Notes: Boy, these chocolates taught me a lot about the art of chocolate making. I started with a recipe for the strawberry pâte de fruit from eGullet which uses regular (Pomona's universal) pectin, rather than the “g” pectin called for in the book. I don't keep salted butter in my fridge, so I threw in a pinch of salt into the ganache; it must have been a pretty big pinch, as the saltiness was quite evident. Otherwise, I made the ganache as directed, but didn't apply the foot chocolate before cutting the squares. This was a mistake as the ganache stuck to my cutting board and was squishy. The thin layer of chocolate would have helped to keep the ganache in place, plus the extra one hour of freezing time would have made the filling even firmer. As I was busy, the cut squares dried for almost two days before I dipped them in a mix of milk and bittersweet chocolate. I messed up the tempering again, as I put the bowl of tempered chocolate on a warm stove and it quickly rose to 38°C (but I continued anyway). In the end, the dipped chocolates weren't very square, nor were the surfaces perfectly uniform, but everyone who tried them liked the chocolates' unusual flavour combination. The inspired technique of making a fruit jelly layer and combining it with a contrasting ganache is one I'd like to explore.
Leave a comment