Week 1 - Chocolate Cognac Truffles

Today is the first day of the rest of my life! I started pastry school, and my first class was Chocolates and Confections.

While I was very excited about this first day, I was also stressed. I'm originally from New York City, grew up taking public transportation, and never felt comfortable driving. But to make it to class, I had to drive on the crazy Houston highways. I arrived a bit sweaty, but I made it!

When I got there, I didn't know where to go, I didn't know where to park. Google Maps brought me close but not to the school door. But after walking in the Houston heat in the general direction suggested by Google Maps, I finally found the school and my classroom.

Everyone else bustled into class wearing their chef's jackets and got their workstations ready. I, on the other hand, had my civilian clothes on and twiddled my thumbs, not knowing what to do.

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Luckily, I wasn't the only one who started that day. Another student, seen here, also arrived in civilian clothes and didn't know where anything was. What a relief!

* This is a photo of us from the last day of class. We both proudly wore our chef's uniform.

We made Cognac Chocolate Truffles covered in plain chocolate, almonds, and gold cocoa powder.

Our teacher taught us about different chocolates and how to temper chocolate, make ganache, pipe it, roll it and dip it in the tempered chocolate. We coated the dipped ganache balls with crushed almonds and cocoa powder and gold luster dust.

I've never worked with "real" chocolate before. I've only used Wilton candy coating and Ghiradelli melting chocolate to dip cake pops and strawberries. I learned that couverture chocolate, unlike chocolate coating, is made with cocoa butter and needs to be tempered and maintained at a specific temperature.

We learned to temper chocolate using a microwave. I also discovered that you can use a metal bowl in commercial microwaves. Yes, you read that right. There are commercial microwaves that won't blow up if you put metal in them. I didn't know that! Did you?

I also realized that we, as a collective class, had to be considerate of each other since there were only two commercial microwaves and a whole lot of us.

The other thing I found out was that working with chocolate is MESSY! There was chocolate everywhere. On the microwave handles, in the microwave, on everyone's clothes, on the tabletop, on the floor, EVERYWHERE!

And my poor teacher kept reminding us to be neat as we worked but to no avail. It was like stepping into the Cat in the Hat book.

Like the book, at the end of class, we had our workstations cleaned and our room back to order.

We all finished more disheveled than we started. I was quite overwhelmed by the whole experience, but I was super excited by what I had learned.

Recipe: Chocolate Cognac Truffles

Adapted from On Baking book

5 oz/150 gr heavy cream

½ oz /25 gr glucose

6 ½ oz/200 gr milk chocolate

5 oz/150 gr dark chocolate

1 ½ oz/50 gr unsalted butter @ room temperature

1 oz/30 gr Cognac

Chocolate of choice to enrobe the truffles

Sifted cocoa powder

Mise en Place:

Weigh glucose in a pot, then weigh the heavy cream in the same pot.
If your chocolates are in bar form, finely chop the two chocolates and mix in a heatproof bowl.
If your butter is straight from the fridge, weigh it on one side of a small piece of parchment, then cover the butter with the other side of the parchment and smush the butter with your hand to soften it.
Weigh out your cognac.
Since cocoa powder can absorb moisture from the air and create hard lumps, sift the cocoa powder.

Directions:

Bring to a light boil heavy cream with glucose.
Pour the hot cream and glucose mixture over the mixed chocolates and butter. Let sit for a little so the chocolate and butter melts. Then gently mix starting from the middle and working in circles out. You want to avoid adding air to the ganache.
If the chocolate hasn't melted, either:
- Place the bowl in the microwave (if the bowl is microwaveable) for 10 seconds and then stir, repeating until the ganache looks silky and like it's inviting you to go swimming in it.
- Or for metal bowls, pour some water into the pot you used for heating the cream to make a double boiler and bring the water to a light simmer. Turn off the heat, place the metal bowl on top of the pot of water and stir the chocolate mixture gently until it's melted and looks silky and like it's inviting you to go swimming in it.
Cover with plastic wrap touching the ganache and wait at least 4 hours to set. In class, we didn't have time for this. So we put the bowl of ganache in a bigger bowl with some water and ice to cool the ganache down.
When the ganache has firmed up but is still malleable. Put in a piping bag and pipe small spheres. Let them firm up a bit more and then roll them into balls using your hands. Please use gloves. Not only is it sanitary but it's less messy. It's important to keep yourself and your workstation clean otherwise you'll get into a Cat in the Hat situation.
Then finish the truffles balls by either rolling them in sifted cocoa powder. Or dipping them in tempered chocolate so they have a longer shelf life.

Here's a note from the book:

"If pure cocoa powder is too strong for you, combine 70/75% of cocoa with 30/25% powdered sugar. Sift at least twice, until both ingredients are well combined. You may still be able to see a few specs of powdered sugar here and there."

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