Thursday, February 13, 2014

Week 5 - Confectionery


    

Confectionery week!  Wow what a great week!
This class was a three day week, and yet the most successful and fun class.  We made all sorts of candies and chocolates, including nougat, gummy candy (similar to haribo), lollypops, flavored marshmallows, bonbons, filled chocolates, candied almonds, pralines, pate de fruit (fruit gummies),gianduja, ganache, caramels! 
     A few unfortunate incidents.  My partner and I couldn’t for the life of us temper chocolate on day two, but today, on the first try we each successfully tempered it!  We had troubles with the marshmallows as well.  Our chef, his English wasn’t the greatest (compared to others), and there was a language barrier, so when it came to marshmallows, they can’t be whipped to much or to little.  Each group asked chef about the marshmallows, I thought our batch was perfect, but chef said a few more minutes, and then less than two mintues later, he comes over, stops our mixer and says its over mixed.  So we tried to pipe out the mixture, but from over mixing the product became too stiff and was almost un-pipe-able.  A few casualties with other groups chocolates, from over filling, to tempering issues, to the guitar (cutting machine) being to hot or too cold for the candy.  But all in all a wonderful, fun and exciting week, learned different candy techniques, and enjoyed working with sugar in all its forms.


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