Display

Had a big talk about how to display chocolate (or any food really).  The key is for the board to look full, but also for people to feel like they are getting the last one - pretty tricky.  Geometric patterns should never come before the first two rules, but lines help to draw the customer in.  Don't pair white chocolate beside dark or it will get lost on the board.  It's a lot of information, but will make more sense once I start doing it myself.

I enrobed the lavender, praline, black cat, and fig truffles in dark.  It's becoming easier to do.

Also made two sets of lollipops.  The first had cocoa powder (+ something I already forgot) and smelled like brownies.  The second had a lot of horehound in it.  For my first set, I watched the pot to see how the sugar changed with the temperature. At different temperatures it is used for different types of candy - soft ball, threads, hard ball, soft crack, and hard crack.  We wanted hard crack for the lollipops, so it had to get up to 300 degrees.  Boiling sugar also will pull off your skin when you touch it - I had a bit of a close call.

I also stayed late and watched how to make ganache.  It was a milk chocolate green tea ganache, and was surprisingly simple to make.

And I made dark chocolate mendiants with a do-it-yourself pastry bag - large chocolate disks with coconut, pistachios, walnuts, cranberries, blueberries, and mango.

Busy day.  Really tired.