theobroma cacao

also known as chocolate, cocoa, food of the gods, and woman's best friend, theobroma cacao is one amazing plant.  well, tree to be precise.  anything that can possibly thrive in the high heat and humidity along the equatorial belt automatically earns some respect from me, but it is amazing that a food item that has been around for so long and has been a symbol of status and wealth in so many societies is grown in some of the poorest parts of our world.  

going in to chocolate week, i was really excited about working with chocolate.  doing the reading for lecture was so much fun and i learned a great deal about how chocolate is grown and manufactured as well as the procedures for proper use of chocolate in pastry.  as a chocolate lover, i knew some of this information going into the lesson, but i was quite excited to learn more about chocolate flavors and which chocolates works best with other ingredients.  

the worst part about chocolate week was that i was leaving straight from class on saturday evening to fly home and pack up the house, so my brain was pretty overwhelmed by thursday evening.  chef amy's lecture was as always very amusing and informative and we had chef nate as a guest instructor for the week.  chef nate is the pastry chef at the kitchen, which is a very popular restaurant in boulder and he is great with chocolate making him a wonderful resource in the kitchen.

in order to properly coat something with chocolate or to prepare chocolate for a showpiece, etc. the chocolate must first be tempered.  chocolate undergoes polymorphous crystallization, meaning that there are multiple shapes of fat crystals that form in chocolate as it solidifies.  some of these crystals actually make the chocolate appear dull and grainy and be fairly soft rather than fully setting up.  therefore you have to encourage the formation of beta crystals, which give a nice shine and firm snap to your chocolate.  in order to get the proper fat crystals forming in your chocolate, you go through a crazy procedure of melting, seeding, cooling and remelting to ensure the formation of beta crystals.  the food science behind tempering is fascinating.  the process, however, is long, complicated, and not a whole lot of fun.  

chocolate work is best done in a kitchen that has a tempering machine or by those who are extremely patient and not easily bored.  once your chocolate has been tempered, you have to keep it at the proper working temperature to ensure that it stays in temper, meaning that you are working quickly and about every 2 minutes, you have to put your chocolate bowl back on the double boiler to keep it at the right temp.  as much as i was looking forward to working with chocolate, i was fairly disappointed with how little fun it was in actual practice.  we made some really awesome products and the final detail work is quite fun, but dipping 100 pieces of toffee in tempered chocolate was one of the most tedious things i have ever done.  

we did small chocolate showpieces on saturday afternoon and though getting chocolate tempered properly was a pain, the actual construction was pretty neat.  cocoa butter can be colored in any hue you want and then spread out onto a piece of acetate, kind of like finger painting.  your tempered chocolate is then spread on the cocoa butter and when it sets up, the cocoa butter is stuck to the chocolate and you can make any design you want on your chocolate pieces.  i ended up having fun making my chocolate box, but overall i don't really think i'm much of a chocolatier.  i'll keep working with it to see if it gets more fun though.  

the greatest part of chocolate week was the chocolate tasting that we did on friday evening.  we had about 30 different types of chocolate including cacao nibs, which are the unrefined portions of the cacao bean that are actually used to make chocolate products, super dark unsweetened chocolate, and everything in between.  by the end my poor taste buds were overwhelmed, but i did find some new favorites.  if you like dark chocolate and red wines, theo brand 70% dark chocolate is an amazing chocolate.  it has some amazing fruity, raisiny top notes that actually burst in your mouth just like a good red wine.  

in the end i could go on and on about my chocolate knowledge, but i think i would rather eat chocolate or talk about chocolate than work with it.  if anyone is seriously interested in chocolate trivia, let me know.  otherwise, i won't bore you all with the multitude of chocofacts floating around in my brain. :)