Paint By Numbers EXTREME CHOCOLATE EDITION

Those three little words 'I love you' some will argue are the best and scariest combination of words in the English language.  But in my sugar crystal world "chocolate show piece" are the best and scariest combination of words in the English language...and the French language now that I think about it. It's no wonder why chocolate is so strongly associated with love, if it gets too hot the substance changes, if it cools down too fast you have to do damage control, both are delicious, and you must treat both with care and passion to get the best shine.

On Tuesday we were told to choose a theme for our chocolate show piece and that it should be a cartoon character. Although I am a little ashamed to admit that I spent 3 hours scouring children's books in Waterstone on Wednesday afternoon to gain some inspiration for my theme, I had a toss up between Horton from Horton Hears A Who and Ratatoullie the Disney character. At the end of the day the deciding factor for me was that the lines for piping where much more visible in the Ratatoullie picture I chose.

I was so geared up for my class on Friday, I had even practiced making my paper piping bags so that I would not have another chocolate spillage tragedy. I also had some new additions to my knife kit...paint brushes and a wall paper scraper.  Finally Friday morning came and I started to temper my white chocolate for the base of my show piece, which had Ratatoullie piped on it (not an easy thing to do backwards, and hand painted carrots. I did a little tester to make sure it dried nice and glossy, it did, so I used it. Everything was moving along, I piped out my design in dark chocolate, which took about and hour. At this point I had to rush to paint my piece with the colored cocoa butter, so some of the colors didn't turn out exactly the way I wanted. We also only had one set of the cocoa butter colors, so we all 10 of us had to share. With the chef shouting at us that we needed to add our white chocolate backing onto our pieces, I was rushing to temper another batch of white chocolate. Chef just handed me a batch and said "this chocolate is tempered, just use this," so I used that white chocolate. Come to find out that chocolate was not tempered and he marked me down for it! Even though he was the one who handed the bowl of chocolate to me! Uh so frustrated. To top off the morning my white chocolate base cracked and would not come out of its mold, so I had to present my piece with no base. Overall though this project was really fun and felt challenging. It was so nice to get away from cakes for a little while and do something much more technical and detailed. Although I am sure my marks for the day were not at all high, I hope that chef appreciated the fact that I chose a more difficult design and that my piping was actually really good considering the detail.

Fridays minor victories: 1. piping was finally thin enough! 2. my paper piping bags did not explode!....At the end of the day these two victories made the failures of the day all worth it.

Now those three little words aren't so scary any more...I guess in both chocolate and love the best thing to do is to just dive in with sweet caution, tempered care, and colorful passion.