You Can't Juice An Apricot

Still with apricots on my mind from two weeks ago, I decided that this week as a break from reading I would experiment with my pâtes de fruits recipe. I did some research on apricot juice, which it turns out is referred to as apricot nectar, to see whether I could purchase it locally. No dice. If I wanted apricot nectar, I was going to have to make it myself. And so off I went to the grocery store to purchase fresh apricots. 

I had no idea how many apricots would translate into 3/4 cups of nectar. I also had no idea how many apricots were in a pound and the store didn't have a scale. After sizing them up, I concluded I should buy eight and hope for the best. Five dollars later, I was on my way back home.

Uncertain how best to proceed, I consulted Google. There were many recipes available for apricot nectar, but they all involved added sugar. Considering how much sugar is in a pâtes de fruits recipe, I thought that might lead to a cloyingly sweet confection. Instead, I decided to go off book and simply juice the apricots. People seem to juice everything these days, so I had no reason to think juicing apricots would be problematic. Indeed, armed with a high end juicer, I assumed this would be a breeze.

It was not. 

I cut my apricots in half, removed the stones, dropped the fruit down the chute, and switched on the motor. And then watched in confusion as the juicer quickly chewed through the apricots providing me with a bowl of pulp and only about a tablespoon of juice. Was the juicer assembled correctly? Or can you really not juice an apricot? Undeterred, I put the pulp back through the juicer for round two. The auger struggled, but eventually did fill a Mason jar with a thick apricot puree. I was in business (and made a mental note that next time, I'll just use my food processor). 

And so into the pot I measured the apricot puree, lemon juice, and sugar. Following the recipe I used during my chocolatier program, I cooked the mixture on medium heat until it hit 113 degrees, then added the remaining sugar. Now, my recipe stated to cook the "juice" mixture to 238, but Notter's table indicated that apricot pâtes de fruits should cook to 225, so that's what I did. Once I hit temperature, I added the pectin and cooked it for 2 more minutes. I poured some of the mixture into a measuring cup so that I could fill the cavities of a silicone jewel mold, and poured what remained into a parchment lined loaf pan. I sprinkled the tops with sugar and let the pâtes de fruits sit for two hours to cool and set. 

Now, let me just say that boiling sugar is always terrifying to me. This wasn't quite so bad as making peanut brittle, where you exceed 300 degrees, but it's still liquid hot magma. It can burn. It can boil over. And living in an apartment, I'm always worried I'm going to set off the alarms and be the reason the building has been evacuated! Mercifully, none of that happened. 

I made some notes regarding the changes I made to the recipe and read a few more pages of Notter's The Art of the Chocolatier. When two hours had passed (incredibly quickly, I might add), I unmolded the jewels and cut the slab into 1" pieces. I then mixed a touch of citric acid into a bowl of sugar, and dusted all of the pieces. When I tried one of the end pieces, I was thrilled with the results. The apricot flavour was bright and the citric acid brought some complexity to the flavour. Definitely an improvement over my earlier attempts. 

Based on the reactions I received from those who had a chance to taste these, the apricot flavour was very present and the little bit of sour pucker from the citric acid definitely made a difference in the experience of the confection. 

And me? I give it an A -- for apricot!

Creating Pucker

As I continued reading Notter's The Art of the Chocolatier last week, I came to a section on pâtes de fruits. These French confections are made of fruit paste through a process that is quite similar to making jam. They're typically tossed in sugar that makes them sparkle like jewels, but it's also possible to enrobe them in chocolate. How do they taste? What is their texture? Think really delicious gummy. 

When I did my chocolatier program several years ago, pâtes de fruits was one of the first things I made. Not because it was required, but because I had read about them and was curious to try something new. I made them with strawberries and rhubarb, and they were a hit among almost everyone who tried them. But there was one individual who remarked that they were just too sweet.

Now, I have a number of friends who would say that there's no such thing as "too sweet." And while they may be right, I would also suggest that he wasn't wrong. Pâtes de fruits are sweet. There's a great deal of sugar in the fruit paste itself, along with pectin. The rolling in sugar is a key element of the presentation. So how does one balance something that is sweet combined with sweet and dusted in sweet?

Enrobing them in dark chocolate is one answer. But despite making pâtes de fruits a few times since then, I've never attempted to dip them in chocolate. The soft centre would likely be challenging to dip and, I suspect, would stick to the dipping forks, so I'd either need to dip them by hand (literally) to be able to control the chocolate or I would have to apply a chablon first (more on that in another blog). 

The other answer? Citric acid. While I had always thought of this as an option if I wanted to make sour gummies, Notter points out that adding a little citric acid to the sugar used to finish pâtes de fruits will give them a very slight pucker, mimicking that of fresh fruit. And that should help to balance the sweet.

And so my shopping list grows! Food grade citric acid isn't the easiest to find and it's more expensive than you might expect. It's $8.99 for 100g on Amazon and at Bulk Barn it's $6.89 for 96g. Nevertheless, it's now my intention to make pâtes de fruits again and try both of these techniques to find the balance that the original recipes were missing. 

Stay tuned for the results!

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!