Calling all Bounty Fans

And I’m talking about the chocolatey coconut bar not the super absorbent kitchen towels ;-)

Check out Stitch and Bear’s article on Mars’ attempt to trademark the much loved bar.

October ChocoFest!

Oh I am so looking forward to October; just look at the lineup  …

At home, there’s the Temple Bar Chocolate Festival October 30th – November 1st 2009.

In the UK, there’ s Chocolate Week 12th – 18th October 2009.

And in Paris, there’s the Salon du Chocolat 14th – 18th October 2009.

The Great Irish Bake

On my way to work this week I noticed a poster in a butchers shop window advertising The Great Irish Bake. Before I could read anymore the traffic lights changed so I missed the rest. What it is is a fund-raising event for Temple St Children’s Hospital.

There are loads of ideas, posters, stickers and even a recipe book to download for the event. It ‘whisked’ off in May but lasts for all 2009.  I am sure I can ‘poison’ a few work colleagues at work for a good cause!

Anyone else baking?

The Candy Store

The Candy Store, Ottawa has to be the prettiest sweet shop I have ever seen. I rarely see the big tubs of hard boiled sweets (sucking sweets is what we called them) that we could buy by the quarter in shops anymore.  Anyone for a bag of apple sours?

Butler’s Pantry Chocolate Glaze

Yip this is just what you want on a warm summer’s day: a deeply rich gooey cake – NOT. But I’m quite enjoying it in the cool of the evening. The sponge is taken from here but cooked in a 9X9″ tin for 35-40 mins. The pièce de résistance of this cake is the shiny icing.

My mother in law saved this recipe for me from the RTE Guide ages ago and I’m only now getting around to it now. It’s taken from the Butler’s Pantry Recipes for All Seasons for Chocolate Fudge Cake.For their glaze, you will need:

3oz/90g light golden syrup (I used plain old golden syrup)

1oz/25g unsalted butter

2tbsp water

3oz dark chocolate chopped (70% best you can lay your hands on)

1. Heat the syrup, butter and water in a pot on medium heat and stir until it comes to the boil.

2. Remove and stir in the chocolate until smooth.

3. Spoon the warm glaze over the cooled cake and stand at room temp until set. I cut my cake into squares then drizzled the glaze so I could get the drip-down-the-side effect.

Valrhona Patisserie Champion

And the winner of the Valrhona Patisserie Championship is …. (drum roll):

Ludovic Lantier, pastry sous chef, Ritz Carlton in Powerscourt. The winning creation sounds fab, combining not 1, not 2, not 3 but 4 Valrhona chocolates.

Check out some of the action shots and full report from Odaios.

Final Assignment All Done

I never thought I’d say this but I need a break from the chocolate kitchen. I’ve been working on my final assignment for the past 3 weeks making fudge, candied peel, gianduja, nut brittle, caramel, fondant; coating in different chocolates; decorating with different techniques; flavouring ganaches. Oh I need a chocolate free weekend! But just to be clear, I will be eating chocolate just not cooking ;-)

I never thought I’d be making such confections during a chocolate course but now I plan to incorporate them into my creations. I’m planning an orange truffle with candied peel and a nut brittle truffle.

The course does not officially end until July and I’ve still got lots of lectures to read through.

The highlight of the course was my mint cream with fondant made from scratch. I will blog some more about this later though.

Fathers Day

Yesterday was a sad day in my head but HoneyB kept me smiling. Anyway, what more suitable way to mark the day than by making caramel. (I would never have eaten the caramel in the box of Milk Tray … that was Dad’s favourite).

My first batch of caramel was a disaster … goodness me, I knew there was a danger of scorching, but I was amazed how quickly it happened. And what a mess to clean up. I ended up boiling the sticky utensils in the pot to remove the caramel.

Himself was very impressed with the caramel taste with Sumatra coffee (Starbucks) so I broke with tradition i.e. no coffee, and had a little espresso cup full.

Actually speaking of  the ‘bucks, kudos to Starbucks in Beacon South Quarter over the weekend for their most excellent ‘aroma lab’. They had 3 coffees up for tasting on three separate tables outside their cafe. On each table the coffee was surrounded by things it might taste/smell like, for example sliced oranges, nutmeg, cinnamon – excellent visual stimulus to help decipher the flavours.

Anyway back to the caramel:

Nuts!

OK, so my philosophy in the kitchen is cook what we enjoy eating. So why on earth have I made a batch of nut brittle? It’s not that it is awful … just hazardous to teeth. I was sure my dodgy back tooth was a gonner after the first taste.

I made this as part of my course assignment, which has me working on all sorts of filling to eventually be covered in chocolate: fondant, caramel, fudge, gianduja. There are two streams to the course and I have chosen the Flavours and Techniques stream (as opposed to the Business stream) because I felt it better to learn the techniques with an expert to hand. I hope I can muddle thru the business part on my ownie own.

Time is very tight with work, home life, course work … For me there are just Not Enough Hours and no man-off-the-telly can fix my time dilemma. Mind you, we did manage a great day out at Airfield House especially when we ended our picnic with a treat from Cupcake Cottage ;-)

Here are a few shots of a white chocolate gianduja truffle which Himself took.

My ‘brown’ zebras.

I made a mistake with these ones though in that I never waited for the filling to harden before pouring on the chocolate base. The results was a very thick base … but if ya like white chocolate then this should not be a problem ;-)

Taste Of Dublin 2009

We had a dry and sunny day at Taste of Dublin which was surprising given the rain that fell this morning. HoneyB was a little under the weather so what was billed as a half day of strolling and grazing became 2 hours of walking and eating. How bad, eh?

Arriving at the entrance reminded us of arriving at a concert. We were ‘greeted’ by a big guy who warned us to ‘Have our tickets ready’. Good god, I wondered was my bag going to be searched next and my water bottle confiscated! Bad start but it was up hill from there on when Donnybrook Fair greeted us with truffles.

The Green & Black’s stand was beautiful with oodles of squares to sample, but the one bar Himself wanted, Dark Cherry, was not for sale only sample :-( It will be available in July but IMHO Wilde Irish Chocolate Cherry gives it a run for its money.

Lindt stall was matching the SuperValu promotion: any 3 bars for €5. There was no new and exciting flavors to see, just lots to taste and the Lindt cook book to flick thru.

I think HoneyB would have wow’ed at ChocAllure’s chocolate fountain. It was such a feast for the eyes; but I’m not a huge fan of the milky stuff so I passed by.

Most of the restaurants seemed busy enough and there were lots of well known faces inc Gino, Darina and the guy from Hell’s Kitchen. All smiling and soaking in the foodie atmosphere. I have to say that the menu for L’Ecrivain sounded a whole lot better than the real thing. I got a tiny burger hidden in a huge bun … himself got a ‘cuisine de france’ crispy roll with a sausage ;-(

But the highlight of the day was a tasting session at Beer Naturally Academy where we tasted 4 beers paired with food. It was very interesting and showed me Carlsberg in a new light! After that we tasted a mini Guinness (we got to keep the glass!) and a Guinness & chocolate tart. Nice one.

Artisan du Chocolate had a nice but small selection from which we chose 2 bars and then went back for a third just to be really greedy! They reckon they are going to open an outlet in Dublin but are searching for the right premises (they said that last year so now I’m skeptical).

We covered a lot of ground and food in two hours and ticked off our must dos: Beer Naturally Academy and Artisan du Chocolat. Then off to collect HoneyB who was soooo impressed that Mommie and Daddie were there early for her.