difference with the rose geranium (can't remember from way back in February). Yet another pricey ingredient for me to invest in. My batch turned out to be a tasty confection, but I have to say the overly salty salt caramels from the previous week were more addictive to me. I think salt caramels are my new favorite thing.

Of course, I also really like a strawberry/milk chocolate combo. So I finally tracked down a decent dried strawberry, Stoneridge Orchards. The result tasted just like the ones from Godiva...delicious!
I also felt creative and decided that freeze dried strawberries mixed with milk chocolate might be good. I was right! They have a nice crunch.
I think I would like to try them with a 45% dark chocolate, though. Which is naturally 2 or 3 times more expensive than the 38% Callebaut milk that I use.

All in all, it was a productive week with lots of good learning experiences. One of which was, I should have bought a much bigger wine cooler for chocolate storage! But the one I have was certainly better than nothing, and it has been a lifesaver these past few weeks. Now I need to eat my way through what is left of the most recent chocolates, so that I can make another batch of salt caramels.

10 comments:

Karen said...

YUMMMM!!! Save some of the leftovers for me!!! I especially love the looks of the Marionberry!! You know..... My birthday is coming up next week (hint, hint!!!)

Will we see you guys at Matt's party Sunday?? I sent you an evite!!!

Patrick said...

I owe you an apology. I may have cursed your name when I didn't see any passion fruit chocolates in the box.

Sorry.

Amanda said...

Apology accepted! Those passion fruit chocolates were such a disaster that they received a special tantrum all of their own. And I emailed Katie that maybe I wouldn't have any chocolates to bring to her after all. Fortunately, things turned around the next day...

Patrick said...

I think you need to spend more time working on the passion fruit chocolates. Feel free to FedEx some to me if you need a second opinion on how they turned out.

Amanda said...

Not to worry...I've got a large jar of passionfruit concentrate in the freezer just waiting to be used. And as soon as you send me the money to overnight fedex to Switzerland, then I'll get right on it! Otherwise, maybe if you're nice to me you'll get a birthday treat...

Patrick said...

The odds of me being nice to you for 4 months are slim. I guess I shoud just send you the cash.

Amanda said...

I thought so!!

evil cake lady said...

Wow! I especially liked the way you, uh, topped the strawberry milk chocolate truffles. (Is topped the right word? I don't know anything about proper chocolate lingo.) And the marionberry filling! That looks delicious.
I really admire you attempting chocolates in last week's heat. I was dying, you were busy making chocolates! You are dedicated!!

Amanda said...

Thanks, ECL! And now that I've gained yet a few more pounds with that latest adventure, I may have to lay off for awhile. :( I've said that before, though...I'll probably make ten desserts next week!

Anonymous said...

I would have sworn that the title of your post was "Chocolate Overlord"...

Cristiane