DAY 71

Today is the day that we are using all the chocolate that we were working with on Monday. Todays goodies consist of Candied Chestnuts, Whiskey Truffles, Montélimard Nougat, Black & White Rock, and Muscadines. It was a very bust day ahead of us but thankfully alot of the steps were the same between them and with the same chocolate. Before we did anything we put a double layer of Siran Wrap on the table. We put the first layer on so it would be an easy clean up since we were going to get very, let me say it again VERY, messy. Then the second was for when we used a knife, so it wouldn't mater if we sliced the top layer of Siran Wrap. We started with the Montélimard Nougat, since it had the most parts and would take the longest. We put the water, sugar, and glucouse on the stove and boil till 150°c and in another pot heat the honey till 130°c. While those were on the stove we took out the hazelnuts, pistachios, and almonds and cut them to the size of a pea. When the honey was done we added it to the egg whites, and sugar like we did when we were making the Italian Meringue. Then adding it with the other pot, added the nuts and left to sit a bit. We moved onto the Candied Chestnuts. The chestnuts that we had gotten in syrup, we had put them on a rack to drain them. We then took the fondant icing and some water and temper this mixture. While tempering, we added the powdered sugar and the trimoline (which is an inverted sugar). When this was all done we dunked each chestnut into the glaze and then put them back onto the rack and put into the oven and steamed them for a little less than a minute. This steaming process is to seal the glaze onto the chestnut and so it just wont drain off when cooling. Going back to the nougat we took it out of the bowl and put in between two sheets of rice paper. Rice paper is so cool, it has the consistancy of litely waxed paper (apparently like the communon wafers) but when you put it into water it become lie wet balled paper, but a little stratchy because of the gluten in the rice. After struggling to spred it all out and then putting the top layer of rice paper put some icing sugar in top. The icing sugar, in the case of desserts, serves the same purpose of flour when your trying to roll something out. To help maintain a leveled nougat we put to sticks on either side and rolled out till we were satisfied. Afterward we cut around the edge so we had a nice rectangle without any rice paper sticking out, then into bit size rectangles and then wrapped them up. The last three things that we had had some simular steps. We started first with the whiskey truffles, taking the cream and trimoline and boiling it then adding it to the chocolate. After the chocolate was fully mixed and had almost cooled added a couple shots of whiskey. When it was about 95% or so cooled we put it into a pastry bag and made little ball on the parchment paper and then set aside to completely cool and hardened. Moving on to the black & white rock we melted the cocoa butter and then added to the pralines. This made a dough like mixture, which we then cut into little cubes and rolled in the finely chopped waffers and then set aside. Then the last the muscadines, we melted the cocoa butter and mixed with the pralines. Then took the single cream and boiled it then added it to the praline mixture. When cooled we took a N° 7 tip and pipped it out onto parchment paper, in a shape like a small slug. After all of this we tok our tea and coffee break. Then taking the other two desserts and the chocolate and the chocolate for the "rocks". We then spent some time in rolling them all in the chocolate. Unlike the black & white rocks, which after the chocolate coating were done, we then added the third and final stage. Oh, I forgot to say, the Black & White rocks taste exactly like Ferrero Rocher. For the whiskey truffles the last stage was rolling in cocoa powder and for the muscadines was icing sugar. We then put everything into little bags and cleaned up, which didn't take that long because of the Siran Wrap.

LITTLE CHOCOLATE HEAVEN...