The Truffle Box.

One of the first things I saw when I toured FCI was level 2 pastry's truffle boxes. The first thought that occurred to me was that they weren't particularly good. Now, I see why. Technically not that difficult to produce, just temper chocolate and cut out shapes. But all the little things that can mess it up make this little box more difficult than I would have imagined. Although because we changed chefs today, things were a bit off and we weren't given much time (about 15 minutes) to actually decorate them, so elaborate decorations were out. Overall, I'm pretty happy with mine, and it did serve as good practice for the candy stand later this week. In fact, diagrams are due Wednesday when we begin production on our show pieces (a stand made entirely of chocolate with a bowl to hold chocolates), which are to be done Thursday, the day before our exam. Clearly the program's pace has increased a bit. I don't mind, and I love that we're being challenged a bit more. Although, leading up to October we have a project or exam (or both) every week! And then...Level 3! Time is flying for sure.
Because of the chef switch there was a fair bit of confusion today, mostly regarding guidelines to tempering. There are a multitude of ways to temper, and really mostly all are equally as effective. So the best thing to do is to find what works for you, and go with that. But some people were really struggling with the vague nature of that instruction. So during the downtime of Chef Chris explaining again to a group of students, I figured I may as well try and actually learn something. Using some left over chocolate from my project I attempted to temper without a thermometer. I want to be able to "just know" and use subtle signs that the chocolate is in temper. I was successful! It wasn't the best temper ever, but it was a start and rare as it is, I was actually pretty proud of myself! Being able to temper well is really important to me, given that chocolate is one of my main interests. So I'm well on my way!