Now I Want An Airbrush

After making the marzipan espresso bonbon, my next assignment in the professional chocolatier program was to make a flavoured ganache and use it as filling for a hand-painted molded shell. Drawing inspiration from Newfoundland, I decided to make a blueberry white chocolate ganache filling and pipe it into dark chocolate shells painted in shimmering white and blue.

I melted my cocoa butter very carefully to ensure that I didn't over-heat it, since that would take it out of temper. First I painted the white, deliberately leaving some unpainted spots. Then I painted the blue. Once it was set, I filled the mold with dark chocolate, vibrated it to remove air bubbles, then tipped it over to remove the excess chocolate, leaving a shell. That set for about 5 minutes. Then I piped blueberry ganache into the shells and capped them with more dark chocolate.

After letting them set up in the fridge, I turned them out onto my marble slab. I had hoped for more white than blue, and there were a few tiny air bubbles in the surface of a couple of bonbons, but nevertheless I was very happy with the results. Better yet, after letting the ganache crystallize for 24 hours, I bit into one and it truly was the perfect bonbon -- a thin, crisp shell filled with creamy deliciousness.

I realized during this process that I much prefer painting and molding chocolate to enrobing centres. More importantly, now all I can think about is buying an airbrush and compressor to try airbrushing molds to see what sort of result I get. This is one of the biggest trends in chocolate right now, and I feel like it's a process that I'd enjoy just as much as the hand-painting.

Let the research begin!