Making Chocolates with Chuck

Every once in a while, I want to do something a bit out of the ordinary on a weekend afternoon.  A few years ago, for example, I waited in line for six hours to audition for the Martha Stewart version of "The Apprentice."  (Last words from Martha's people?  "Don't call us, we'll call you.")

Today, it was spending five hours behind-the-scenes in the production kitchen of Charles Chocolates in Emeryville, learning how to make chocolate concoctions with owner and chocolatier Chuck Siegel himself.

At first I was a bit intimidated, since almost all of the other students in the class had extensive chocolate-making experience, and all I had was extensive chocolate-eating experience.  But I pledged to be a quick study, and Chuck put me at ease by promising that what we'd learn today would be hands-on, fun and easy enough to repeat at home.  

We'd lay the basic foundations upon which we could build a myriad of variations.  For example, we started with basic hand-rolled truffles.  The ganache was a plain chocolate, but Chuck gave us tips for infusing it with various flavors at home -- such as tea, citrus or hazelnut.  The best part of rolling the truffles was getting the chocolate's cocoa butter all over your hands.  Better than any lotion I've tried!  Here's the finished product:

Many of the recipes were Chuck's tried-and-true, but we also helped him experiment with a Chocolate Granita.  It turned out to be too much chocolate (dense flavor) not enough granita (iciness) for his taste, but I thought it was terrific!  Chuck's advice is that you should always make things to suit your own taste -- since you can't please everyone else since everyone has a different tongue, you should always aim to please your own palate.  Here's Chuck dishing out those pearls of wisdom along with the whipped cream for the granita:

We also made two different kinds of hot chocolate -- not hot cocoa mind you, but hot chocolate -- meaning thick, liquid heaven.  First we did basic chocolate hot chocolate, then got a bit more advanced with a caramel and cinnamon infusion.

The final treat in the curriculum was learning to make filled chocolates in a mold.  The molds were done for us beforehand, because even with a five-hour class there wasn't enough time to learn tempering, and Charles Chocolates uses a machine to do this anyway.  But we did the rest ourselves, including making the apricot-infused filling.  Here I am mixin' it up with an immersion blender, and sporting the de rigeur hair net:

We piped the filling into our individual molds...

... and refrigerated them.  Then it was time to put the bottoms on, carefully wiping off the excess with a squeegee.  

From there, they needed about an hour to set, so later on at home, I broke them out of the mold and...TA-DA!  

We were sent home with a goody bag of essentials to make our own at home, including recipes, molds, milk and bittersweet bars, and an offset spatula that's great for ganache-smoothing.  All I can say is that this could be very, very dangerous.  But if I'm going down, you're going down with me, people!  (That means all of you in my office who'll be eating these treats come Monday if there are any left...)

For more information on this class and other fun things going on at Charles Chocolates like movie nights and their upcoming open house, check out the Events section of the Charles Chocolates web site.

Comments

[lizelle green]

You look so professional! I'm sure the cocoa treats were delicious. Please pull me into your next class. :)

[Ryan Hupfer]

Laura - I'm glad to see that I'm not the only 'random-weekender' around here. You have to mix it up every now and then, ya know?

Now how much of that chocolate did you actually end up eating? :)

[laurafrofro]

Lizelle - yes, very professional in that lovely hair net, no? Would love to have you as a partner in crime next time.

Ryan - Had a few tastes while we were there, but not enough to succumb to a Willy Wonka-style fate. Of the stuff I brought home, there's a little bit left but it's going fast...