Things that melt

The Fran Bigelow Chocolate class was this past week and it was pretty much amazing. As an assistant you sometimes get leftovers, if there are any, and I was lucky enough to come home with a wee bag of Fran-made truffles. They were so perfectly uniform in size and roundness. I learned a lot and am planning to pick up her book when I get the chance. I should have bought it at the class and then I could have had her sign it but I was in a chocolate haze and wasn't thinking straight. I really enjoy making truffles. The most important lesson about working with chocolate I learned was the importance of having the various ingredients at the same temperature (eggs, cream, chocolate...etc) . In making truffles this means not to refrigerate the ganache. Let it set up at room temperature. If you refrigerate it, it becomes too cold and thus becomes harder to scoop to form the little balls. Think about how a new stick of butter right from the fridge scrapes off in shards when you try to butter your toast, as opposed to the glorious smoothness of room temperature butter. And, the heat from your hands is too much of a contrast to the cold temperature of the ganache and when you roll the scoops of ganache into balls you will have a melty mess, literally on your hands. Fran put the ganache in a large disposable pastry bag and piped little perfect mounds that were left to set up at room temperature and then rolled into balls and coated with cocoa powder. (see pic above) You can, however, make and refrigerate your ganache ahead of time, but make sure it comes to room temperature before you try to work with it.

That being said, the MOST IMPORTANT thing you have to keep in mind about truffles is that they were initially made to resemble the lumpy dirt-covered fungi rooted out by pigs so don't sweat it if they are not "perfect." They will still taste Divine.

Switching gears, school is going well. I had a mini-meltdown this week with all of the pressure of my various responsibilities colliding. I had a good cry and all was right with the world. This is from my Analysis of Form class: