chocolate

j had the idea that she would learn pastry making here and then open a pastry delivery business in cambridge. she started surfing the web on the ipad and came upon the idea of making chocolate from scratch. some website said "it's easy!" and j was convinced. she went to buy the things she would need. she was going to follow the recipe from the website which called for cocoa, sugar, vanilla, butter and milk. also needed was a candy thermometer and chocolate molds. so we went shopping to the kitchen supply area of paris - near the cathedral st eustache, above les halles in the 2nd arrondissement. that's also where you can buy beautiful copper pans. (3 shops we know of: e. dehilleron, mora, and la bovida). she picked out one mold with several different shapes, but forgot to buy the candy thermometer. j was so hot to start making chocolate that when we got back, she decided to try it without the thermometer. she read about the "softball" stage - when the candy is hot enough to form a ball when dropped in water, so decided to try that method.

try 1: she added the butter and vanilla too early. she boiled and boiled the mixture and dropped it in water to test if it was "softball" stage. finally decided it was ready and poured it into the mold. it was a gooey, sticky mess and tasted burnt. even after 24 hours in the fridge and freezer, it did not harden.

j went by herself to the cooking store around the corner and using her limited french, proudly succeeded in buying a thermometer. but when she came back, it didn't seem to be the right type at all, since it only went up to 50 degrees Centigrade. she didn't want to go back, but in the end, we both went down and had a long talk with the owner who also gives cooking classes in the shop. j was glad that i was there because she only understood about 1/2 of what he said. he was very informative. he said that the recipe didn't sound right - that there were 2 enemies of chocolate - water and temperature. water ruins chocolate and keeps it from hardening. the recipe called for milk - which was mostly made of water. he said that normally chocolate should not be heated to over 55 degrees centigrade, but the recipe required 116 degrees and then putting it in the freezer. he said the thermometer she bought was a chocolate thermometer -used for "tempering" the chocolate. if you start with a chocolate bar and melt it, it will only harden again if you temper it - which is to bring it up to a temperature, then cool it to a certain temperature and then heat it again a tiny bit to another temperature. when it is tempered it is shiny and will harden. he said he had never tried making chocolate from scratch, but the 3 ingredients should be cocoa, cocoa butter and sugar. we bought a candy thermometer, and kept the chocolate thermometer for later.

try 2: she decided to try the recipe again, just to test it, this time using the proper candy thermometer. she put everything together and tried to get the mixture up to 116C. but guess what? centigrade is defined by the freezing and boiling point of water. 0 is freezing, 100 is boiling. since milk is mostly water, it did not rise above 100 degrees. the recipe was ridiculous.

she saved the chocolate liquid to drink as hot chocolate. (we tried drinking it later and it was just too sweet. we tried adding more milk etc, but we ended up just pouring it out!)

try 3: she went back to the store and bought cocoa butter. she followed a different recipe. it called for very fine sugar - powdered sugar with no starch added. it called for powdered milk. we only had normal sugar, so that is what she used. she bought some powdered milk. it was a relative success. she made thin chocolate slabs which tasted good, though gritty from the sugar. i kind of liked it that way.

try 4: she made some more

try 5: tempering chocolate. she took her chocolate, melted it, brought it to temperature A, cooled it to temperature B and raised it again to temperature C. though it was a bit inexact, she poured the finished liquid into her molds and put it in the fridge. it worked and beautiful little chocolates (though a little gritty and crunchy) popped out of the mold.

j is acting a bit the purist about things. she's talking about making chocolate from scratch extreme. she wants to get the beans and grind them up. she wants to grow the tree and pick the pods and do the WHOLE process. not to be discouraging, but i told her that she would have to move to within 20 degrees from the equator. i told her that when i bake cakes from scratch, i don't grow the wheat and grind it into flour.

we went to the chocolate museum in the 10th arrondissement - called "choco-story". very informative and perfect for j. chocolate pod and bean displays, history (maya and aztecs used it in spicy drink and evolution to current sweet chocolate in western world). cocoa beans were a measure of wealth and used as currency. but more importantly were the displays of the process - beans are ground and create a paste referred to cocoa mass which can be squeezed to separate out the cocoa butter and the solids which become cocoa powder. all kinds of historic chocolate paraphernalia was displayed - cups, stirrers, molds.

we were gathered to watch a demonstration. this was the best part. the lady had a big machine that constantly stirred a vat of chocolate and then dispensed it into a mold (plastic grid of chocolate shapes) with a grid of poured liquid. she let it sit for a minute and upended it to pour the chocolate back in the pot - but leaving a thick coating in the mold. she used what looked like a masonry scraper to clean the mold. put in the fridge for 10 mins (she had one already prepared) and pulled it out to put in the filling - praline. put in fridge for 10 mins, and then poured chocolate on top and scraped clean and back in fridge. then she banged the mold hard to have the chocolates fall out. this was valuable for j to see exactly how to handle it. then we all got to taste them. delicious.

p asked how hard it would be to start from grinding the beans. the woman was shocked. she said that you'd need some serious machines to pull off the skins and grind them and squeeze them (or something like that). p asked about using fine powdered sugar as an ingredient- she said no, you should use glucose. hmmm, sounding quite industrial.

at the end of the exhibit there were sculptures and clothes made out of chocolate. also, there was a display explaining why chocolate was good for your cholesterol and for losing weight. not sure how objective these observations were, since the museum is sponsored by a large belgian chocolate manufacturer.

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