Pink Slip Gourmet: Tempermental, Are We?

Chocolate is many things to many people. It's delicious; it's heavenly; it's forbidden (only by those who wish a lifetime of sorrow in my opinion); it's a vice; it's dessert; it's breakfast. I could go on forever, but what I learned in Pastry on Monday was that at that precise moment in time, chocolate was a bit tempermental (pun intended). It's not as easy as it looks to temper chocolate and it's a whole lot messier when you don't know what you are doing. That is for sure.

We started with melted chocolate at 55 degrees. Celcius, thank you. And no, I won't convert that to Fahrenheit, not because I can't - because I swear I can. It's just that, and let's be honest here, I need Google to do it for me and I'm protesting Google at the moment. Why? Well, it's France and if I truly want to immerse myself in the culture I ought to protest something, right? :)

Chef demonstrates how to temper chocolate the old school way - using marble.

He does this process a couple times with a third of the 55 degree chocolate.

And then scrapes it back into the bowl with the rest of the chocolate.

After stirring all the chocolate together, he takes the temp. He is trying to get to 28-29 degrees C. Then, he will bring the temperature back up to 31-32 degrees C and the chocolate will be ready to use. We all did this (with varying levels of success - more on that later) and then made these awesome things...

Chocolate eggs.

Which take several coats.

And eventually turn out to be this!

Chocolate pieces for garnish are made using this "bicycle."

The chocolate is rolled and then

the pieces turn out like this. Tasty and pretty all at the same time.

Then Chef pulled out the big guns - the "guitar" to make bon bons.

This is a ganache we made last week that was infused with cinnamon and star anise. Just between me and you, though, I didn't put the anise because I'm not a huge fan so mine is just cinnamon.

I need to invest in one of those "guitar" things. It makes the most perfect little pieces.

Which we dipped into the tempered chocolate.

Believe me, it's hard not to eat them all right away! I had to keep reminding myself that there was no more room in my chef's pants for me to eat the bon bons all afternoon in class.

The final product with a few attempts to make them look not so plain jane. Some succeeded, others not so much.

Frosty, Christmas trees, stars and apparently saws. I am hoping that the saw is a symbol of cutting down the Christmas tree and not some sick joke by a weirdo working at the mold company. I feel like you never know these days.

We also made "cigarettes."

Some people made fish.

Then Chef demoed the white chocolate. I think he thought it was a lost cause to have us try it at such a late hour. The damage we did to the kitchen, ourselves, and our neighbors with the dark chocolate was enough to keep us there cleaning for hours. He didn't dare throw white chocolate into the mix.

Much less cocoa butter mixed with coloring.

He took the color mixtures and painted on a piece of plastic.

Poured the tempered white chocolate onto it.

And went after it with the "bicycle."

Once chilled, it looked like this!

Below is a small glance into the mess we made and the trouble we ran into tempering chocolate for the first time.

Things seem to be going well.

And yet, I'm pretty sure there shouldn't be huge lumps like this in there. Never fear, Chef rescued me and soon my chocolate was smooth and lump free.