Today was the day that I had my Christmas present from my lovely (and good at presents!) husband, a lesson from Barry, a master chocolatier who also happens to come to our local farmers' market. My friend S came along too to share my present (and make it more fun) and our girls went off with the Daddies to do some geocaching (first time for K & M, A & J their friends had done it a couple of times before).
So we learned how to temper chocolate - temperature being key. Barry doesn't use a thermometer, but then he can tell the temperature by using his bottom lip - the one occasion we tested it he said it was between 27 & 28 degrees C and it was 27.6 - pretty impressive! So we tempered chocolate, both dark and milk, and made two different ganaches, brandy with the dark and amaretto with the milk chocolate, and made some rather delicious chocolates, as well as filling a variety of moulds that I already have to make some things for the girls to have! We ended up with a rather chocolatey kitchen, but apparently it was pretty clean and tidy compared to some other times Barry has done this. I've also got quite a lot of ganache left in the fridge, which I will be using to make truffles tomorrow. All in all a fantastic Christmas present!
No comments:
Post a Comment