I think I'm in business...almost!

I just found out some very good news: it's possible, according to state law, to have a commercial kitchen in one's basement. I could easily convert my laundry room into usage for this purpose! I had feared that one needed to have a separate entrance, but though this is preferred, it is not the law. The question now only concerns zoning, which is covered by the City of Grand Rapids.

I'm very excited by this prospect, and if this is possible, I'll definitely be starting up a little baking business in my basement, and start selling things at the Farmer's Market this summer, followed by chocolates in the fall.

Giddy up!

Shipwrecked on Pastries

I didn't want to go to bed just yet tonight, and wanted another beer, so I decided to grab a good book, sit in a comfortable chair and pick up some writing by Clement of Alexandria, who I haven't had the pleasure of reading for quite some time. I decided to thumb through his book, Christ the Educator, and stumbled on a passage that I found rather humorous.

There is no limit to the gluttony that these men practise (sic). Truly, in ever inventing a multitude of new sweets and ever seeking recipes of every description, they are shipwrecked on pastries and honey-cakes and desserts.

To me, a man of this sort seems nothing more than one great mouth. 'Be not desirous,' Scripture says, 'of the meats of the rich. For these belong to a false and shameful life.' These men hug their delicacies to themselves, yet after a while they must yield them to the privy. As for us, who seek a heavenly food, we must restrain the belly and keep it under the control of heaven, and even more that which is made for the belly which 'God will destroy,' as the Apostle says, intending, no doubt, to curse gluttonous desires. 'Food is for the belly,' and the life of the body, belonging completely to this world and made for corruption, depends upon it.

What would dear Clement think of my Willy Wonka ways, I wonder? I'll go with the words of the Apostle Paul on this one: As one who is in the Lord Jesus, I am fully convinced that no food is unclean in itself. ...For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, because anyone who serves Christ in this way is pleasing to God and approved by men.

Whew! I still see chocolates in my future. And some of them will be yielded to the privy.

(Well, I suppose all of them will.)

Raspberry Flourless Chocolate Cake

Sarah really enjoyed this flourless chocolate cake I made for her last night. I wish I had a picture of the finished presentation, complete with red and golden raspberry sauces, homemade vanilla bean ice cream that is the best I've ever tried, (thanks to an amazing recipe!), as well as some chocolate garnishes and homemade whipped cream. Over the top, and very tasty!

It's fun to cook for a woman I care about.

Valentine Chocolates

I can't believe how good the raspberry chocolates are that I made tonight. I mean...they're really, really, really good. Like crazy good. I think Sarah will be a fan. I also made some blood orange/cinnamon chocolates, with Grand Marnier, using milk chocolate in the filling, in a dark chocolate mold. Blood oranges are apparently one of her favorite fruits, so I figured that was a no brainer. They need some tweaking--these turned out a little too boozy, but I think they'll be good when they sit for a day or two. The third kind is a creme de menthe chocolate that I think is an improvement over the creme de menthe chocolates I made for Christmas. When I made them for the holidays, I used only dark chocolate for the filling. This time I used 3 oz. milk chocolate and 5 oz. dark. It makes them still very intense and dark, but the milk chocolate mellows them out so they seem more "creme."

I'll finish sealing them up tomorrow, and they'll be ready to give to Sarah on Thursday, when I'll see her next.

Exultant Monotony

This chocolate thing is incredibly satisfying to me. I just finished wrapping about 50 chocolates, some that are chocolate covered caramels to give to friends, and the others are to fulfill the charity auction item that I donated for the United Way. It's surprising how gratifying it is to see them all lined up, waiting to pass on to someone who I know will enjoy them.

As I wrap each one of them, I examine it to see how each turned out. Some have little imperfections that bug me, and then some are as perfect as can be, and I take immense pleasure in seeing them. I like the fact that these aren't your average home made chocolates too! I enjoy the monotony of the task as well, because every individual chocolate has the possibility of perfection. I'm just wired that way, and that's why I've decided to turn this passion of mine into a business.

I'm determined to have a business up and running this year. There's a lot to learn about being in a food business, but I think it will be incredibly enjoyable, and if I can make some extra money from making chocolates and giving people incredible tasting chocolates that they've never had before, or even dreamed of before, I'll be happier yet.

Chocolates for me are an exultant monotony, as G.K. Chesterton wrote: perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, ‘Do it again,’ to the sun; and every evening, ‘Do it again,’ to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike: it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.

Wisdom from the Chocolate Factory

I'm creating chocolate molds again. Each time I do this I get the system more streamlined. It's satisfying to be able to tweak the process, and see tangible improvements. I'm glad that we weren't born with the ability to do everything perfectly--we'd miss out on too much of the satisfaction that comes from realizing we're better at something today than we were yesterday.

Chocolates

I'm very pleased with these. Clockwise from the top: milk chocolate with a milk chocolate/Irish Cream filling; dark chocolate with the same filling; dark chocolate with a white chocolate/thimbleberry/raspberry port filling; dark chocolate with a Lindemann's Framboise beer/dark chocolate filling; and in the center, white chocolate with the thimbleberry/raspberry filling.

Mr. Hershey

I'm a chocolate makin' crazy man! As of tonight, I'll have about 200 chocolates filled, and ready to seal by tomorrow. That's A LOT of chocolates! I grew weary of cutting and dipping chocolates by hand. It's very tedious and frustrating work. Instead, I decided to concentrate on molded chocolates to streamline the process. I filled six molds with 40 chocolates each, and today I've been filling them. Half of the chocolates will have the Irish Cream concoction I came up with a year or so ago...just about this time, in fact, during Nutcracker. The other filling is one that was requested by the woman who purchased my chocolates at an auction. This one uses a Chai tea infusion and is surprisingly tasty.

I'm off to go fill those now.

Chocolates...again

Well, tonight I took a few minutes to whip up a ganache. The Kasteel Rouge Belgian ale I had a few weeks ago has stuck in my mind, and I thought it might be very tasty combined with dark chocolate as a filling for chocolates. I mixed cream and the beer, half and half, then added an equal amount of chopped dark chocolate to come up with the filling. It didn't have enough of a fruity flavor though, so I added a little raspberry port for good measure. Not having one of the fancy billion dollar chocolate funnels that professionals used, I ladeled the ganache into a Ziploc bag and snipped the tiniest of holes.

It was very satisfying filling my molds with ganache. It was one of those moments where your tongue sticks between your teeth, and sticks every so slightly out of your mouth. Yup--that's how I get when I'm working with chocolate, like a kid completely consumed by his latest passion. I'll let it set over night, and sometime over the weekend, when I have some free time, I'll seal them with a layer of chocolate. If all goes as planned, I'll have my first filled chocolates to try on Sunday night.

Giddy up!

Chocolates...

It's chocolate making time again. I offered some for a charity auction and it's high time that I fulfill my bid. I bought some really cool molds awhile back, if you recall, but when I tried it with the mega amounts of chocolate I bought, it became clear that the cocoa butter content in the chocolate wasn't high enough. You need the chocolate to be viscous enough to pour out of the molds once you fill them, so you're just left with an empty shell, but in this case, the chocolate just puddled in the bottom of the molds--and stayed there.

I found a source for some really high quality Belgium chocolate made by Callebaut. I bought the biggest chocolate bar you've ever seen in your life: 11 lbs. What I'm going to do is reserve this chocolate for the molding and dipping of my chocolates, and use the other chocolate I bought for the fillings.

I'm hoping to fill and top these chocolates off tomorrow, so I'm spending some time right now having a go at making some empty shells again.

I'll report back tomorrow with a progress report.

Beer and Chocolate

I went to my local store for beer aficionados and asked for a recommendation for some unusual Belgian beers. I bought four, had two decent ones last night and decided I would pop open a third one tonight. I was doubtful that I would like it, but it's now been catapulted towards the top ten beers I've tried in my life. It's a classic Belgian, with a twist--of cherries. It's brewed with cherries, and according to my local beer expert the flavor comes from the yeast that exists on the cherries which also impart a delicious sour component to the finished beer as a result of a bacterium that is present in the cherries. All I can say is yum!

It's going to be made into some chocolates, by the way. I think mixed with white chocolate ganache, then covered with dark chocolate.

Wow...off to have a few more sips.

Chocolate Trouble

I don't think I'll have chocolates made for the anniversary. I had some concerns about the viscosity of the chocolate when I bought it, but was hopeful. I had my eye on a high cocoa butter content chocolate that is perfectly adapted to molding chocolates, but I also had concerns about buying chocolate that doesn't use slave labor. I was able to ascertain that the supplier I purchased my chocolate from doesn't buy chocolate from slave farms, so that's a good thing.

But here's the kicker: cocoa butter is what makes chocolate viscous. This chocolate is as viscous as mud. When you're doing molds, you need it to run very thin so that it will pour out of the shell. If your chocolate doesn't have the appropriate viscosity, you have to add cocoa butter. It's expensive. I bought a 16 oz. tub that cost $18 a year or so ago, though the nice thing is that you only need to use a little bit of it at a time. Somehow it's vanished, so I need to track some down.

Here's the other reality that I discovered today: my little chocolate machine will only temper enough chocolate at one time to fill one mold. That means for each mold, I need to go through the tempering process from scratch to fill each one. That will take an insane amount of time, more time than I have before my parents' anniversary. It just isn't possible for it to happen.

What will happen is that I will buy some cocoa butter, and from time to time whip up a batch of chocolates, and then freeze them for Christmas. I think that's what I'll be giving out. But how do you find enough people to give 600 chocolates to?

I'm thinking out loud right now. Ironically, my chocolate tempering machine is actually a hindrance to the process of making molds. In order to make hollow chocolate shells, I would need three pounds of chocolate, tempered and at the ready. The only way to do that without a $1500 machine is to do it the old fashioned way. What was so frustrating to me about the "old fashioned" way was that I was using the chocolate for dipping, and so I needed it to remain in temper for a long time. The machine allows me to do just that. But in the case of molds, you need a massive amount of chocolate in temper, all at the same time. That I can do. The tempering machine can be used when I need to dip chocolates.

There may be hope yet. If I can find some cocoa butter locally, I'll try my hand again at filling some molds on Friday. But I'm going to really have to thin it out quite a bit in order to do that.

I've learned my lesson: I'm not buying chocolate from any supplier unless it has a high enough cocoa butter content. Adjusting it on the fly is a royal PITA.

Cake-o-matic

It's looking like a three cake day today. The two I made earlier today were somewhat of a mixed bag. My Mother's Day cake is in the bag, and though the second one is almost in the bag, it's harder to figure out when it's done baking because I'm going for a gooey center. The usual toothpick technique doesn't always do the trick. The first time I made this cake I baked it a little too long--this time wasn't long enough. I think the next time I'll have it set.

I've got a third cake that came to me tonight as I was doing a little shopping. I had to zip home and give it a whirl. Based on the batter, it should be a pretty tasty cake.

Two of the three cakes use either lime or lemon zest, so I have a lot of unused citrus juice lying around. I had a eureka moment and so what I'm going to be doing is freezing all of the juice, then when I'm all done with my cake madness, I'll thaw it make a lemon-lime curd, which is a very tasty cake filling. I think I'll transform the cake I'm making tonight into a standard cake, cut it in half, fill it with the curd and then frost it with a lemon butter cream frosting. That would be a tasty, tasty cake.

All in all, it's looking like I'll have six cake recipes to enter this time around.

Pretty crazy.

Off to go temper some chocolate and fill some chocolate molds. But first there are dishes to do. Blech.

Chocolate Molds

The polycarbonate molds I bought came today in the mail. I bought a total of nine, three each of three different designs. I'm pumped about getting started on using them next week. You can see some close-ups of all the designs. I'll be able to make 120 chocolates in one fell swoop. I'm going to be a factory next week.

Chocolate Abundance

Have you ever seen 30 lbs of chocolate? Check it out:


This came today in the mail and will soon be transformed into about 600 individual chocolates for my parents' wedding anniversary. The polycarbonate molds are coming in the mail tomorrow and I'll start working with chocolate in earnest next week.

I don't know if the CD really gives perspective like I hoped it would. The one clear plastic bag is mammoth! It's pretty amazing and pretty darn fun to get 30 lbs. of chocolate delivered to your doorstep.

Willy Wonka Again

For my parents' 50th wedding anniversary, I offered to make some chocolates for our guests. We'll be giving bags of them out to each guest, so I have to make about 750 of them. That's a lot of chocolates, and I'm looking forward to every minute of it. I just ordered 30 lbs. of chocolate today for a great price--20 of dark chocolate and 10 of milk. I also put in an order for some polycarbonate molds. If there's one thing I've learned through woodworking, you get what you pay for, and it pays to have the right tools. Polycarbonate molds are what the pros use--you can't get any better than these and I shopped around to find the best price on these as well. I bought three different kinds. One is a geodesic design that I know my dad will enjoy and the other two are standard chocolate shapes.

I decided to go with the molds because I won't have to deal with the time consuming process of dipping them, which takes a really long time. With the molds I'll be able to be systematic and be able to do 120 chocolates in one fell swoop. Easy as pie. First day: temper the chocolate in the chocolate machine, then fill the molds, invert them and let them set. Second day: make the ganache filling and fill each individual chocolate. Time consuming, but not as painfully so as cutting and dipping individual chocolates would be. Third day: cover the molds again with tempered chocolate--that will take about five minutes of my time. Fourth day: flip over and unmold. Bingo! 120 perfect chocolates!

The molds and the chocolate should be here by the end of the week and next week, I'll begin my chocolate making in earnest, and I'll be sure to document the process on my blog. I'm looking forward to it.

That's a lot of Chocolate!

As I type this, I have 90 Celebrator Truffles sitting on my dining room table. A moment ago there were 95.

:-)

Um...they're tasty.

Celebrator Truffles Redux

I'm making another batch of Celebrator truffles. I told my quintet about them, and I said I'd bring a bunch to our final rehearsal of the year on Friday. I wanted to try using an ounce more of beer and one less of cream to see if that would boost the beer flavor a bit more, and yet still be well balanced. I'm also going to thin out the enrobing chocolate a little bit by adding an ounce or two of cocoa butter, which will cause the chocolate to be more viscous, thus producing a thinner shell. Last time, the shell was too thick and so the balance of chocolate to the ganache filling was wrong--the chocolate overpowered the filling. We'll see how this one goes. I think I'll have about 80 or so chocolates by tomorrow night.

By the way, I stopped at Martha's, one of the best liquor/party stores in town. They have a slew of chocolates made by someone in town. I saw that they had a Bailey's/Kahlua chocolate, so I thought I'd see how it compared to my Irish Cream chocolate.

I thought there's tasted like a raisin. The balance of flavors was all wrong--the Kahlua should have been in a separate chocolate because with the mix of the two, all you tasted was alcohol and a raisiny/pruny flavor. Blech. I really don't like the decorations either. All the chocolate maker does generally is spray the inside of the molds with liquefied cocoa butter, tinted with food coloring. It looks like someone is doing a test of a spray paint can for color. I think people who see it find it interesting because it's different than what one would typically see, but there's nothing aesthetically pleasing about them, if you ask me.

I'll give the guy this: he's got a slick presentation and a good marketing plan. I think that's half the battle.

Beer and Chocolate

Everyone seems to really like the Celebrator Truffles. That makes me happy! One of my buddies who was a huge taste tester when I came up with the mint chocolate explosion cookies told me that the beer truffle is the best thing I've ever made. That made me feel good, and based on the standard I've set for myself that at least one person needs to tell me each recipe is the best chocolate they've ever had, I think this one counts. Scratch two off the list.

I really enjoy the creative process involved with making these chocolates. I have a slew of ideas to try, just waiting for the time and chocolate. It's remarkably fun for me, and I'm beginning to realize that I can trust my instincts. I'm learning too that part of the creative process for me is a percolation factor of sorts. It seems necessary for me to allow ideas to run rampant through my head for a few weeks, trying different possibilities in my mind. I suppose this percolation factor could be called daydreaming, but I've realized that this is part of how I work and operate at my best. It's surprising when those thoughts pop in my head--sometimes I have eureka moments at the most random of times, and I usually know I'm on to something when I reach a point where I can't wait to get home to try a new idea. It's all very cool to see how the mind works. I think part of learning who we are is to recognize how our mind works and to trust it.

Chocolate epiphany?

Miscellaneous food talk

After I got home from work, I needed to do a little practicing, but I decided that after that I would finish making my beer truffles. The only way I could get both accomplished was to use my chocolate machine. It's sort of like a Ron Popeil machine: set it and forget it, baby! It really is a slick piece of equipment. It makes the process fairly fool proof, and unlike my previous efforts, I don't need to be hovering over the chocolate the entire time. You drop in the chocolate, turn it on, and let it do its thing. That machine allowed me to whip up two dozen truffles tonight before I went to bed. Not bad.

And I think the truffles aren't bad either. I'm very curious to see what other people think however, and my good westsiders...have no fear that you will have a taste!

On the freezer purge front, I've enjoyed making do this week with what food that I already had on hand. Far too often I find that food goes to waste in the freezer, so it's felt good to dig deep and get a little creative. The past couple of days I've been eating some pulled pork that came from a pork shoulder I bought sometime this past summer. It turned out pretty tasty. I started by putting a dry rub all over it, then roasting it in the oven on a very low temp for a couple of hours, followed by an all day sojourn in the crock pot. To help it along, I checked out what I had on hand, and I added a couple of bottles of hard cider, some chicken stock that needed to be used up, a few bay leaves, ,sage, thyme and rosemary, lot's of black pepper, some allspice berries, a few bay leaves, onions and garlic and a little bit of liquid smoke. After it had been cooking for about three or four hours, I tasted the sauce that was developing and decided it needed a few more things. I added a can of tomato sauce, and some regular cider to sweeten it up just a little bit. I then let it cook for a few more hours.

When the pork was fork tender, it was time to finish sauce, so I strained out everything and tweaked the flavor a bit. I added quite a bit of cherry wine vinegar to give it a nice fruity zing, then some chipotle pepper powder for smoky heat, then I more black pepper to give it a bit more kick, and finally added just a little bit of sugar to round out the flavor. I popped the sauce on the stove, poured in some Calvados and then let it reduce by 75% until the flavor was deeply concentrated and the sauce had thickened quite a bit. I think reduction is one of the least used techniques in the kitchen--simply by reducing even relatively bland cooking liquids by half or more can really create some amazing flavors. In this case, the many hours of cooking, and the variety of ingredients, gave this sauce some great flavor. I've really been enjoying this quite a bit this week, and it feels great that the food didn't go to waste and that everything I used was something that I already had in the house.

I also found some frozen whiting in the freezer and decided I would cook that. Baked fish can sometimes be boring, so I figured I'd try and make it interesting. A perusal of the pantry showed me that I had a can of macadamia nuts and almonds. It made me think of pecan crusted fish which got the creative juices flowing. I ground up the nuts, then added a slew of spices and flavorings, including some minced onions, until I arrived at a tasty little coating. I dipped the fish in an egg wash, then dredged the filets with the nut mixture. I baked them at 350º for 15 minutes or so and had about three or four healthy (and low carb) meals from food that most likely would have ended up in the trash in a few months time. What I learned from this experiment however is that the nut mixture should be ground as finely as possible, and that when working with such a bland and tasteless fish as whiting the spices should be more concentrated than my intuition would suggest. It needed even more flavor than I gave it.

Tomorrow, I'll be making the four cheese pasta dish that's been a favorite of mine for the past few months. I'm trying to stay low carb and healthy however, so I picked up a spaghetti squash the other day to use instead of pasta. Spaghetti squash is an amazing food, and is a great substitute for pasta. When you cut it in half and boil it, it cooks into spaghetti like strands that you pull from the squash with a fork. I highly recommend it. It's honestly very hard to distinguish from real spaghetti when it's covered in a great tomato sauce. What I'm curious about, however, is how it will hold up in a baked dish like this pasta I'll be making tomorrow. Regardless, I know the flavor will be good and it won't feel so unhealthy as if I was eating pasta. And again, the nice thing is that, other than the squash, everything is already here at home. Project purge is going well, and the pocket book is appreciative as well!