Going nuts. [Not really.]

I can't believe another week has gone by already. I mean, I love that it's Friday again, but man is timing passing by quickly. Seriously. We only have one more day in the decoration room and then it's onto the bread section. I also have to spend some time this weekend thinking of ideas for a holiday-themed cake for the Festival of Trees cake auction next week. I am sort of leaning towards North Pole / snowmen / penguins / winter wonderland theme, but I'm not exactly sure. I also think that we have to work in partners and I don't have one yet, so, there's that.

For this stint in the chocolate room we definitely seem to do one and a half things a day because we spend a really long time on whatever we are trying to finish. Today started off with making a coffee-flavoured ganache which actually smelled so delicious and I hadn't had a coffee yet and I just wanted to drink the chocolate. But I refrained. The method for ganache is pretty straightforward by now -- for this one, it was melt milk chocolate, heat cream and instant coffee, pour hot cream slowly into chocolate and stir, add softened pieces of butter. I was doing well until the temperature in the decoration room was so cold that my chocolate cooled down before my butter could completely melt into the ganache mixture. It was a quick fix though; all I had to do was put it on a double boiler again to heat up the chocolate a bit more so the butter would melt. And I didn't even have to ask what to do. LEARNING! Once the ganache was done, we set it aside, stirring every once in a while to make sure it didn't harden too much so that we'd be able to pipe it later.

After the ganache was done, it was time to cover our almonds from yesterday. We melted down some milk chocolate and coated the almonds, then refrigerated them for a bit, then coated them again and let them set. The third coat of chocolate had to be melted and tempered and then once those were coated, we rolled them in either icing sugar or cocoa powder. And that's pretty much it. We weren't really sure how much chocolate to coat the almonds with, so from group member to group member the chocolate to almond ratio differs dramatically. But I think no matter what ratio, milk chocolate and roasted / caramelized almonds will always taste good. Always.

The almonds before being coated in chocolate.

I could have just eaten them like this. They were delicious.

After the first two coats. They don't look that appetizing.

They were still pretty tasty though.

After the final coat of chocolate and cocoa powder.

They tasted better than they look.

At some point, when I was taking a picture of the caramelized almonds, Larry came into the decor room and said, "Here, take a picture of this. You can say it's marzipan. And no one can say anything. Because you're an artist." He came into the room at least three more times. I'm not even sure if that was the weirdest thing he said. [Larry is the hilarious Baking & Boulanger Art instructor.]

Huh?

We didn't go on our break til really late in the day today because the almonds took a really long time. Our chocolate kept setting so we had to melt it over and over again, which wasn't my favourite. Also, as per usual, there was chocolate on everything. I was initially wearing gloves while I coated the almonds in chocolate, but eventually I just started using my hands because I had to keep taking off and putting on gloves for various things. I managed to use one hand for the coating and one hand to control the rolling through the cocoa powder, so only one was fully covered in chocolate. My chef's jacket has chocolate on it in the weirdest places. I wouldn't even be able to explain it to you.

After we came back from the break, we put our ganache into a piping bag with a plain piping tip and just piped little dome-shaped ganache thingies [official terms, obviously]. I have to work on my piping skills with icing and chocolate because I am really bad at finishing the shapes without having a weird part that sticks up in all different directions. I know it has a lot to do with how you have to stop pressing on the piping bag and twist in a downward motion, but I can't really get my hands to move in the direction that I think they should go. But I was getting better towards the end. Maybe. Jean-Luc said that if there were pieces sticking up, we could just put a glove on and smooth them down. On Tuesday, we're going to dip the ganache in chocolate, creating amazing coffee-flavoured ganache-filled dark chocolate amazingness. (We may have been tasting -- testing? -- the ones from the previous group.)

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Today's Recipes
Chocolate Covered Almonds
Arabica [Coffee Ganache]