chocovision (playing with chocolate 2)
another try at making candies, this time I’m armed with a secret weapon!
The eater got me a very cool gift for Christmas that I really haven’t used all that much: The Chocovision Revolation 1. For those of you that aren’t super-foodies, the Revolation is a chocolate tempering machine. It is the little brother of the Revolation X3210 professional model, but don’t let that fool you, this little guy gets it done. It will melt up to two pounds of chocolate, temper it for you automatically, and keep your chocolate tempered for well over an hour or so.
When I temper chocolate by hand I never seem to have problems getting the chocolate tempered properly; my problems usually come from trying to use the tempered chocolate. Even with the best of setups I always seem to have problems dipping candies or filling molds or keeping all of the stray chocolate off of me. The Revolation probably takes a little bit of the art out chocolate making, but I’m not complaining.
Over the weekend I made several varieties of candies but I think I went a little overboard this time. I managed to come up with macadamia nut turtles, dark chocolate-matcha ganache truffles, white chocolate-coconut ganache truffles, and chocolate covered caramels. I really intended to make more, but the candy supply started to get out of hand.
Although I made too many plenty of candies, they did not turn out exactly how I expected. The chocolate I used to coat the candies is a bit on the bitter dark side. While this isn’t a bad thing, I don’t think it paired well with the matcha ganache or the macadamia nut turtles. The white chocolate ganache had all sorts of problems staying firm enough to coat. The real winner out of the entire batch was the caramels.
Since this was yet another chocolate making experiment and my ganaches didn’t work out as I intended, I’m going to forgo the recipes this time. After we manage to eat about all one hundred or so of these, I’ll try another batch and refine the recipe. Here’s a parting shot of all the candies in reserve:
For those who are looking for more on chocolates:
- David Lebovitz writes about his Paris chocolate adventures
- Chocolate Alchemy writes about making artisan chocolate in the Pacific NW
- Artisans Sweets writes about her boutique candies and pastries
Those look amaaaazing. I’m so jealous of people with fine pastry and chocolate skills!
Like I said, next San Diego foodblog event I’ll bring all sorts of goodies or something. Isn’t it about time to have one again?
If you’re looking to get rid of some of those …