When you're wanting to learn how to make chocolate recipes better there are a few things you need to remember.
1. Follow the recipe before you make changes to it.
2. Use good quality, fresh ingredients only.
3. Make sure your measurements are right e.g. tsp is teaspoons, tbsp is tablespoons, gram to cup conversions vary depending upon the ingredient/s.
The main item I would like to focus on here to help us all make better chocolate recipes is the Star ingredient - Chocolate.
Chocolate would have to be one of the best ingredients ever! I thank God for the Theobroma Cacao tree from which chocolate is made. The scientific name Theobroma actually means "food of the gods".
If we stop long enough and just think about chocolate all by itself we would quickly realize what a magnificent food it really is. Here is a food type that will cheer up anyone who is feeling sad. It says "I love you" better than any other food type. When we think of Valentine's Day chocolate, flowers and jewelry usually come to mind.
It also makes an excellent gift for birthdays, Easter, Christmas, engagements, weddings, anniversaries, is a great way to say sorry, makes a good excuse to get together, is delicious with practically any beverage, it markets and sells well generally and for charity drives, has featured in so many movies e.g. Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory, Charlie and The Chocolate Factory, Like Water for Chocolate, Chocolat, In Search of the Heart of Chocolate and so many more.
Then we start to think of chocolate as an ingredient. Possibly the best place to begin is by thinking about chocolate bars. Brand names like Cadbury, Hershey's, Nestle have made very successful businesses by adding fruits, nuts and flavors to it. Change the shape and sell it again e.g chocolate chips, blocks of chocolate, little chocolate bars, milk or dairy, dark and white chocolate etc.
Put chocolate in biscuits, cakes, drinks - both non-alcoholic and alcoholic, mousse, brownies, pies, icing, desserts and the list goes on.
Chocolate really is superb!
If are wanting to know how to make a chocolate chip cookie recipe you would find a cookbook, website or blog that is dedicated to chocolate. You want to make sure that the author of the recipe/s really knows the ingredients they promote.
Also, remember the guidelines mentioned above - follow the recipe, fresh ingredients and correct measures.
Recently I decided to make chocolate brownies. A friend suggested I double the ingredients, which I did. I poured all of the brownie mix into a deep baking dish and baked it for the suggested time. Because of this the brownie recipe was a flop however, the chocolate lava cake was a huge success - thankfully. My mistake here was I should have stuck to the recipe and poured the mix into two shallow baking dishes just like it said.
Once you are confident, then experiment to your heart's desires. Have a go at using additional ingredients. For example where the chocolate chip cookie recipe calls for rolled oats, try a natural muesli. The addition of fruit, nuts and bran to these cookies is outstanding.
Finally, when most people think of chocolate they think of fun times. Chocolate and cooking are both fun, so relax and enjoy working with different recipes. This alone can improve the quality of your hard work and time in the kitchen.
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Monday, September 5, 2011
How to Make Chocolate Peanuts, Turtles and Other Chocolate Covered Products
One of the most interesting ways chocolate candy is made is a modern method that involves a machine called an "enrober". Imagine a cupcake cup in which you place a pretzel. Fill the cup up with warm chocolate. Then make slits or slots on all four sides so that the extra chocolate will run out of the cup and into a catching tray.
Now when you flood the cup with chocolate it coats the pretzel, but as the chocolate flows back out of the cup the pretzel remains coated. If you move this cup on a belt through a cooling tunnel the chocolate will harden to its final form. Suppose there are 12 cups in a row on a conveyor line, all filled with pretzels. The cups pass beneath a nozzle that fills the cups with chocolate. The overflow runs out through the slits in the cup.
The above method would not be perfect if you need to have chocolate on the bottom of the piece. When you make chocolates in an enrober that needs a chocolate bottom first, before you place an item in the cup you add a small amount of chocolate in the cup bottom. The cup then passes through a chilling tunnel where the bottom sets. The cup is then filled with a nut or fruit center. Then the cup is top flooded with chocolate. The entire piece passes through a cooling tunnel to make the final hard set. Often this is the way production chocolate pieces are made for the large companies.
The excess chocolate recirculates and is used again to flood the next cups with chocolate. This is an enrobing line and you can always tell enrobing because there is a flat bottom on the chocolate item.
Smaller chocolate makers hand dip the chocolates - one at a time - and this is slower but more individualized. An enrober give constant quality, appearance, and large volume of products.
This method of chocolate coating is machinery intensive and requires expensive equipment. A normal plant might make 2,000 pounds of enrobed chocolate pieces on a typical production run!
Have you ever wondered how it is that we can dip nuts into chocolate so that the chocolate comes out distributed evenly all around the nut?
When the nut is coated commercially it goes through an enrobing process. If you had a cup and poured a little chocolate in it and set the chocolate, then placed a nut in the cup on the chocolate bottom, and then flowed chocolate over the nut with the excess flowing out of the cup, you would be enrobing. The finished coated nut goes through cooling tunnels to harden the chocolate and is then popped out of the cup.
You can not do that at home. About the best you can do is to pour chocolate in a mold and then push the nut into the center. As it sets the nut will form a core. Sometimes you can buy these molds at cake decorating specialty shops. They are usually made of flexible rubber or plastic.
You might also try an easier method, but more specialized. Take the nut in your hand and dip the nut into the chocolate and give your wrist a quick turn as you lift the chocolate-coated nut out of the bowl. The chocolate will run off, but some will stay on the nut forming a thin layer. Set on wax paper to dry. You can dip several times and this will build up a mass.
This method is an art-form and when you hear of "hand-dipped" chocolates, this is what they mean. It takes about a year of steady dipping and twisting to get talented so don't be discouraged if it does not go well.
Now when you flood the cup with chocolate it coats the pretzel, but as the chocolate flows back out of the cup the pretzel remains coated. If you move this cup on a belt through a cooling tunnel the chocolate will harden to its final form. Suppose there are 12 cups in a row on a conveyor line, all filled with pretzels. The cups pass beneath a nozzle that fills the cups with chocolate. The overflow runs out through the slits in the cup.
The above method would not be perfect if you need to have chocolate on the bottom of the piece. When you make chocolates in an enrober that needs a chocolate bottom first, before you place an item in the cup you add a small amount of chocolate in the cup bottom. The cup then passes through a chilling tunnel where the bottom sets. The cup is then filled with a nut or fruit center. Then the cup is top flooded with chocolate. The entire piece passes through a cooling tunnel to make the final hard set. Often this is the way production chocolate pieces are made for the large companies.
The excess chocolate recirculates and is used again to flood the next cups with chocolate. This is an enrobing line and you can always tell enrobing because there is a flat bottom on the chocolate item.
Smaller chocolate makers hand dip the chocolates - one at a time - and this is slower but more individualized. An enrober give constant quality, appearance, and large volume of products.
This method of chocolate coating is machinery intensive and requires expensive equipment. A normal plant might make 2,000 pounds of enrobed chocolate pieces on a typical production run!
Have you ever wondered how it is that we can dip nuts into chocolate so that the chocolate comes out distributed evenly all around the nut?
When the nut is coated commercially it goes through an enrobing process. If you had a cup and poured a little chocolate in it and set the chocolate, then placed a nut in the cup on the chocolate bottom, and then flowed chocolate over the nut with the excess flowing out of the cup, you would be enrobing. The finished coated nut goes through cooling tunnels to harden the chocolate and is then popped out of the cup.
You can not do that at home. About the best you can do is to pour chocolate in a mold and then push the nut into the center. As it sets the nut will form a core. Sometimes you can buy these molds at cake decorating specialty shops. They are usually made of flexible rubber or plastic.
You might also try an easier method, but more specialized. Take the nut in your hand and dip the nut into the chocolate and give your wrist a quick turn as you lift the chocolate-coated nut out of the bowl. The chocolate will run off, but some will stay on the nut forming a thin layer. Set on wax paper to dry. You can dip several times and this will build up a mass.
This method is an art-form and when you hear of "hand-dipped" chocolates, this is what they mean. It takes about a year of steady dipping and twisting to get talented so don't be discouraged if it does not go well.
Saturday, September 3, 2011
Chestnut Chocolate Cake
Chocolate cake with chestnut filling
I made this cake because one of my sons very often eats chestnut cream. So I came up with the idea of a chestnut filling, and I don't regret it, because this chestnut filling cake came out delicious. The chestnut cream in a jar is very thick, that is harder, and it must be mixed with whipped cream so that it is easier to spread on the cake layer. I could have made a separate chocolate cream or ness coffee cream to soften the chestnut cream, but I thought it's better to put whipped cream so as not to mix the fillings too much, and it came out very good. It takes some time to prepare this cake, but the result will be a truly special one.
Ingredients:
• 1 chocolate cake layer
• 2 chestnut cream jars
• 2 jars of cherries in cherry juice
• 1 box of liquid cream from the brand "Hulala" (500 ml)
• 2 packages of chocolate icing
• 300 gr. of nutmeats, cut into small pieces with a knife
• Raw sugar for the whipped cream, 3 or 4 spoons
• 50 ml amaretto liqueur for the syrup
Preparation:
First, we prepare the chestnut cream using the 2 jars, mixing it then with some "Hulala" whipped cream spoons. I've used 6 whipped cream spoons for 600 gr. of chestnut cream. We thoroughly mix the cream with a wooden spoon, so that the cream homogenizes well and then we put the cream into the refrigerator. We also prepare the "Hulala" whipped cream, to which we add 4 spoons of raw sugar. After that we put it into the refrigerator.
We prepare the syrup for moistening the cake layers. I've prepared it out of 250 ml of water, to which I have added 4 or 5 spoons of raw sugar, depending on your taste. We put the kettle on the fire, until the sugar dissolves entirely, and then we add 50 ml of amaretto liqueur. We pass on to moisturizing the cake layers, we add plenty of cream and on top of the cream we also add a generous layer of nutmeats, crushed or cut into small pieces with a knife. I've cut the nutmeats with a knife, because we like it to be a little bigger, not finely crushed. After we have moistened the cake and added the cream and nutmeats, on top we put the icing, the whipped cream and the cherries taken from the jar. The cake is served after keeping it into the refrigerator for a while, and then it is cut into squares. Enjoy!!!
I made this cake because one of my sons very often eats chestnut cream. So I came up with the idea of a chestnut filling, and I don't regret it, because this chestnut filling cake came out delicious. The chestnut cream in a jar is very thick, that is harder, and it must be mixed with whipped cream so that it is easier to spread on the cake layer. I could have made a separate chocolate cream or ness coffee cream to soften the chestnut cream, but I thought it's better to put whipped cream so as not to mix the fillings too much, and it came out very good. It takes some time to prepare this cake, but the result will be a truly special one.
Ingredients:
• 1 chocolate cake layer
• 2 chestnut cream jars
• 2 jars of cherries in cherry juice
• 1 box of liquid cream from the brand "Hulala" (500 ml)
• 2 packages of chocolate icing
• 300 gr. of nutmeats, cut into small pieces with a knife
• Raw sugar for the whipped cream, 3 or 4 spoons
• 50 ml amaretto liqueur for the syrup
Preparation:
First, we prepare the chestnut cream using the 2 jars, mixing it then with some "Hulala" whipped cream spoons. I've used 6 whipped cream spoons for 600 gr. of chestnut cream. We thoroughly mix the cream with a wooden spoon, so that the cream homogenizes well and then we put the cream into the refrigerator. We also prepare the "Hulala" whipped cream, to which we add 4 spoons of raw sugar. After that we put it into the refrigerator.
We prepare the syrup for moistening the cake layers. I've prepared it out of 250 ml of water, to which I have added 4 or 5 spoons of raw sugar, depending on your taste. We put the kettle on the fire, until the sugar dissolves entirely, and then we add 50 ml of amaretto liqueur. We pass on to moisturizing the cake layers, we add plenty of cream and on top of the cream we also add a generous layer of nutmeats, crushed or cut into small pieces with a knife. I've cut the nutmeats with a knife, because we like it to be a little bigger, not finely crushed. After we have moistened the cake and added the cream and nutmeats, on top we put the icing, the whipped cream and the cherries taken from the jar. The cake is served after keeping it into the refrigerator for a while, and then it is cut into squares. Enjoy!!!
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