Birthday Time

Well, today was the Sabbath from baking and I enjoyed time at church and with my friends, the Sauters, who live in Bend.  These two weeks are the weeks of birthdays and I am thinking fondly of all of my friends and loved ones who have birthdays at this time. 

Bob Sauter's Birthday is August 31

Derek Sauter will be 22 on September 10

My mother, Nada Fluckiger, will be....??? on September 11

 

And Grace, my daughter, will be 20 on September 11

My brother and sister-in-law and my brother-in-law all have birthdays at the end of the month.  I spent some of the day preparing birthday treats.....it's a surprise!!  But happy birthday to those I love and care about.  Tomorrow the baking resumes and we will be making a surprise batch of croissants and filling and pastry for many savory pastries that I would like to feature in the bakery.

Let the baking begin....again!

I have loved spending the week learning better how to handle and temper chocolate, how to fill an decorate the molds, and create delicious fillings.  Today was the final day of filling a few chocolates and then we were back on to baking.  Here is a photo of what the chocolates look like when they are all filled in the mold and ready to be closed.  It can be very beautiful at each step if done right.  And what is also beautiful is the array of chocolates that you can create that make the candies look magical.

Gianduja chocolates with their peaks of filling that get tamped down with a finger dusted in cocoa powder
 

Here is the spread of chocolates for the week.
We used 40# of chocolate to make all of these.

I still have much to learn, but this was a fabulous beginning and enough to unleash my creativity.

We now move on to baking for the next week and I am very excited.  Today we started with apple strudel.  This is a mysterious pastry that I have long been interested in.  You make a dough and then stretch it so thin that you can read a book through it.  You then roll it up around the filling with crumbs and butter separating the layers and bake it.  It is an amazing treat and I am glad to add to my repertoire.  The filling can be apple, cherry, poppy seed, or savory items like mushrooms....yum yum.

Here is the strudel dough all pulled out with the filling on it

The dough is brushed with butter and sprinkled with bread or cake or praline crumbs

 After you have the strudel prepped with the butter and crumbs...you roll it up with the bedsheet that you have been working on.  You use the sheet to lift and roll the strudel because it is so thin and tender.  Once it is rolled up you can leave it straight or turn it into various shapes and freeze it just like that and bake it later.

Round strudel

Coiled strudel

 We baked off one strudel yesterday and here it is, dusted with powdered sugar and out of the oven.  It is very flaky and delicious, and I am ready to try this again.

Slice of Strudel

Apparently my teacher learned to make strudel in college when her Hungarian professor that lived upstairs was having a sleepless night, she would call Marda and say "You vanta make Strudel?"

We had another magic baking moment yesterday as my Marda taught me to make Pita bread.  One of her life's projects was helping the Chinese government make a pita factory that could produce one million pita breads per day.  The dough is very unique and the magic in the oven comes when you place this dough in, and the entire thing pops up into a flattened ball (then you know that the pocket has been created).  It takes only one minute and then you get them out of the super hot oven in and let them cool and deflate them later as you package.  If you have pita breads that do not inflate, you slice them up and make pita chips out of them.

These were awesome to make as you stand there watching through the oven window encouraging your breads to pop up and do what they are supposed to do.  We had great success yesterday, and I was glad to learn these.  After a good day of baking, I was invited to dinner with Marda and some of her friends here in Bend.  We had a delightful meal at a Peruvian restaurant and I cam home and flopped in bed.  A day of rest tomorrow will be wonderful.  I am still in baking heaven.

Confectionary Final Exam

Today we got to finish all the truffles we left partially done yesterday and get their second chocolate coat on and all dressed up for presentation.  It is important that candies are presented in a way that gives you a hint of the contents and it heightens the excitement to eat something beautiful.  So we are going to dress up all 400 truffles as we coat them the traditional second time.  This method is the traditional French method that my teacher has been teaching us.  However, there was one other confection waiting on the docket for today.  My teacher explained that we would also be making pate fruit.  These are wonderful French fruit candies that are made out of pure fruit puree or juice.  Their flavors are very intense and are a real tribute to the fruit that is used  They are only lightly sweet and fairly tangy inside and coated with granulated sugar on the outside.  One could consider them a cross between fruit leather, a gumdrop, and a Sourpatch Kid.  I think that they are one of the most sublime confections ever created, and was very excited to learn the technique.  She began to explain the methods and then told me that I will be making some of these treats, by making a reverse mold in corn starch...like sand mold for candles.  I have to make this impression in lightly packed cornstarch that we will then fill with the hot liquid fruit gels and let them sit for two days to set up and be ready for final treatment.  As I have mentioned before, Marda is a stickler for details and very high quality in the products that we make.  She also love to throw challenges my way which are very fun and teach me much.  So, here is a picture of the raspberry candies cooling in the cornstarch molds....very cool.

Made with Bill and Donna Pfeiffer's raspberries

The rest of the pate fruit will be made in molds dusted with cornstarch or in sheets and then cut into squares later.  We will not be finishing them for several days.  However, we also made Meyer Lemon pate fruit and here it is cooling in a pan and in some molds.  I am very excited to see these come out...more on this next week.

The main event of the day was to finish the truffles and here they are.

French Mint dipped in dark chocolate

Mexican Chocolate truffle (cinnamon and cayenne)

Pistachio White Chocolate (absolutely incredible if you like pistachio)

French Mint Praline candy bars

So we get to the afternoon and my teacher says..."Well we have time for one more, is there a flavor you want to try?"  So as the last special problem on the final exam test, we put together a Gianduja chocolate.  This is a special mixture of milk and white chocolate with hazelnut that is very popular in Italy.  It is a flavor that I am particularly fond of and I think it could be very popular.  So we mixed up a batch of filling, and then molded the chocolates in a special mold with a transfer sheet design and it will likely be featured at the bakery in Torrington eventually.  It is heavenly if you like hazelnuts.  It is hard to pick a favorite, but I think this is close. 

So today felt a little bit like a final exam.  I am pleased with all I have learned about the art of confections and chocolate this week.  Tomorrow we are back to baking, but these lessons from this class will be lifelong.  Thanks Marda.

A Truffle Teaser....Detention followed by Redemption

Well today, the lesson was all on truffles.  Those beautiful little chocolate confections that were originally designed to look like truffle fungi that are found wild and are dark black in color.  These culinary delights were traditionally foraged for in the woods by pigs.  In order to mimic the appearance of the truffle, the filling was traditionally dense and made of chocolate combined with cream.  There is a very specific technique to making truffles that keeps the filling smooth on the tongue without any grit or unmelted chocolate.  The truffles are then rolled in chocolate in the palm of your hand.....twice.  We did not finish today, but will have to finish in the morning.  This hand-rolling technique is a bit tricky because you want to evenly coat the truffle without a huge amount of extra chocolate and you want there to be enough to have a definite shell of chocolate on the truffle as well.  After the first coating sets up, you dip them again and decorate.  If the truffle filling is particularly soft, then you can pipe it into a bed of cocoa powder and let it harden up and then roll it in cocoa to help get that round shape without making a mess with the sticky filling.

Mexican Chocolate truffle filling rolled in cocoa and waiting to be dipped.

 

Truffles on trays...some still waiting for dipping (two more trays not pictured)

 

We made three kind of truffle fillings in all: French Mint, Mexican Chocolate, and Pistachio White Chocolate.  They are delicious, but learning does not come without a price.  The first batch of mint truffles that we made earlier this week had a bit of grain to the filling that you could feel on the tongue (many reasons for this to happen) and the chocolate shell was so thin that it was almost non-existent.  So the chocolate student had to redo his work and we melted them all down and strained the filling so we could start over.  Yes....all over (detention).  That is they way you get good at chocolates.  The French Mint truffles were remade and formed and dipped from some other truffle filling we had waiting and the re-melted truffles were mixed with praline and turned into these gorgeous mint praline candy bars.  You never waste product in a bakery....always find a way to use it.   These are big enough to serve three people and are very decadent. 

Mint Praline candy bars

Redemption came when dipping the truffles a second time and I had at last mastered the technique of the hand rolling and the truffles had the correct amount of chocolate on them.  I go back early in the morning to finish rolling and coating the truffles.  We will then add the decorations and I will get more good photos at that time.  I must say that the filling is incredibly smooth and delicious...Marda knows best.  Stay tuned for more photos of truffles tomorrow.

Don't Lose Your Temper

Chocolate is like love or any other relationship.  If you want it to work out....don't lose your temper.  We all understand what that means with our loved ones, but it has just as much importance when working with chocolate.  I have spent the last few days learning how to respect the tempering process of chocolate.  One has to be patient to decorate, fill and seal the molds, and I have to work very diligently to make sure that the chocolate is in perfect temper.  This is the moment when all of the fats in the chocolate are ready to crystallize all at once and create that beautiful shine that you see on a piece of good chocolate.  Proper temper creates strength to the chocolate, that perfect snap when you bite through the outside of the chocolate and the lustrous shine.  It is quite a chemistry project.  The chocolate has to be heated up until all the fats are liquid, then cooled down until the cocoa butter is crystallized and then heated up enough just to work it, but not re-melting the cocoa butter.  If chocolate is worked too warm, then you get those awful white streaks and a powdery coating that we have all seen on candy that has sat in a warm place too long, and then been cooled.  It is edible, just not attractive.

We had a great day making tasty fillings and creating beautiful chocolates.  I am grateful that my teacher is encouraging me to be creative with the molds and go beyond just filling them.  I am becoming more confident handling the chocolate, because it used to scare me a bit.  One of my tasks today was also to make praline with almonds and pecans.

This praline was then ground up pretty fine and mixed with chocolate to make the following candy bars that we really did wrap in foil wrappers:)  Like I said, suddenly she comes out with the most beautiful things to make the presentation amazing.

Praline Crunch candy bars

The other new thing today was making chocolate crème centers, which are very soft.  They are a mixture of chocolate, cream and butter with flavoring.  We had a great time creating the design on the mold and filling them.  I am very proud of the flavors that we created for the fillings. They are quite tasty and dynamic.  I am always disappointed when the chocolate is beautiful, but you bite into it and the filling has no real flavor.

Passion Fruit Milk Chocolate crème centers

Rum Dark Chocolate crème center

We also made an additional filling for pistachio white chocolate truffles that we will dip tomorrow.  I have more technique to master for hand-dipping the truffles.  Every day is a great day, and I am much more comfortable with the process and excited to bring this knowledge back to the bakery.

Marzipan Magic...is she really Willie Wonka?

This morning, I did not get up and walk along the river, but I am going in the morning.  I was studying for class today and the music for the next GCT production, Plaid Tidings.  Before I knew it, it was time to head to Marda's Workshop, because I certainly got the golden ticket.  I would gladly be two feet tall and Oompa Loompa orange if it meant that I could live long enough to glean all of the experience that my teacher has. She really is a modern-day Willie Wonka in the magical sense.  Just when you think that you know what is going on, she pulls some outrageous stuff out of her closet and the candy-making just became spellbinding.  I am thrilled every day.

The first order of business today was to create mint caramels...the last of the nirvana from yesterday, and possibly one of the best.  We combined her caramel with mint white chocolate to create a wonderful filling for these beauties.  The initial white-green luster paint is painted on the mold before the chocolate goes in and is hidden until the big reveal when the chocolates are turned out. The photo does not really do it justice, but it is cool.  Of course, using the leaf mold is a great touch.  The flavor is not overpowering, but very smooth and the caramel just takes it all to another level.


Mint Caramels

After we decided how to make the mint chocolates up we headed into marzipan bases and French truffles. The first thing we did was make a marzipan chocolate that appears to be a maritime hat that Napoleon might wear...so its name is Chapeau Napoleon.  It is a layer of marzipan wrapped around an Amarena cherry (preserved sour cherry from Italy).  These are very tasty and easy to make.

Yes...that is 24 K gold dust brushed on the top....perfectly edible.
Chapeau Napoleon

Then we turned the Marzipan into a raspberry filling, that contained two kinds of raspberry essence (super-concentrated fruit) and freeze-dried raspberries.  These were double-dipped in white chocolate tinted pink and have a very intense raspberry flavor.  We also made dark chocolate mint truffles and they were not ready for photography as we finished them at the end of the day.  I have learned that a good chocolate tempering machine is a must to make the chocolates turn out well, and I have learned many good techniques from her in just a short time....more to come.  Here is a snapshot of the marzipan raspberry truffles.

Just before the white chocolate hardens, the chocolates are rolled in pink luster dust.
 This is a colored dust that has crushed pearls in it to add shine...totally amazing and magical.

Needless to say, my jaw was on the floor when we rolled the truffles around in pink fairy dust and they were shiny.  This effect is better appreciated in person, or by a better photographer.  We are doing a bit more marzipan tomorrow, but then headed to cream centers.  I am looking forward with great anticipation.  I am scheming about all of the ways these techniques and products may find their way into the bakery.  I will be the best Oompa Loompa that I can be.

Caramel Nirvana

I got up this morning and went for a walk along the Deschutes River here in Bend, and the view was amazing.  It was cool and crisp and the weather felt positively like fall.  I then went home, and got ready and fixed a little breakfast in my little chalet.  I then hopped in the truck and loaded all my trappings up to the International School of Baking.  It has only been one year since I have been here, but so much has happened with the progress of the bakery at home, and the decision to open a store downtown in Torrington.  It has been a wild train ride, and today was no different.  I have literally stepped off the train into Chocolate Wonderland.  While the rest of the world was celebrating Labor Day, I was working diligently with my teacher and her assistant to create caramel fillings that would be worthy of attention.

The whole day was spent on these fillings and learning to properly fill molds with chocolate and then filling and sealing them.  Marda's first instruction to me was that I was responsible for the choice of the mold for the chocolates and how we decorated them.  We also made a caramel base which we then divided into portions and each portions was flavored and made into a filling for a molded chocolate.  It was a great education.  We had tried working with molds at home before, but did not have the right tempering equipment.  There was also some technique differences that made these chocolates turn out amazingly well.  I still have much to learn as the photos will reveal.  Chocolate is unforgiving and must be handled correctly.  My molding technique will get better, and my design work is just beginning.  But the fillings, and the tempering of the chocolate were sublime.  The chocolates all had a perfect snap when you bit into them and I have never tasted such intensely flavored caramels before.

 

These  chocolates are filled with hazelnut caramel which was a mixture of finely ground hazelnut butter with the caramel we made in the beginning.  The chocolate mold was dusted with gold powder before filling and has tiny ridges along the mold...it is a very art deco-looking chocolate, though the photo does not do it justice.  They are absolutely delicious and a definite addition to my menu.

 

These little beauties are filled with chocolate caramel.  This was made by melting chocolate and stirring it into the caramel.  The mold was decorated with a transfer sheet that is put into the mold ahead of time with a removable back piece.  The transfer decorations are cocoa butter and transfer right onto the melted chocolate.  Very cool and beautiful.  It looks like the chocolate has velvet wallpaper on it.

 

These are blood orange caramels which I painted with tinted cocoa butter.  I liked the array of colors, but my painting techinique needs some work.  The caramel was made by again mixing the base caramel with blood orange paste.  These are excellent and I was so excited to make them. 

 

 

I felt like I had reached a new level of understanding and appreciation about chocolates and caramel and the flavors were Nirvana!