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| - Over the years I'd played with chocolate, but I found myself spending an inordinate amount of time trying to temper my chocolate. Because that's what I'd read about online, you see. Melting, cooling, more chocolate, measuring temperatures - rinse and repeat a million times - to get things just so.
And yet, I couldn't imagine that the multitudes of chocolatiers out there were fussing over temperatures and crystal formation like I had over Christmas. I clearly needed some hands-on guidance.
The first place that came to mind was George Brown. But their Introduction To Chocolate course was overkill - not only was it 11 classes, but it had a pre-requisite as well. Then I came across Stubbe Chocolates and found their classes to be exactly what I needed: a compact demo with a hands-on component about tempering chocolate. Perfect.
Since most people don't have a giant cooled marble slab at their disposal, the class at Stubbe would teach the widely adopted seed method. We would learn how to properly melt and prepare the chocolate, as well as make our own mendiants and fashion a box made of chocolate to contain them, over the course of two hours.
With Daniel's calm voice, he guided us through the process while we had some good laughs at are feeble attempts.
It was a fun evening spent where I was able to learn (and relax) when tempering chocolate - just what I needed. I also managed to snap some great photos (see blog) since the room we were working in was gleamingly bright and white. Thanks to Daniel at Stubbe Chocolates for an informative and entertaining evening.
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