Mocha Sticks, Pistachio Aida, Nougat Montelimar

In Tuesday's Candies & Confectionaries class, we continued our production of various chocolates, making three different kinds. To make Mocha Sticks, we prepared a ganache that was chilled and then piped into thick round logs on parchment paper. After chilling again, we tempered milk chocolate and brushed the logs with milk chocolate, which then looked like real logs. After setting, we cut the logs into 1 inch pieces, which were then dipped into milk chocolate and dusted with powdered sugar.

To make Pistachio Aida, or Baumstaemmchen, we made a nutella flavored ganache, which was chilled and then piped into thick rounds logs on parchment paper. We then prepared pistachio marzipan, which was rolled over the ganache logs. These were also brushed with tempered dark chocolate and cut into 1 inch pieces.

To make Nougat Montelimar, we first prepared the nougat. Honey, water and sugar were heated to 266 degrees F on the stove, while egg whites were whipped with sugar in a mixer. The honey/water/sugar mixture was poured into the egg white mixture, then placed on the stove over a water bath. This mixture was whisked furiously for 25 to 30 minutes, which was quite a workout. Chef was not impressed with my whisking skills, but seriously, I was working as fast and as hard as possible; the mixture was quite thick. After the moisture was reduced, this was spread over crushed almonds and pistachios, and the whole mixture was placed between two pieces of oiled parchment paper and rolled to 1 cm thick. Once it was set up, a layer of chocolate was brushed on one side, then the nougat was cut into 1 inch squares. The squares were dipped into chocolate, but the nougat was left exposed on top.

All in all, another fast-paced high production day of chocolates. And again, there wasn't a chance for me to take any photos. Next week, I may possibly purchase some of them to bring home, and then I'll be able to take photos at my leisure.

We also spent the last 30 minutes of class practicing piping the ornaments with royal icing. Chef demonstrated this last week. His looked like this:



So each of these in actuality is 1.25 inches thick, give or take, and extremely thin. It requires the right size tiny hole in a pastry bag made from parchment paper. I spent a few hours over the past two days practicing, and I can easily say this is one of the hardest things I've yet to experience in school. My midterm exam in based on this piping in a few weeks. I'll be spending many hours practicing.