Easter Carbs

What better way to break forty days of fasting for Lent than with carbs?

It's common among my friends and coworkers to give up sweets, potato chips, and/or pop during Lent. I admire their commitment and will power. I know we talked about this sort of thing when I was a kid attending a Catholic school, but I don't actually remember giving anything up myself. Maybe I did and was so traumatized by it that I've blocked it from my memory. Or maybe because it was a "small t" tradition, it wasn't overly emphasized in my family. Whatever the case, I don't normally participate in fasting for Lent.

In more recent years, though, I've picked up alternative practices. For example, for a few years in a row, I collected 40 food items to donate to the food bank. Another year, I selected 40 items to donate to charity (inspired by a 40 bags for 40 days challenge that just seemed to be a bit too much of a commitment). When you shift your perspective in this way, you find that there are many options to make an impact that don't involve food. Donate $40 to a local charity. Volunteer for 40 hours with a non-profit organization. Engage in 40 random acts of kindness. This is my preferred way to observe Lent, but everyone should do what works for them. 

Now, despite the fact that I haven't fasted, I'm still happy to participate in the breaking of the fast. From chocolate Easter bunnies to hot cross buns and everything in between, this is one calendar custom with delicious traditions.

Today, I'm happy to have an invitation to a turkey dinner. Naturally, I felt compelled to make dessert. Inspired by Facebook memories of Easter past, I decided it was time to make cupcakes again. French vanilla sponge with vanilla buttercream dyed a pale yellow and topped with rainbow Eggies (and a few with Junior Mints Eggs). The colour is on point and the flavour is top notch. 

But before I get to that, I'll start my day with one of the raspberry Easter eggs that I made earlier in the month. Alongside a cup of coffee, I'm sure it will be heavenly. 

I know I've said more than once that I thought a particular confection was my best work yet, but the response to these raspberry Easter eggs has been incredibly positive. The raspberry ganache centre had a beautiful texture and the addition of the lemon juice really brought out the fresh berry flavour. One day, I'll sell these in a very chic chocolate lounge. 

And of course, I can't forget to mention hot cross buns. Ever since moving to Cape Breton, I've been hunting for the best hot cross buns. Almost every year, I take off Holy Thursday and visit local shops and bakeries, buying all of the delightful things I can find. It's less about Easter and more about the start of Spring (which brings with it balcony coffees, gardening, and Birkenstock season). I've bought hot cross buns in North Sydney, Sydney River, Sydney, and Glace Bay. But there are two key issues. First, it's not uncommon to have to buy hot cross buns in large quantities. One year, the smallest pack I could find was 8. Now, as one person, I can't possibly eat 8 hot cross buns before they go stale and hot cross buns are the sort of thing were you eat one or two to get your fix and then you're over it for another year. The second issue pertains to the icing cross that is common here. I've seen it made with a very loose royal icing and I've also seen it made with buttercream. While it adds a delightful sweetness if consumed immediately after buying, leave it even a few hours and the sugar begins to absorb moisture from the air and the icing begins to weep and melt. It's a sticky mess (and that impedes toasting them when they're a few days old). 

Consequently, for the last few years, I've made my own hot cross buns. I use a small batch recipe that I found online, which makes only 6 small buns and I riff on that to make it my own. (Next year I may try cutting the recipe in half, because really 3 would be the ideal number to make.) This year, I used a bread lame to cut the crosses into the buns, thereby eliminating the need for an icing cross (I realize that traditionally a flour paste is used to bake the cross into the top of the bun, but it seemed like an unnecessary step). And I also glazed them with apricot jam, which gave them a delicious flavour. Next year, I plan to substitute apricots or blueberries for the more common raisins. (I may have to write a note to my future self so that I remember to try one of these variations.)

Until then, I'll enjoy this year's Easter carbs while I can, for Eggies and hot cross buns come but once a year.  

Happy Easter!

Raspberry Easter Eggs

Over the years, I've made many different Easter eggs. Peanut butter fudge, Cadbury creme egg dupes, strawberry cream, orange creamsicle, Oreo cookie, potato chip, Rice Krispies, peanut gianduja... They've all been delicious and it would be easy to just pick one and repeat it (especially a peanut butter one). But Tuesday night chocolate study and this blog aren't about what's easy! They're about trying new things and learning in the process. And so as much as I'd like to be making myself a gianduja bunny again, this year's Easter eggs will instead have a dark chocolate raspberry ganache filling.

Now, I've experimented with ganache a fair amount, particularly with alcohol as the flavouring. Beer, cider, port wine, Cointreau, brandy... I've also made a variety of truffles flavoured with oils (peppermint, orange, key lime, lemon, strawberry), and even a few that used pulverized freeze-dried fruit. But I can't recall making a truffle with fruit puree (though I certainly used fruit purees in buttercream frosting when I was doing more cake decorating).

In preparation for my Tuesday night chocolate study, I reviewed a number of recipes. I settled on a recipe in the Ewald Notter book The Art of the Chocolatier as a base recipe upon which I would riff. And that meant I needed to make raspberry puree.

I started with half a bag of frozen raspberries, tossed them into a pot with about 20 grams of sugar, and heated and stirred until they started to break down and become liquid. Then I pureed them and strained out the seeds, first with a mesh strainer and then with multiple layers of cheese cloth. Neither was particularly efficacious. After significant effort (and mess), I had about 120 grams of puree. I set it in the fridge and called it a night.

The next day, I prepared the ganache. Based on the quantities outlined in the Notter book, I decided to half the recipe. I have to admit, I was a little bit nervous making this ganache. I've never added lemon juice to chocolate and I worried that it might break or seize. Presumably the addition of lemon juice was meant to enhance the flavour of the raspberry puree, so once the ganache was a beautiful emulsion, I took a deep breath and added the acid to the mixture. The gods favoured me and the ganache didn't split. And the resulting flavour was incredible.

Sadly, the gods didn't favour me for long. I'm not sure if the chocolate I was using as seed was itself out of temper or (more likely) if I was impatient and rushed the process, but my first attempt at shelling was a failure. I knew when I took the mold out of the fridge that the chocolate was not in temper. So I started over. I wasn't present the first time around, but I was hyper-focused the second time and it worked as expected. 

Next I filled the shells and set the mold aside to crystallize before proceeding with capping the following day. When I tapped out the finished eggs, I had one casualty, which cracked coming out of the mold. The rest were perfect. 

As I write this, a week later, I am in the process of doing it all over again so that I will hopefully have 23 eggs in total to share with friends. The molds are shelled and filled, and tomorrow night before a museum board meeting, I hope to cap them.

Now, about that casualty. I did not discard it. Nay, I uncharacteristically ate it. (If you've been reading these blogs long enough, you know that I don't normally sample the finished product so soon after it's been made). What can I say about these eggs? They are incredible. The raspberry flavour is intense. The pairing with dark chocolate is ideal, ensuring the eggs aren't overly sweet. While I'm not a huge lover of raspberry, I would definitely make these again. I'm thrilled with how they turned out and can't wait to share them with family and friends.

Yes, I said family. I don't normally mail chocolate home, but my sister's birthday is coming up and there is a Canada Post flat rate box headed her way. Conveniently, there's a little room left in it for three Easter eggs. Hopefully she and my parents will enjoy them (though I'm guessing they won't survive until Easter Sunday). 

This experiment definitely has me wanting to try additional chocolate and fruit puree pairings. I'm curious: What fruit and chocolate pairing would you use in an Easter egg? 

Abstract Expressionist Dinosaur Eggs

Last year, I made two flavours of Easter eggs: peanut butter fudge and strawberry cream. I was happy with the final products, but the process was incredibly frustrating. One egg mold I used, with 6 half-egg wells, was made of silicone. While I loved the decorative pattern it produced, the mold itself was floppy and hard to work with. (The solution to this issue is to cut silicone molds into pieces, but I find it very hard to dismember them despite knowing it will make my life easier.) I also used 4 half-egg polycarbonate molds. These are much easier to work with because of the rigid plastic, but you're limited by the number of molds you have and tempering chocolate for several small batches can be time consuming. So, after making all of my eggs last year, I ordered a new polycarbonate mold with 12 wells and tucked it away for Easter 2023. (I pause this blog so that Present Self can thank Past Self for looking out for Future Self...)

As I planned for this year's eggs, I realized that the new mold would change the techniques that I could use. I would be able to shell the molds the way were were taught to in my professional chocolatier program -- that is, fill the wells, invert the mold, and tap out the excess chocolate, instead of "painting" the chocolate into the molds. This got me thinking that I should try decorating the molds as well, as we did for assignments. But I needed inspiration.

After trying Hummingbird Chocolate a few weeks ago and remembering the chocolatiers who inspired me during my program, I decided to riff on Brandon Olsen's (CXBO) disco eggs. Having received a set of oil-based food colouring for my birthday, I purchased a small quantity of white chocolate and coloured it orange and teal -- orange to reflect the flavour of the eggs and teal because it's one of my favourite springtime colours. After polishing my polycarbonate molds, I grabbed a fork and used it to splatter chocolate over the molds in the abstract expressionist style associated with Jackson Pollock. (Side note: Brandon Olsen would have done this using coloured cocoa butter, not coloured chocolate, but I was making do with what I had.)

Next, I tempered some dark chocolate and shelled the eggs, using my drywall taping knife to clean the molds. (Don't worry, it's only ever been used for chocolate.) Not only was this significantly easier than last year, but it's also a much cleaner way of working and very efficient. I set the molds aside for a few days. 

When I returned to my project, the first thing I had to do was make the ganache for the centre of the egg. The first batch went off the rails, but the second batch was perfect. Flavoured with orange oil (not extract) and a sprinkling of pulverized freeze dried orange slices, the ganache had an intense, real orange flavour. (One thing that the professional chocolatier program instilled in me is a distaste for artificial flavours.)

Once the eggs were filled and the orange ganache had started to crystallize, I tempered some dark chocolate and capped the eggs, again using my drywall taping knife to remove the excess chocolate. 

The result? Eighteen abstract expressionist dinosaur eggs with creamsicle centres for Easter! I'm loving the way these look and I can't wait to heat up a knife and slice through one later today!

An Edible Geode

I often like to make something special for my friends when the occasion calls for it. Some of you, for example, may recall a giant peanut butter cup that I made for a birthday last year. It was pretty spectacular, if I do say so myself, but you can be the judge:

Always looking to outdo myself (my mother always says, "You do like to challenge yourself"), I started contemplating ways to make a geode dessert for the same friend this year because of her love of (obsession with?) geodes.

Originally, I was going to make an edible geode using a rock candy method over a modelling chocolate base, like this. Then I considered making a geode cake, drawing inspiration from this video. But once I started the Professional Chocolatier program, I knew what I had to do: an edible white chocolate geode Easter egg.

I had seen a tutorial online that provided a basic method to follow, so as I worked my way through the program, I began planning in my head how I would accomplish my goal. Conveniently, last Easter, I had purchased a set of egg molds. One of them was the perfect size for an impressive geode egg. About two weeks before Easter, I painted the mold with green luster dust and then poured tempered white chocolate into it. I then left it to set a few days. I decided to do a second coat of chocolate to be sure that it was sturdy enough to stand up to the application of candy. And then I left it to crystallize again for a few days. Happy with the thickness and sheen, I was ready to apply the candy.

It took me a few weeks to actually locate the right candy, a quest that consumed much of March. I started with blue raspberry Jolly Ranchers and crushed them a rolling pin. Then I went on the hunt for a lighter blue hard candy and a clear one. I was surprised by just how limited the selection of hard candy was. Maybe it's the time of year or maybe hard candy isn't as popular as it once was. Either way, I couldn't find a single hard candy at Bulk Barn that was any shade of blue (other than the Jolly Ranchers I already had). I resorted to buying two sticks of rock candy in a cotton candy flavour that was a pale blue colour. Then I searched the store for a clear hard candy. Again, the options were surprisingly limited. I chose peppermint. When I got home, I cut the rock candy from the stick with a chef's knife and then broke it apart. I once again attacked the remaining candies with my rolling pin, beating them into submission.

I spent a lot of time thinking about the best way to adhere the candy to the egg. I briefly considered melted chocolate, but figured that it either would take too long to set or wouldn't adequately hold the candy. I also worried about it affecting the temper of the already set egg. Likewise, I considered blue candy melts and then abandoned the idea. In the end, I rewatched the tutorial and decided that royal icing was indeed the way to go. I mixed up a small batch and tinted it sky blue with my cake colours.

I carefully painted the inside of the egg with a thick coat. I then placed my candy into the royal icing -- first the Jolly Ranchers in the centre, then a ring of rock candy, followed by a ring of peppermint. Once it started to set up, it became clear that thinning the royal icing and painting a coat over the top was the best way to keep the candy shards in place -- they melted together and became one candy mass.

Then it was time to add some sparkle. First I mixed gold luster dust with vodka and painted the edge of the egg. While it shimmered a bit, it really didn't read as gold. I decided to buy some bronze luster dust to try. Instead of mixing it with vodka to make a paint, I brushed vodka over the edge of the egg and then with a dry brush applied the dust to the damp edge. This method worked much better. I then added a little gold over top to tone down the bronze. Finally, I used pearl luster dust on a dry brush to enhance the candy with some shimmer. 

And then I weighed it. No, this wasn't really a necessary part of the process, but I was curious. It weighted just under a half pound.

After letting the egg cure for a few days, I packaged it for gifting in a cupcake box I picked up at Michaels. And I have to say, I'm thrilled with the results.

So what do you think? More epic than a giant peanut butter cup?

And more importantly, what's next?