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Making Truffles - The Real Thing

It has been nice to get out.  As I wrote yesterday, I did win a door prize at Knit City, a $90 special knitting bag.  The information about it was added to the October 14 post as a post script.

On Sunday I had signed up to take a candy making class at Cocoa Nymph in downtown Vancouver.  It was a rainy day so staying inside for 2.5 hours was a good idea, even better was the fact I got to stay in a candy shop that smelled so wonderfully chocolaty.

The Cocoa Nymph found at 4 West 7th Avenue
The lesson began by outlining the process of taking a cocoa bean from the tree (where it grows on the trunk) to a usable format, something much more complicated than I realized.  We also got a brief history of chocolate.  Chocolate, as we know it, has been around for about 150 years; however, there's evidence it was used as early as 1900 BC.  We had a tasting of a single source Mexican, Cuban and African chocolate.  It was amazing how differently each tasted from one another. The Mexican was my favorite, a richer chocolate flavor with ribbons of overwhelmingly strong chocolate flavors running through it.  Of course the cocoa tree originated with the Aztecs, so Mexico has had years of practice growing the plant, perhaps explaining why it taste best.  We also tasted cocoa butter and chocolate nubs which are coarsely ground, roasted chocolate beans.  Neither were all that tasty on their own.  I used the cocoa butter to soften my hands, that's how good it was.

Then the fun began; we got to make a box of our own chocolates.  We moved into the candy making room where dark chocolate had already been tempered; see the loverly vat below.  (Doesn't it just make your mouth water.)


Also prepared in advance for us was the ganache for our truffle-making purposes.  It was cool in this  room and once we started trying to press out shapes I understood why.  Even the heat of one's hands made it challenging to empty the cookie cutter.

Ganache

My cutout maple leaves, a star, squares and finally the traditional balls 
See the maple leaf cutter in the top upper right hand corner of the photo above.  It is covered with ganache even though I wiped it clean after every cut.  These rather ugly pieces are dipped into the tempered dark chocolate, accessorized, or rolled into cocoa powder or white chocolate before a brief chill.

Almost there still a bit of a mess though
After a brief time in the cooler it was easy enough to remove my goodies from the tray and put them in a box.

My take-home box of much more presentable chocolate
I'm not sure I'll take up candy making anytime soon, but it is great to know it is relatively simple to make edible candies.  Making them beautifully presentable will take lots of practice and frankly at this point in my life I don't need all those irresistible calories practicing would create.
























Cocao Nymp
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