It didn’t take me long to get round to a second attempt at fudge did it? I decided to start my adventures with “proper” fudge with a favourite flavour, chocolate.. with a few pecans added for good measure.

Fudge comes under the category of crystallised  candy, the sugar has to be cooled and then beaten precisely right so that the sugar forms crystals in just the right way to produce a fudge with a desirable texture.

The method obviously involves a little more work, and more planning ahead. The cooling period took much longer than I anticipated. So, with that in mind let’s get to it!

Start with milk, sugar, salt and your invert syrup (corn syrup is common, glucose more normal in European fudge making but harder to find here) in a heavy bottomed saucepan. Cook to 238F. Yes, a sugar thermometer is necessary. You can try the old fashioned putting a drop in a cup of water and feeling the texture, but really, why bother. It’s inaccurate and open to interpretation. Save yourself the hassle and spend $10 on a thermometer.

Anyways, once the sugar is cooked pour it into the bowl of your mixer. Sit the chocolate (pulverised by a cuisine art in this case, to form smallish pieces), butter and vanilla on top. And leave it.

Yup, leave it, until it’s 120F. This takes a good long while. But it’s integral that you don’t try and speed things along. This long slow cooling period is so the sugar crystals can form properly and we don’t end up with fudge that has huge nasty sugar crystals in it.

Once it reaches the right temperature start the mixer and beat on low until it lightens and dulls. This will actually happen really fast. The recipe called to fold the nuts in after this point, I would actually put them in sooner as they just didn’t get mixed in properly.

Transfer to the tray you’re using (it’s not really “pour” at this point), and press out evenly. Once I had it mostly spread out I laid a piece of parchment across the top and pressed down with a second tray to get it flat and even.

Leave to sit at room temperature to finish setting. 4 hours minimum, overnight would be better. Then cut into your desired size, 1 inch square is a nice size.

One day, a fair while ago, we were walking around Whole Foods with friends.I can’t speak for all WF stores, but ours (being the flagship and all) had a pretty impressive confectionery counter. Fudge, chocolates, truffles, bark etc. It’s fun to look and see what they have.

On this instance they had orange creamsicle fudge. A creamsicle (for those not stateside) is an ice pop, vanilla ice cream covered in a layer of flavoured ice (think of a mivvi). Orange, raspberry, lime etc. Orange seems to be the one mentioned most.

The fudge was pretty decent. I made a note to make it someday.

That someday was now! I started with a recipe I found online. It was a “no-fail” fudge, meaning one that used marshmallow fluff and white chocolate, more on that in a bit.

Start by lining a 9″ square pan and greasing it liberally.  If you want your fudge to come out of the pan easily and not be stuck to the paper this is important!

Combine the butter, sugar and milk in a heavy bottomed pan. The recipe said to boil for 5 minutes, since this is horribly inaccurate and can vary depending on your stove and saucepan I went for 240F, a good general temperature for fudge.

Remove from the heat and stir in the white chocolate chips and the marshmallow cream until smooth.

Take out a third of the mix and stir in orange extract and food dye.

Mix vanilla extract into the two thirds and pour it into your tin.

Pour over the orange fudge and swirl in. Leave to set for a few hours then turn out and cut.

Firstly, I should say, this fudge wasn’t bad. It just wasn’t what I wanted. The lack of sugar crystallisation that you get in “proper” fudge makes for a different texture. I found the white chocolate and marshmallow also made it way too sweet (yes, a candy with sugar as it’s main ingredient can be too sweet!). The white chocolate, being cheap, also was reluctant to melt properly so there was the occasional small lump of white chocolate in the fudge.

I want some more practice making regular fudge, getting the sugar crystallisation right and then I’ll try this again only properly!

Marshmallows don’t usually generate a lot of fuss.  They’re typically something most folks buy by the cheap bagful at the mega-mart, and never think twice about.  To these folks I say this: if you’ve never had a fresh, handmade marshmallow, you’ve never given your inner child a hug.

The texture is tremendously better, the flavors are fresher, and there is something that simply tickles the base of your brain whenever you have one.   They’re addictive, and once you’ve had them you’re spoiled for life.  What’s also good is that they are fairly easy to make… they just take a little time and some basic ingredients.

Traditional marshmallows are good, but something slightly more elaborate is even better — this time around I made mocha java marshmallows.

I started by blooming the gelatin in cooled espresso.  While that blooms, I bring the sugar, corn syrup and water to a boil, and just a tiny bit of kosher salt adds a more complex flavor down the line.

While the boiling sugar slowly reaches it’s destination temperature, prepare your pan.  A note here… marshmallows are one of the stickiest confections it has ever been my pleasure to work with, and it is inconceivable that you can over-prepare your work surfaces, tools, pans, etc.  I coat my pan with non-stick cooking spray, line it completely with parchment, coat the parchment with cooking spray, and dust thoroughly with a mixture of cornstarch and powdered sugar, and in this instance cocoa powder (Dutch process cocoa, please).  The first time I made marshmallows, I skipped the parchment step, and I tell you now that spraying and dusting alone are not sufficient.

Once the sugar mixture reaches temperature, set your mixer with the whisk attachment on low and slowly drizzle the sugar into the bowl.  Be sure to drizzle down the side of the bowl — and not through the whisk — to reduce the risk of flinging superheated droplets of molten sugar (a.k.a. “kitchen napalm”) in all directions.  Once all the sugar is in, advance the mixer to medium-high and let it run for 12-14 minutes.  Approximately halfway through slow the mixer and add a nice dose of vanilla extract, then resume high speed.

The goal is to incorporate a tremendous amount of air into the mix, and as the mixture cools the gelatin sets the air in place.  Your mixture will gradually increase in volume and the color will lighten dramatically.  Traditional marshmallows go from clear to bright snowy white, and as you can see in the progression of pictures below, the mocha java marshmallows that started out with gelatin bloomed in espresso that was a deep mahogany brown, end up a pale creamy white.

Once the mixing is done, pour/scoop the marshmallow into your prepared pan — be sure to coat all tools with cooking spray!  Spread the mixture evenly in the pan, taking care to get it into all the corners and obtain a smooth surface.  This is, I will add, a fight you will lose, as no matter how well coated your tools, the marshmallow with still stick to them somewhat.  The best you can hope for is to battle to a grudging draw.

Dust the top of the marshmallows in the pan with your cornstarch/powdered sugar/cocoa mixture, and set aside to cool and set for about 4 hours.  There is definitely a difference between these and traditional marshmallows, as you can see from the pans alone.

After the marshmallow has cooled, turn out the pan onto a cutting board and remove the parchment.  Give this surface another good dose of dusting powder.  I find the best tool for cutting up marshmallows is a well coated pizza cutter — you can work quickly and efficiently.  A standard metal ruler makes a good cutting guide, and gives me tidy 1¼” squares.  Cut in one direction, rotate your board, and cut in the other.

Have handy a deep bowl (or in my case, a clean 5 gallon bucket) with a generous amount of dusting powder in it, and pull apart your cut marshmallows and drop them in.  After a few rows, I like to give the bucket a shake to coat all the surfaces, then resume separating some more.  Once all have been divided, reach in and stir those little buggers up, separating any that may have stuck together and ensuring each one is dusted well.

Take a few handfuls of marshmallows and place them in a colander and shake it gently over your bucket to remove and reuse excess powder.

Once all of the marshmallows are out, share and enjoy them, and never look back at the store-bought aberrations.  They’ll keep just fine for about a month in a tightly sealed container… if they last that long.

So, last Wednesday we talked about the basics of chocolate, how the beans are processed. Obviously, it’s not necessary to know all of that before you head into playing with chocolate but I like to think that understanding the ingredient a little better can help you towards a better finished product.. Or it just helps you look smart and clever!

One of my instructors at the Culinary School always said that “you can be the boss of cakes, you can be the boss of sugar.. the most you can hope for with chocolate is a helpful colleague.”

If you can’t gather from that, chocolate is a pain. It can be uncooperative and irritating. With practice and patience you can learn how best to work with it to make it behave. Now, you can just cheat and use what is known as coating chocolate, this sets at room temperature on it’s own with no extra effort from you. In my opinion though, coating chocolate is just plain nasty. It’s waxy from the extra fats added to make it set and the flavour is just unappetising.

So, while using couverture takes more work it really is worth it.

Let’s start with the signs of well tempered chocolate. It will set quickly at room temperature and stay stable, it will have a lovely shine to it, it will have a crisp “crack” sound when it is snapped.

The couverture you buy is tempered, but by melting it so you can use it  you’ll be breaking the structure of the fat cells (tempering is all about the alignment of cell.. way too complicated for now) and so you need to temper it to realign them ready to set it as you desire.

There are several methods for tempering, the easiest (with the least extra equipment) is known as seeding, aside from a double boiler, spatula and tea towels the only remotely specialist equipment you need is a good thermometer – digital is best, we like our trusty thermopen, be sure to calibrate (measure boiling water and see how far off it is) regularly.

So, start by melting two thirds of your chocolate in the double boiler, you don’t want it to get too hot (this is especially true with milk and white chocolate, dark is a little more lenient), get the water boiling then turn it down low.. I mean really low. Stir to aid melting.

Take it off the heat, and preferably to a cool dry spot in the kitchen, be sure to dry the bottom of the bowl, any moisture in this will end in badness. Add the final third of chocolate – the “seed,” this must be tempered with no bloom. Stir to coat it in the chocolate and let it sit for a minute to start melting.

Now the hard work begins, start stirring. The alignment of the fat cells all comes down to temperature and agitation. So stir.. lots… until your arm feels like it’s going to drop off.. and then stir some more. The chocolate will thicken a little, and become glossy. Any good couverture will tell you the temperatures on it’s packaging, I was using Callebaut which crystallises at 82F. That means I stirred that chocolate until it reached 82F, all of your seed should have melted at the start so you will have smooth, glossy heaven in a bowl. I like to take a small dab of the chocolate and smear it on a surface, my nice marble slab works well (marble draws heat away so sitting the bowl on this while I stir helps it to cool). Within a minute it should either have set, or be very close to setting (it’ll be fudgier), this is a good way to tell that your chocolate is tempered before you go putting it in molds.

It still needs a little reheating just to make those fat molecules behave right, for the chocolate I was using this means taking it to 84-86F. This is a really small jump so be careful, and I always go for the lowest temperature so any carry over doesn’t act detrimentally. If you go over the reheating temperature you will need to start over!

Now you can do with the chocolate as you will, you can you molds to make lollipops or filled truffles (fill the mold, empty so it’s a thin shell, let set. Fill with ganache, let set. Spread a layer of chocolate over the base, scrape smooth, let set, turn out). The sesame squares we made for the holidays used tempered chocolate in both the base and the ganache. You can use it to coat rolled truffles to keep them fresh or so you can add another coating such as shavings or cocoa powder. You can also use it to make fancy garnishes for cakes and desserts.

A word of warning, there is a peril out there. The dreaded word that makes any chocolatier cringe… Bloom. There are two types of bloom. Fat bloom is caused by fluctuations in temperature, maybe you were a little off with your temperatures when tempering or it’s being stored someplace that an inconsistent temperature. Chocolate with fat bloom can be retempered, just make sure that your seeding chocolate isn’t bloomed.

Sugar bloom is much uglier, it’s caused by moisture getting into the chocolate. One or two molecules is all you need and that’s your chocolate ruined, as well as moisture exposure when tempering it can be caused by condensation once it’s set so be careful. Sugar bloom has a grainy texture and will be far more brittle and can’t be used again as tempered chocolate, you can save it for use in ganache though.

Good luck, but most importantly, have fun!

“There are four basic food groups:  milk chocolate, dark chocolate, white chocolate, and chocolate truffles”

Chocolate – Theobroma Cacao, the food of the gods.

Roughly two-thirds of the entire world’s cocoa is produced in Western Africa. Production costs can be decreased by reducing cocoa solid content or by substituting cocoa butter with another fat. Cocoa growers object to allowing the resulting food to be called “chocolate”, due to the risk of lower demand for their crops. The sequencing in 2010 of genome of the cacao tree will hopefully allow yields to be improved.

There are two main jobs associated with creating chocolate candy, chocolate makers and chocolatiers. Chocolate makers use harvested cacao beans and other ingredients to produce couverture chocolate. Chocolatiers use the finished couverture to make chocolate candies.

Cocoa straight from the tree isn’t too pleasant and it must undergo a long process before it’s the chocolate we know and recognise. First, the pods are harvested, broken open and the beans are spread in piles and covered with banana leaves to ferment. The fermentation is complete when the beans are a rich brown colour. The beans are then dried, to about half of their original weight, before they can be shipped.

Once the beans arrive in the factory they are sorted according to type and country of origin. Passed through a machine to remove pulp and debris they are weighed so they can be blended accurately.

One of the most important factors in chocolate flavour is roasting. Rotating ovens give an even roast, anything from 250F upwards, for 30 minutes to several hours (low and slow gives a better flavour and is funnily enough going to be the more expensive chocolate).

After roasting the beans are cracked and winnowed The machines crack open (not crush) the thin shells releasing the seeds (aka nibs) and removing the shells. The nibs go through a series of strainers to sort them according to size.

The nibs are approximately 53% cocoa butter and 47% cocoa solids, they are milled in a process that heats and liquefies the nibs into a paste – chocolate liquor.

Some of the liquor is placed in a hydraulic press which squeezes out all the cocoa butter. The remaining cocoa is pulverised into cocoa powder. Good quality cocoa powder will be Dutched – treated with an alkali to reduce the acidity. See how the Dutched cocoa is a much richer colour, it looks much nicer than the cheaper cocoas.

The unprocessed liquor will be mixed with dairy, sugar and extra cocoa butter (to keep it solid at room temperature), it will be refined to a small particle size, for a much smoother mouth feel. In general Swiss and German chocolates refine to a smaller particle size than American or even English chocolates.

The refined chocolate paste is poured into a vat in which a large heavy roller kneads, blends, and grinds the mixture. Agitating this paste smoothes out the sugar grains to give the chocolate a silky texture. Aerating the paste allows acids and moisture to evaporate, which creates a mellower, more well-rounded flavour. This process, called “conching,” can take up to six days to complete!

Finally, the refined chocolate is cooled and warmed repeatedly in a process called “tempering.” This gives chocolate its glossy sheen, and ensures that it will melt properly. Well tempered chocolate will be uniform, hard and shiny! It will be deposited into blocks, bars or pistoles and sold as couveture at this point.

Come back on Monday and I’ll tell you how to take this couveture and make some delicious high quality chocolates from it.

Firstly a Happy New Year to you all, we’re back and ready to start 2011 with a bang! We hope your holiday season was everything you wanted it to be.

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As we have done the past couple of years we decided to treat our guinea pigs… er.. um.. I mean friends, with a selection of goodies for Christmas. It gives us a chance to try out some new techniques and recipes without the stress of them being for a customer. And we can get reviews on the items from a mix of tastes and preferences, a nice way to see what’s popular.

We started off with two chocolates. First up, a sesame square. Sesame brittle crunched up into chocolate for the base and a chocolate-tahini ganache on top, sprinkled with some toasted sesame seeds. The mix of chocolate and sesame caused some people to stop and think but overall it went down well.

The walnut bonbons were a definite success. A dark chocolate shell, nice and thin and consistent all the way around. The filling was almond, caramel and toasted walnuts, a wonderful mix. These really were the winners this year.

We made two different pate de fruit.. fruit jellies that is. We did a layered one, raspberry, basil and peach. I knew raspberry and basil worked together well although it’s a combination that some people don’t want to even try. I knew raspberry and peach worked so the only gamble here was peach and basil though we were fairly confident. The raspberry layer was thinner than I had wanted but the combination worked really well, nice and refreshing.

Then we tried our hands at some lime slices. These took a bit more effort and still came out a little soft and hard to cut accurately. They had a wonderful tangy flavour that was aided by adding some citric acid to the sugar that they’re coated in. Another winner!

Marshmallows are always a firm favourite so we decided to jazz them up this year with the addition of passionfruit.. It almost worked. They ended up with a hint of flavour, just not as strong as we would have liked. We’ll need to work on them some more.

Finally we ended the goodie box with honeycomb, also known as sponge toffee. Caramel with a hint of honey though the name comes from the honeycomb like structure.

And of course, the furry friends got some of our brew bones. Can’t go leaving them out now can we!

We made a caramel ganache to go in some molded truffles, and a cherry bounce cordial, we even coloured the chocolate accordingly. Our favourite piece (and the piece with the most reviews) was a white chocolate lemon truffle piped out and then it had sugar crystals grown onto it to form a protective shell.

Our first attempt at taffy was mostly a success, made with Godiva chocolate liqueur it had a nice smooth flavour. A little too chewy perhaps but fun to make!

We finished with peppermint sticks. Hand pulled and twisted, we definitely need more practice there!

We also made some bacon dog treats for the pups in our lives. All reports indicate that they went down very well indeed!

We hope 2010 brings you nothing but happiness.

This includes traditional items such as divinity and pralines, along with candied zests, marzipan squares and many other delicious items. Visit the gallery for more items. Hopefully in time many more confections will be joining them.

In the gallery now we are showcasing a range of styles and flavours of both the rolled and molded truffles. Other flavours and styles will of course be tried in later months, but we decided to share what we have for now.