Eight secrets for perfect chocolate enjoyment
Published: Saturday, Dec 2nd 2023, 09:40
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Advent without chocolate is like a pot without a lid. There are a number of secrets to ensure that the pleasure is unadulterated. The chocolate Santas are ready and waiting on the supermarket shelves and the smell and sight of chocolatey confectionery delights the heart.
Award-winning chocolate expert Géraldine Müller Maras explains the secret of good chocolate:
Conching
Chocolate, which first came to Europe in the middle of the 19th century, was highly sought after, for example to increase the desire for love. However, it was drunk because the pieces were dry and crumbly. The Swiss chocolate manufacturer Rodolphe Lindt wanted to produce smooth chocolate. He tried a lot in 1879, stirred the chocolate mass, but nothing worked.
But the evening he left the factory in frustration, he accidentally left the mixer on. On Monday, he found a creamy, shiny chocolate mass that melted smoothly on the tongue. This was the invention of conching. To this day, chocolate mass is stirred for several hours at different temperatures. This allows rather sour aromas to evaporate and cocoa particles and butter to combine perfectly.
Melting
To make your own chocolate creations, chocolate must be melted over a bain-marie. Whether light, dark or block chocolate makes no difference in terms of quality, says Géraldine Müller Maras, a professional chocolatier. In 2015, she was the only woman to make it into the top ten in the world in the "World Chocolate Masters" competition.
Müller Maras works at Maison Cailler, the oldest chocolate brand still active in Switzerland, founded in 1819 by François-Louis Cailler. Today it is part of the Nestlé Group. Important when using a bain-marie: turn off the hob when the water is boiling. The bowl must not touch the water to prevent the chocolate from burning. At around 45 degrees, the chocolate is ideally smooth and liquid.
Tempering
Tempering is essential to ensure that the chocolate is liquid enough to be poured into molds, but still solidifies properly later on: "The mass needs stable and unstable crystals," says Müller Maras. She therefore spreads two thirds of the dissolved mixture onto a cold marble slab. She pushes it together again and again with a spatula and spreads it out so that it cools down to around 27 degrees.
The mass slowly becomes firmer before Müller Maras adds it back to the liquid third and mixes the whole thing well again. Precision is the key to success: the processing temperature for dark chocolate is 30 to 32 degrees, and 28 to 30 degrees for milk and white chocolate.
Liquid hazard
Water must never get into the chocolate bowl during a bain-marie. "It clumps immediately, you can no longer melt it," says Müller Maras. Unfortunately, alcohol also has the same effect. Pralines are possible: Here, the alcohol filling can be poured into a chocolate mold that has previously been poured and firmed.
Cocoa butter
The cocoa beans, i.e. the seeds of the cocoa tree, consist of 50 percent cocoa butter. They are lightly fermented and roasted so that the aromas can develop and the shell comes off, then ground until the cocoa mass is produced, which is then refined with sugar and other ingredients.
A high fat content makes chocolate thinner, like couverture chocolate. It is suitable for coating something with a thin layer of chocolate. You can also replace cocoa butter with other fats, which makes it cheaper.
In addition to milk and sugar, white chocolate only contains cocoa butter. Dark chocolate has more cocoa mass than light chocolate, but there is no difference in quality, says Müller Maras. It is purely a matter of taste. In general, "the more cocoa mass, the less sugar".
Ingredients for your own creations
There are no limits when it comes to refining with dry ingredients. Salt, cloves, cinnamon, chili, pepper, nuts, chocolate balls or salted brittle. Müller Maras has already tried chocolate with Roquefort cheese in France. When describing the taste, however, she just grimaces sourly.
Chocolate doesn't belong in the fridge. "Too moist," says Müller Maras. "The sugar can dissolve and appear as stains on the surface, and the chocolate can also take on the smells of other foods." Chocolate doesn't like large temperature fluctuations or too much heat either: the fat can then escape and appear as a gray coating on the surface. This does nothing for the quality, but it looks unappetizing. A cellar temperature of around 18 degrees is ideal for storage.
Saving overheated or older chocolate
If water does get into the bowl during melting or the chocolate burns and becomes crumbly, the creamy mass is no longer ready for further processing. But you don't have to dispose of the result, says Müller Maras. It is still suitable for chocolate brownies. Unused Santa Clauses or chocolate Easter bunnies are ideal for chocolate mousse.
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