The Motivation to Try Something New

One of the reasons why I'm enjoying the professional chocolatier course so much is that it's forcing me to try new recipes, techniques, and ingredients that I wouldn't normally make time for. There's no question that I love baking, making confections, crafting, and trying the many pins on my Pinterest boards. But life can be busy and unless there's a special occasion or event that motivates me (like the fundraiser for Little Bear or the library), I often fall into the rut of making the same things all the time. But that's changing.

The assignments in my program are designed to force you to try new things in combinations that you might not have considered before. For example it will identify two types of centre (one a traditional cream ganache, the other a layer of a nut-based centre topped with a layer of ganache) and then three types of finish (painted molded shell, traditional truffle, or enrobed with placed decoration). They also give you master recipes that you are encouraged to modify. So, it becomes a mix and match game of new recipes, techniques, flavours, and finish to meet the requirements. This weekend, for one of my bonbons, I'll be making a marzipan (nut-based) layer topped with espresso ganache (modified master recipe), enrobed in chocolate with a toasted slivered almond placed on top (finish). I'm excited to see how it turns out, but I'm also very nervous about the enrobing process. If you've ever dipped anything in chocolate before (and I have many times), you know how hard it is to get that perfect finish and a minimal "foot" on the finished product (the "foot" is the pool of chocolate that forms while it hardens on a flat surface).

One of my recent successes was making pate de fruits for the first time on a snow day. Since pate de fruits is one of the optional layers for one of the assignments and I've never made it before, I decided I should research some recipes and give it a go. Armed a food processor and a good thermometre, I prepared all of my ingredients and then cooked strawberry-rhubarb juice with sugar until it was "sheeting" off my spoon. I added some lemon juice and an envelope of Certo and quickly poured it into an 8x8 pan lined with parchment. Two hours later I had perfectly set "fruit paste." Cut into squares and tossed in sugar, these are a delicious fruity finish at the end of a meal. (I recently found a recipe for tangerine pate de fruits, so there may be another adventure closer to Easter. I'm also thinking that lemon pate de fruits that have some citric acid mixed in with the sugar to make them sour might be fun.)

This course is also forcing me to visit stores that I've never been to before for ingredients, supplies, and research purposes. And that's showing in my weekly step count. As someone to tends to hibernate during winter, it's been good to have a reason to go out in the evening. While the efficient type A in me can be annoyed that I can't find everything I need in one place, I have been enjoying moments of discovery (like the dried blueberries that cost $50/kg).

Hopefully this motivation around experimentation and getting out and about during winter will last beyond the end of the course!