Learning Objective: Understand what is included in this module

Chocolate bonbon technique and production

"My Ideas come from within. Its rare I get an idea from tasting something, but rather from conversations, emotions, reading, meeting. I write my ideas down in diagram form first, then recipes . I have what I call a scenario of taste - I imagine this in a sequence as you bite into the cake - what happens first, what happens second, what may provide a surprise in the middle. And because only taste matters, I avoid embelishments that bring no contributions to the flavors, nor add anything to the combinations." Pierre Herme as told to Food Arts Magazine

This module introduces you to the making of chocolates or bonbons (as the European's call them). Your goal is to become proficient in working with chocolate (including chocolate enrobing, dipping, decorating and molding) in order to produce a consistent product each and every time.

You'll understand all the flavors and formulations that go into producing a flavorful center for your chocolates. This not only includes chocolate truffle centers but also caramel, fruit, fondant and nut recipes among others.

In the early 1900s, chocolate confections were based on recipes that produced three major textures: creams, chews and crunches. All were made from sugar-based recipes. The creams were based on fondant, fudge, marshmallow or buttercream recipes with typical flavorings such as mint, fruit flavors, coffee and chocolate. The chews were based on caramel or molasses recipes and often included nuts. The crunches were usually combined with nuts and based on hard boil sugar recipes such as brittle and toffee or solid chocolate barks. You can still see these classic flavors in most chocolate shops across North America and Europe.

Not much changed until the late 1900s when chocolate truffles were invented. Chocolate lovers appreciated the deep chocolate flavor of the truffle’s chocolate ganache center and some of the more exotic flavor combinations created by the new chocolatiers. Classic chocolate makers embraced the trend, adding truffles and ganaches to their product offerings.

With the proliferation of chocolate truffles in chocolate shops now, I think we need to update the classic three textures to four: creams, chews, crunches and chocolate! Suck on a little bit of chocolate and you’ll see that it definitely has a texture all its own.

I created the "master" recipes in this module to give you an understanding of the major recipes used inside chocolates. There are so many recipes on the Internet that if you want other recipes for toffee for example, just put "toffee recipe" in your favorite search engine (I got 52,800 related links when I did that exercise) and you'll have lots of specific recipes to use for further experimentation.

Understanding why our mantra "practice, practice and more practice" works.

Just as some of you struggled to have a successful tempering session, recipe development is all about practice. Don't be discouraged if your first attempts at a recipe don't work out a beautifully as you imagined. We don't expect you to be perfect - you are a student not a master. Mastery takes making the same recipe or technique over and over and over. How much time? Here is a cute article from Wired Magazine that attempts to put a number of hours needed to become proficient in something - maybe even chocolate work :o)