BY GEMMA ELWIN HARRIS
Today we’ve been wielding scalpels, squinting at thermometers and snapping on surgical gloves. There’s been talk of molecules and the phrase "beta crystal" was bandied about (please don’t as me what it means). After a three-hour Introduction to Chocolate Making class with Ruth Hinks, I have new respect for chocolatiers. Making handmade chocolates may not be brain surgery but, like a surgeon, you need patience, concentration and a steady hand. You may also need cocoa sprinkles.
When I booked into "chocolate school" a month ago, it was with the modest intention of making better-than-Thornton’s Valentine’s and Easter treats for my hudband, so to get a grounding in the principles of chocolate-making is a bonus.
Ruth, a former Australian Pastry Chef of the Year, a Culinary Olympics winner and no stranger to Michelin-starred kitchens, co-runs Cocoa Black, a chocolate school and retail business in Peebles, 45km south of Edinburgh. The school attracts all levels, from bungling amateurs like me to pro pastry chefs and chocolatiers honing their skills.
If you’re just graduating from Rice Krispie cakes though, don’t let Cocoa Black’s credentials put you off. Ruth can still remember what it felt like to mould her first chocolates as a teenager in South Africa, where her international carrer as a chocolatier began as a pocket- money scheme.
"When I was 14, I really wanted one of those double tape-deck radios, and my parents said I needed to earn the money myself" explains Ruth. "They said, why not grow vegetables in the garden and sell them back to them? But that was going to take way too long. In the end I found this Easter egg mould in a charity shop and figured out how to use it." She made her first sales when Easter rolled around, cannily displaying them in her dentist father’s surgery. "By age 17 I was making 2,500 eggs in the run-up to Easter. I’d work all night."
Ruth’s love for " the best job in the world" hasn’t waned after 20 years, and her infectious enthusiasm make Cocoa Black a fun place.
"Don’t worry," she assures us at the start of the lesson, "you’re all going to be professionals by the time you leave today"
As someone with the hand-eyd coordination of a Thunderbird puppet, I’m dubious. The three 40-something Scottish sisters in today’s class are brimming with confidence; I suspect them to be premier league cake-makers. After a brief tour of the ingredients, Ruth announces it’s time to "get covered in chocolate." This, at least, I can do.
We get to work mixing fillings: bringing cream to a boil for fragrant orange ganache and blending rich hazelnut praline with that looks like tiny shards of ice-cream wafer, known in the biz as Pailleté Feuilletine. This, Ruth tells us, will give our praline centres a crispy-crunch effect.
Then we learn how to heat and cool the chocolate to get the right consistency (called "tempering") and about "couverture" or coating chocolate, which has a higher cocoa-butter content than ordinary chocolate and will be used to cover our fillings. We heat the chocolate in a microwave (pariah of kitchen appliances no more!) taking care to observe the three golden rules of tempering: Time (don’t rush the melting process); Movement 9 stir frequently); and Temperature (to temper your chocolate, it should reach 45ºC exactly, so keep dipping that confectioner’s thermometer like you’re Florence Nightingale on steroids).
Once our fillings have cooled and hardenet in the fridge, it’s time to slice them into squares with the dark or milk couvertures. Ruth shows us how to dip each square in a tub of melted chocolate using a three-pronged fork: delicately and not a drip out of place. The sisters follow suit with all the panache of TV chefs and then it’s my turn. Predictably, I lose the praline, go fishing after it with my fork and, by the time I drag it up from the depths and lever it with difficulty from the fork, my workbench, hands and apron have all been baptised in chocolate. This is what I came for. It smells so good, I want to dive in.
Next we don surgical gloves in order to roll the truffles "lightly" in couverture. Surgical gloves? I don’t remember Juliette Binoche having to wear surgical gloves in Chocolat. One thing becomes clear as I give my truffle the chocolate equivalent of cement boots: a good chocolatier needs to stay focused. There’s no wafting around with one eye on the raspberry fondants and the other on Johnny Deep.
Still, who needs Depp when there are gorgeous chocolates to ogle? However clumsy my first attempts at posh chocs have been, they look damn good. The sisters and I layer our darling ganaches and pralines in boxes and tie bags of truffles with ribbons. We’ve decorated some chocs with coloured transfers, others with silver baubles and sugar love hearts. But which ones are orange ganache and which coffee? Must just try a couple to be sure… If these last till Valentine’s it’ll be a miracle.
Cocoa Black, Unit 7, Southpark Industrial Estate, Peebles, Scotland, tell: +44 (0) 1721 723 764, www.cocoablack.co.uk . The Introduction to Chocolate Making class costs £75.
Choc & Awe
FUN CHOC FACTS
Are they nuts? Chocolate manufacturers use roughly twenty percent of the world’s peanuts… and forty percent of the world’s almonds!
Icky sticky! Chocolate syrup was used for blood in the famous shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho.
Guilt begone: one plain milk chocolate bar has more protein than a banana.
The Swiss consume more chocolate per capita than any other nation on earth, but most of us will still consume ten thousand chocolate bars in a lifetime (on the yeahbaby team, you can safely double that!).
The melting point of cocoa butter is just below the temperature of the average human body – explaining why it literally melts in your mouth.
Chocolate is poisonous to dogs, cats and other domestic pets. The ingredient theobramine overstimulates their cardiac and nervous systems, and can be fatal.
Chocolate was discovered about 4,000 years ago by ancient American tribes who ate cacao (cocoa) beans before going into battle to give them strength.
The world’s biggest Easter egg was made in Belgium by Guylian, using 1,950kg of chocolate. The egg was 8.32m high and 26 people worked for 525 hours to build it. Alderman Urbain Vercauteren, of the city of St Niklaas, said: “After a week outside in all weather conditions, I don’t think it would be very tasteful.”
The world’s biggest chocolate was made in Italy by Perugina and weighed six tonnes. The gargantuan chocolate took more than 1,000 hours to make and stood more than 2m high.
The world’s biggest chocolate fountain was created in Las Vegas and was 8.2m high, filled with 2,100lbs of chocolate.
