A Bean-to Bar Chocolate Intensive

Explore ICE's Bean-to-Bar Chocolate Lab in this two-day chocolate experience. In this workshop, open to pastry and culinary professionals, ICE Chef Michael Laiskonis offers an exclusive hands-on look at the bean-to-bar chocolate making process.

Attendees will roast, winnow, grind, formulate, and refine artisan-quality couverture, creating a one-of-kind batch from start to finish. Additional discussion will include tempering, molding, and further applications of the finished chocolate.

You will cover: - An introduction to the history and culture of craft chocolate - Cleaning and sorting of cacao beans - Roasting, winnowing, and grinding cacao beans - Refining process - Tempering and molding finished chocolate bars Two batches of single-origin dark chocolate will be made.

Students will leave the class with samples of the chocolate produced, and exclusive bars available only at ICE. Michael Laiskonis joined ICE in 2012 fresh off of an eight-year tenure as Executive Pastry Chef at Le Bernardin. Laiskonis has long been one of the industry's most creative and talented chefs. He helped Le Bernardin earn four stars from "The New York Times" and three Michelin stars.

He was named to America's Top Ten Pastry Chefs by "Pastry Art & Design" in both 2002 and 2003 and was "Bon Appétit's" Pastry Chef of the Year in 2004. Best known for his use of modern techniques to reinvent classic desserts, he was also awarded the coveted James Beard Award for Outstanding Pastry Chef in 2007.

Most recently, Chef Laiskonis received the IACP's 2014 Culinary Professional of the Year Award, one of the most distinguished honors in the culinary field. Laiskonis has been an active writer, in print and on-line, including "Gourmet", "Saveur", and "The Atlantic" and has appeared on television shows such as "Top Chef: Just Desserts". While Laiskonis is best known as a pastry chef, he spent most of the first half of his career on the savory side of the kitchen.