Competition 101

I have a terrible competitive streak.  I think I got it from my dad.  I have participated in a lot of competitions, some successful, some not so successful.  I have competed as a classical guitarist, a Renaissance lute player, a double bass player, in all kinds of musical ensembles.  I have competed as a sailor, single handed, double handed and fully crewed and with too many crew.  I have competed with sugar, chocolate, cake and all sorts of ingredients. 

This past week I participated in The Escoffier Society's Culinary Salon.  This was my third time.  I decided, since I make cakes that people pay for I should go in the Professional Division for wedding cakes.   I like competitions of this sort because the judges will take the time to discuss your work with you face to face.  I like to hear what's wrong and why and how to make it work, what skills I need to improve, how to train my eye. This year's cake was a real challenge. 

The chocolate work on the sides of the cake have to be shiny, perfect and elegant.  All the decorations are piped by hand after hand tempering the chocolate.  The topper on the cake was my first attempt at designing and executing a showpiece after returning from Chicago.  I should have spent more than 1 day on decorating the cake but only had a week to do the showpiece and decorate the cake.  The best in show, which was a bread piece, took the guy 3 months to make.

When designing a cake, you have to take into account the time of year, the heat, humidity, cold and quality of the products you are using.  If it's too hot out, forget the chocolate, you have to use a little less buttercream, the fondant will get really soft, really quickly.  In the winter, the dry air will cause the fondant to crack, the chocolate will set before you want it to, the buttercream won't be as soft as you would like.  Although I would rather work with cakes and chocolate in the winter, it has its challenges.  Fondant work is harder than most people think.  There can't be any air bubbles, no tears, no shiny surfaces.

After talking with the judges, I got two thumbs up for the mini chocolate showpiece, they even went so far as to say it was perfect and gave me some tips to do the chocolate showpiece competition next year.  The judges wanted to see more piping skills, a more traditional design.  I was happy with my bronze  medal because the comments were worth all the effort and anxiety.  I personally loved the design of the cake and have added it to my portfolio.  

I have already started designing my chocolate showpiece for the March 2012 competition.  Yes it will be a love/hate affair with my design for a year, but I hope to not only learn new skills, but also snag maybe that elusive gold medal!

The week after Chocolate School

A week has gone by since my week at The Chocolate Academy in Chicago and I'm prepping for the Escoffier Society's competition - I'm in the Professional Wedding Cake category this year.  I have yet to win a gold medal, I have a bronze for petit fours, a bronze for wedding cakes, a silver for theme cakes and a silver for wedding cakes.  That elusive gold medal, will it be in my grasp this year?

This year's cake is a morph of a design I came up with a year ago.  It's art deco inspired and all the decorations are made of chocolate - would you expect anything different???

This competition isn't on television, it won't be in the newspapers or on the radio.  It's for professionals, run by professionals at a very high level to showcase skills and showcase new ideas in flavours, plating, ingredients and design.  True, this isn't a tasting competition but the criteria for the categories are flavour profiles.  

When I won a bronze for my petit fours, I had a white chocolate tube filled with raspberry mousse, an ice cream cone with a scoop of chocolate ganache, a fresh fruit bite made of different kinds of melons topped off with nutmeg cream cheese, mini brioche and 2 bite chocolate covered cheesecakes (see photos below).  The judges have pretty much eaten everything, tasted so many flavour combinations that they have forgotten more then most people have sampled.  None of my flavour combinations were mind blowing - they were the classics, it was the presentation!  I used sugar to make plates and serving trays and used the colour of the natural fruits to add that punch of colour.  Snagged me my first medal!

Year two, I snagged a silver for my wedding cake covered in gumpaste roses - I have a knack for flowers.

Claudia and I (team Pandora's Bakery) got together and entered the Theme Cake category.  These cakes were no dummies!  Real cake with a twist.  Our theme - Nursery Rhymes.  Three Blind Mice, Humpty Dumpty and Sing a Song of Six Pence.  Our cakes: Lemon poppy seed cake with a cream cheese icing, eggless vanilla cake with saffron scented white chocolate ganache and honey rye cake with apple buttercream respectively.  I remember when we were setting up our cakes the small crowd that gathered (it was 7am) and then as the cakes were cut, decorated and garnished a little gasp from the back, a finger pointing yelling in delight - they are nursery rhymes.  We got some great pictures, except for Humpty's cake, but my favourite was the Sing a Song of Six Pence cake and if you don't know the nursery rhyme, google it - Love that Cake!!

Now I'm working on my wedding cake for this year.  I decided to only enter one category, not enough time this year, it's a huge time commitment.  Wish me luck, I'll have a picture of the finished cake up on my blog next week, and pictures of the finished cake up on Facebook before then so stay tuned, I'm hoping a gold medal will be lying on the table beside it...sigh...

The Chocolate Academy - Chicago

There I was, in November, sitting at my desk at my office job, bored, surfing the net and lo and behold there it was, EXACTLY what I have been looking for...an Artistic Showpiece Course in chocolate in Chicago.  I have wanted to learn how to make a showpiece out of chocolate for years, now was my chance.  A few financial calculations, some surfing for hotels, clear off the credit card, book the flight on Porter Airlines and I was going to Chicago in February!  

Speed ahead 3 months and I'm sitting in the lounge in the Island Airport, shitting bricks wondering what the hell I was doing going to a prestigious chocolate academy in Chicago.  A course taught by the head technical advisor of Barry Callebaut (world chocolate supplier)...my stomach turning, and not from the turbulence of the flight to Chicago.

We checked into our hotel around dinner time Sunday night and headed out to find some grub.  Chicago is a wonderful city as far as cities go and the choice of restaurants is amazing!

Monday morning came way too fast.  Paul walked me to school and there it was...The Academy on the 8th floor, my name on the wall welcoming me and 6 other students to the Artistic Showpiece class with Chef Jerome.  After putting on my chef uniform I sat in the kitchen tightly holding my morning coffee, scarfing down a croissant and hearing how the others were shitting bricks too!

The first day was all about introductions, the equipment in the lab we would be using and engineering a showpiece so it wouldn't fall over and keeping your work station and your nice, new white apron gleaming white for the next four days...

5 minutes into pouring chocolate into a mold, my apron came undone and the ends, well they were in the mold that I had just filled with dark chocolate...so much for my gleaming white apron...

The first day was spent making support structures, talking about techniques and building the body of a crane that would tower up to 4 feet high when completed.

Day 2 was spent finishing the structure of the crane's body, making the base for the showpiece and adding the wings and feathers - all chocolate!

Day 3, we built the base up to place a large chocolate sphere in the middle where the crane was going to stand.  A hole had to be melted into the top of the sphere, a cylinder of chocolate 'glued' into the sphere then the bird body balanced on top.  One of the students, while sweating profusely  and said "Day 3 - spinchter factor was at an all time high".  Chef Jerome helped me 'glue' my crane onto the sphere but said it need some support as a lot of  the weight was on one front support - I quickly went to work.

Day 4 - the crane was still standing the next morning.  I went to work, we had 2 hours to finish the crane's feathers, head and beak!  I was putting on the top combing of the crane, up on a ladder, ready to put on my piece of chocolate, cold spray it into place and then there was no artistic showpiece left - it had crumbled to the floor beneath me.  Note to self: read some engineering/gravity books...  yes, it was in pieces on the floor - 30 hours of work back in the melter...

All was not lost, one of the students was ill so I was able to use his partially finished piece.  I still had only 1 hour to finish the head, beak and feathers, I missed coffee break that morning.  The rest of that day was spent making flowers, making beautiful long tendrils of chocolate that snaked around the piece.  Then we went to work spraying the bird with chocolate, added the beautiful flower. 

Chef Jerome finished his bird by spraying the flower with coloured cocoa butter and highlighting parts of the crane with some beautiful oranges and dark blue cocoa butter.  We had a plane to catch and were already into the champagne so I didn't have time to finish with the colouring...but I did get my certificate and the t-shirt.

Chef Jerome's finished piece!

Me and Chef Jerome!  YEAH!  (Yes I have chef hat head...after 40 hours...)

I had a few embarrassing moments like a piping bag full of chocolate exploding on my nice white apron and the cup off the air brush, that was filled with cocoa butter and dark chocolate, spill down into the sleeve of my chef jacket - but all in all I learned an amazing amount and had an amazing time.  I can hardly wait to go back to The Chocolate Academy and do it all over again!

For the Love of Cake - Part 2

Cake, cake, CAKE, CaKe, C.A.K.E., cake....cake.  I'm trying to figure out an interesting recipe to post that's not too hard, not too easy, doesn't give away any of my secret recipes and something I have a picture of...ahhhh - did I say CAKE.

Chocolate cake.  The recipes are many.  You can use melted chocolate in your chocolate cake or cocoa powder.  Coffee, nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon all go amazing with chocolate.  Why am I focusing on chocolate cake?  Well, I am a chocolatier and I have a lot of chocolate cake recipes and not many people hate chocolate.  My first day in chocolate school we made chocolate cake covered in chocolate ganache - I'm in heaven.  

I was at George Brown College, a decent 20 minute walk from school to the GO Train at 10:30 at night in downtown Toronto.  There I was, in my droopy chef pants, steel toed butcher boots, chocolate covered chef jacket, chef hat head, large red down-filled winter coat, huge bag full of knives, spoons and stuff, my purse and one box with an 8" ganache covered chocolate cake to carry to the GO Train.  I got 2 offers on my way to the train but I politely declined, after all, it's chocolate and I can be selfish.  Made it to the train station without a mishap, waited for my train without a mishap, up the stairs, got on the train, sat down - no mishaps.  This could work out I sheepishly said to myself, knowing Paul would be waiting for me at Mimico station to pick me up and drive me home.

Made it to my stop, made it out the door, down the stairs, under the tracks, back up to the parking lot, in the car, steel toed boots, droopy drawers, big red scary coat, bag of knives, purse, cake and all!  I'm sooo great I thought, I'm a freakin' genius!  Paul helped me out of the car, I egotistically carried my masterpiece up the front steps through the door, being held open by my oh-so-lucky husband.  Proceeded to then drop my bag of knives and purse on the floor, and put the cake on the kitchen table, I shamelessly will never forget watching (what seemed like slo-mo) that pretty boxed, chocolate ganache covered, perfect chocolate  cake (which snagged me an A+) slide across the table, and teeter on the edge, for what seemed like an hour, only to have it tip off and land upside down...yes, my ego trip was over.  I stood there like a dejected puppy looking for a new home.

As I scooped ganache and cake off the floor and tried to smush it back into something that looked like cake the cat decided it was a good time to help wash the floor...sigh.

After all that, I have to say the cake recipe was not only awesome but lower in fat then a lot of cake recipes, although high in the sugar department, but, half the sugar can be substituted with Splenda.  Here's that ill fated recipe that I still use to this day!

CHOCOLATE SLIDE OFF THE TABLE CAKE

100g   flour
50g     cocoa
225g   sugar
1 tsp   baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
1 egg
120 ml milk mixed with 1/2 tsp vinegar
60 ml oil
120 ml hot, freshly brewed strong coffee
1 / 2 teaspoon vanilla

METHOD:

Preheat the oven to 350 F.
Mix the milk with vinegar and allow to curdle.  Line an 8" spring form pan with parchment and spray with oil or grease with butter.  In a bowl sift flour and cocoa, add baking soda, salt, baking powder and sugar and mix well. Mix the egg with a fork, add oil, milk and vanilla. Pour wet ingredients to dry and mix.  Add hot coffee and stir until combined.
Pour into prepared cake form and bake until ready, about 25-30 minutes. 

We Should All Eat Cake - Part 1

I love cake, and not just a vanilla cake with chocolate icing or a chocolate cake with fudge icing, all kinds of cake.  The majority of North Americans have no idea what is out there!  Beyond our coasts, all the way across the pond in Europe.  The art of the Viennese treat is still alive and well in Europe.  There are so many days I wish to sneak away from my desk at work, order a double espresso and a nice opera cake.  But alas, what do we have to choose from, cupcakes with shortening icing (no butter), biscotti full of preservatives wrapped in noisy plastic, cookies with no butter and poor quality chocolate....sigh.

So what do the Europeans know that we don't?  Surely they can't make much money using real butter, fresh ingredients, employing pastry chefs with knowledge and skills.  In fact, a pastry with your espresso in the afternoon will run you the cost of lunch at McDonald's here at home.  Or you can get a nice coffee or Latte with a cute little French Macaron or two (about half the cost of a McDonald's lunch).  The thing is, you aren't eating that little pastry or drinking that espresso because you are hungry.  You need a break, need to slow down, do some people watching.  So maybe that little cuppa Joe and pastry will take you 30 to 45 minutes to enjoy.  Bet you your 1/4 pounder and fries are scarfed down in 10 minutes...

European style pastries are my favourite.  The Jaconde, Japonaise, Opera Cake, Bombe, torte, tarte, macaron, Berlin Air cake, Tiramisu, Biscotti, Gianduja, terrines, verrines, etc., etc.  The Jaconde is a vanilla sponge made with nuts, pistachio, walnut, hazelnut etc, the Japonaise, a meringue made with nuts, a Bombe is a heap of mousse, the Berlin Air cake is a light sponge with layers of cream and fresh fruit and it goes on.  We miss out on so much here in North America with the typical birthday cake, the humdrum wedding cake flavours the McCain cakes of the world.

I hope you can all think about what kind of cake you want next time you go looking to buy one.  Think outside the big box store, look in your neighbourhood for a little mom and pop bakery (or call me...hehe).  So instead of a recipe today - here are bunch of pictures to drool over and think of me when you need a cake for a special occasion and I promise they aren't the same price as gold they are affordable little goodies!  Part 2 - there will be a recipe so you don't have to call me!

White Chocolate Cherry Cake

White Chocolate Chestnut Mousse Cake

Almond, Chocolate Caramel Dobro

Peanut Butter Chocolate Tarte

 Pistachio 6 Layer Cake

Chocolate - Part 2

Qualities of chocolate.  It's a lot like fine wine or the subtleties of coffee and tea.  Each plantation has a different characteristic, each species of tree has a different flavour.  Each manufacturer conches a different way, has different milk product sources, uses different sugars.  They all make a difference.  How would one choose a superior chocolate just by looking at the package ingredients?  Let's start with that.

The amount of Cocoa Liquor and Cocoa butter make a difference, they should be the first on the ingredient list.  Also the better chocolate contains no artificial flavourings or fillers such as palm or coconut oil.  It's the same old story, you get what you pay for.  The process to get the cocoa pod into a chocolate bar is expensive and the more filler, the less chocolate used, the cheaper the product.  Also there's what's called "mouth feel".  If you take a bar of Hershey's chocolate or Cadbury and then have a bar from Lindt, you will notice the cheaper chocolates are gritty and the Lindt is like silk.  Why?  The time the raw chocolate spends in the conch, the longer the chocolate spends in the conch the smoother it will become, however this also costs more in equipment and labour to product the silky smoothness.

So one day, when you have nothing to do, go buy a bar of Hershey's, Cadburys and Lindt and have a taste test and you will notice a difference in quality.

What is the big deal between the percentages of chocolate on the label.  The higher percentage the more chocolate and less sugar.  Lindt even makes a 95% chocolate that is very nutty, a tad bitter, and has the mouth feel of peanut butter.  The average is abut 53% and each 'grade' percentage tastes different.

However, where the chocolate originates makes a big difference.  Chocolate trees grow in amongst other crops, in Madagascar the vanilla orchid grows on the trees, the chocolate from Madagascar has a beautiful hint of vanilla.  Chocolate grown in amongst coffee plants in Cuba - well has a very smooth hint of coffee.  I like to research where the chocolate I eat and use come from and match the characteristics of that chocolate with the food I'm eating or the application I'm using it in.

White, Milk, Dark.  A lot of chocolate snobs say that white or milk chocolates don't count.  I disagree.  

Although white chocolate doesn't contain any chocolate solids (Liquor) it does contain cocoa butter.  A good white chocolate contains no preservatives or fillers, it will have a lot of sugar but will have a high quality vanilla and lots of milk solids.  I like white chocolate.

Milk Chocolate is a North American favourite - I love it.  However, the brand does make a difference and I do have a preference, you should try different Milk Chocolates, read the ingredients, the first ingredient should be chocolate solids, not sugar.  If sugar is the first ingredient, put it down and slowly back away!

Dark Chocolate is self explanatory and the qualities are referenced above and is a personal preference.

This is only a small history and discussion about chocolate.  So try different kinds, don't worry about the price!  It's a gift from the Gods.  Now, since it's -20 outside, here's one of my favourite chocolate recipes:

HOT CHOCOLATE

You can either use steamed milk or heat on the stove top.

Stove Top:  Place milk in sauce pan with a handful of your choice of chocolate.  Stir with a whisk until milk is warm (not boiling) over medium heat and all chocolate has melted and enjoy.

With steam:  Get your milk steamer up to pressure.  Put your milk in lettiere with your desired chocolate, about a handful.  Steam away until all chocolate has melted, stir and pour into your favourite mug. 

Wrap your hands around that hot cup of chocolate, put your feet up and relish the food of the Gods!

Chocolate - Part 1

From the NY Times, January 11, 2011 - By FLORENCE FABRICANT, Rare Cacao Bean Discovered:

DAN PEARSON was working in northern Peru two years ago with his stepson Brian Horsely, supplying gear and food to mining companies, when something caught his eye.

“We were in a hidden mountain valley of the Marañón River and saw some strange trees with football-size pods growing right out of their trunks,” Mr. Pearson said by telephone last week. “I knew nothing about cacao, but I learned that’s what it was.”

For some of us chocolate is an everyday food, relied on much like that morning coffee.  It's a very interesting fruit, grown only in a small area around the equator, discovered by the Aztecs and not until the invention of milk powder in the mid 1800s by Nestle, did we eat chocolate.

Chocolate is Native to Honduras.  Chemically Theobromine is unique to chocolate and the Koala Nut. In modern medicine, theobromine is used as a blood vessel widener, a diuretic and a heart stimulant.  Possible future uses could be in the fields of cancer prevention (from Wikipedia).

The Aztec leader, Montezuma drank his 'Xocolatl' as an aphrodisiac.  Don Cortez introduced this aphrodisiac to the Spanish Monarchy in the 1520s.  Not until a royal wedding in Spain of a French Princess to a Spanish Prince was Xocolatl (as a drink still) introduced to the rest of Europe.  The beans were ground up, steeped in water with sugar.  The drink had some of the telltale 'chocolate flavour' we know today but it was sugary and gritty.

The technology to grind chocolate to a finer paste was developed in France in 1732 and not until 1828 was the cocoa press invented by a man named VanHouten.

This process allowed half the fat to be removed from the paste so the drink wasn't fatty and slimy. The Dutch then treated this new cocoa powder with alkali liquid.  This gives cocoa powder it's colour, good quality cocoa powder is very dark and reddish.

Frys of England made the first eating chocolate in 1847.  They created this new chocolate bar from the by-product of the cocoa powder process developed by VanHouten.  It was still gritty and not like the smooth fatty chocolate bars we enjoy today.

In 1875 Daniel Peter of Switzerland was the first to add condensed milk, creating the very first milk chocolate bar.  When Nestle invented milk powder in 1879 (aka milk solids), the first mass produced chocolate bar was introduced, milk powder was cheap and a good filler to cut down on the amount of chocolate used.

Lindt then invented the conching method in 1879.  

It's a strange looking machine, it grinds the chocolate, sometimes for 24-48 hours with sugar, sometimes with milk solids.  This grinding creates heat and thus the chocolate changes on a molecular level and the sugar and milk solids caramalize.  This conching method finally gave chocolate that melt in your mouth quality!

By 1900, Hershey was producing the first mass, cheap, chocolate bars.  Through industrilization, affordability of sugar and milk powder and the use of fillers to cut down on the amount of chocolate used in each bar, everyone could now afford a little piece of Montezuma's aphrodisiac.  

From that point on, the boxed chocolate was developed in Paris by Jean Neuhaus, the filled chocolate "Praline" (pronounced Praline-a) was developed in 1913.  The New York Chocolate Exchange was organized in 1925 and chocolate was sold as a commodity.

During World War 1, most chocolate went to the troops and chocolate was rationed until 1953.

Next blog - Part 2: Where it grows, varieties, how it goes from fruit to factory and qualities of chocolate!  Stay tuned.