Chocolate 101

We start with a fine Belgian couverture chocolate tasting. Students are taught the difference between the various types of chocolate and cocoa powder and all those confusing percentages that appear on the chocolate bar wrappers are explained.

You will learn what chocolate is and what it contains so that you can work with it properly when making chocolate confections, decorations, candies and when baking with it.

You will go on to learn to temper/crystalize chocolate. If you have ever melted chocolate and then tried to drizzle cookies with it only to find that later all the cookies stuck together or the coating on your cake pops went soft ... no more! We will teach you a very straight-forward method to tempering chocolate (the Seeding method) so that you will be able to create your own chocolate bars, cute confections and cake decorations at home.

Together we make hand-rolled truffles, we learn to dip cake pops/cake truffles in chocolate the way the pros do it. We go on to make solid chocolate shapes and bonbons. You will also learn to work with cocoa butter transfer sheets to make very cute and sophisticated decorated chocolate discs.

Note: we use equipment readily available to people who want to work with chocolate in smaller amounts in their own kitchens.

You will go home with a large box of fine Belgian chocolate confections to share ..... or not! along with very detailed instructions and recipes.