Chocolat…

It’s true that there are patisseries absolutely everywhere in Paris. But almost as abundant as the pastry shops, are chocolate speciality shops – chocolatiers. In the few blocks around our apartment, I have counted no less than half a dozen.

A few days ago, Ruby and I took a chocolate making class at Edwart Chocolatier. The atelier started with a chocolate tasting, where we were disabused of the idea that dark chocolate is bitter while milk chocolate is sweet. It is only poor quality dark chocolate, apparently pretty common in America (no mention of Canada!), that is bitter, according to the person who was running the tasting. We finished with chocolate from Peru that was from an area rich in volcanic ash. Incredibly, you could actually taste the smoke in the chocolate.

We would be making bi-couches chocolates – half domes with a layer of dark chocolate ganache beneath a layer of praliné, enrobed in a thin layer of dark chocolate. The first step was the messy job of filling the chocolate molds with what would be the outside of the top of the chocolates. This was a tricky job that involved holding the molds in one hand while overfilling them with melted chocolate with the other. The molds were tapped to remove air bubbles, flipper over and tapped again to let excess chocolate drip out, and then scraped twice to smooth the edge of the half domes. We were warned to work quickly and place the molds face down on the counter (no-peeking!) as soon as this task was complete. No pictures, unfortunately, as my hands were quite covered in chocolate at then end of this step!

The next step was to prepare the two fillings. We were taught the secrets of making a ganache that wouldn’t split – a combination of patience, temperature control, and magic to coax the chocolate and cream to blend – and the praliné. The less finicky praliné was prepared by processing roasted french hazlenuts that smelled absolutely divine, with sugar, cocoa butter, and milk chocolate. Each filling was piped into the now firm molds and left to set.

The final step was to cover the filled bonbons with another layer of chocolate, almost as messy as the first step.

The chocolates were placed in the fridge to set, then turned out of their molds and placed into boxes. Each chocolate had to be checked for quality – any imperfection at the base of the chocolate, like an air bubble or hole, meant the chocolate didn’t meet the standard. It turns out that these imperfections are a point of ingress for fungi, bacteria, and the like, so the chocolate can spoil. Mind you, anyone who leaves their chocolate around long enough for this to happen, probably shouldn’t have them in the first place! Luckily for us, there were a good number of discards, so we had ample opportunity to taste the fruits of our labour. And even still, we each went home that day with a gorgeous box of 16 perfect chocolates!

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