Our chocolate culinary class at Calvary Baptist Church on 2/11 was awesome! We learned about the difference between tempered and untempered chocolate, how to fix chocolate if it seizes up and what the taste differences are between the cacao levels.
Chef Caroline exploded a chocolate covered balloon (to make a chocolate cup) before class ever started and spent the rest of the night covered in chocolate!
I was more successful with my demo chocolate cup, but it was so hot in the kitchen that the chocolate mousse separated. It looked a little funky, but it still tasted delicious.
Once class officially started, we met with a great group of people who were very patient with us as we got our six pan makeshift double boiler going. If you've never tried to melt six kinds of chocolate in two disposable pans, how do you even do chocolate??
We discussed the pros and cons of using baker's chocolate and the steps that would be necessary to make it set at room temperature (tempered) versus using Candy Melts or Candy Quick (which is not cheating, I learned, it is merely skipping the tempering steps as the chocolate is ready to go).
Did you know? There is no such thing as "white chocolate" as that would mean 0% cacao; "white chocolate" is a flavor that is added. I guess that explains why there's never any chocolate syrup in my white chocolate mochas...
We also learned how to dip candies, cookies, pretzels, and other assorted goodies into chocolate and let them sit. We pretty much dipped anything that was vaguely edible and wasn't nailed down, even the molded chocolate spoons!
Chef Caroline showed us how to use an ice cube tray to make super easy truffles that we could decorate as we went or partially decorate as we were making them!
We had so much fun and we're so glad we had so many people join us!
We still have a couple of class topics to be determined, what would you want to learn more about?
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