Getting back to things I love..............

So I have really really wanted to make more chocolate truffles ever since graduating culinary school in February of 2008. The biggest obstacle in my way was obtaining the chocolate molds. Recently I was gift with some chocolate molds so my next challenge was attempting to temper chocolate again. For those of you who are unaware tempering chocolate is essentially getting molecular chocolate crystals to form in a stable manner so that you can get chocolate to give you a snap when broken, a glistening shine and a smooth texture in your mouth. Not to mention if you don't get it right you get a white film on the outside of your chocolate, it is soft and visually unappealing and even worse chocolates will not unmold from their molds! So with all this in store I attempted to create some chocolates as practice for Valentine's Day. For all intensive purposes it was a complete success! Of course there is always room for improvement, but hey they aren't too shabby. Definitely look for more chocolates in the future. I can't wait to get some cocoa butter colors to spruce up these little guys!

An undertaking

A new challenge I recently faced was creating a beautiful wedding cake from the comfort of my home. Now you may think that making a beautiful culinary masterpiece is complicated, but throw in a small household oven, the limited availability of commercial bakery products, and the absence of many convenient  tools and you have an even bigger challenge. This is a challenge I greatly welcome. Making beautiful cakes takes not only a lot of time, but it takes a great deal of patience and passion. My passion for this industry and my love of all things culinary are my driving force for always welcoming bigger and better challenges for myself.