Chocolate Apprentice

Perfect Chocolate Ice Cream

Now that the weather is finally taking a turn for the hotter, it seems an ideal time to haul out my faithful Cuisineart tabletop ice cream maker.

Okay, who am I trying to kid?

I make ice cream all year ‘round, the same way my partner barbeques everything, including Christmas dinner.  In all honesty, it is more a matter of lifting the ice-cream maker down from the shelf, and digging the chiller sleeve from the depths of the freezer.

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Really Good Ice Cream and Gelato in Vancouver

When I was a kid, in the “olden days”, I knew of no-one who had a home ice cream maker. Perhaps, growing up in Canada, it seemed ridiculous to actually own a machine to churn ice, when there was so much of it lying around on the ground!

So, for many of us, myself included, “going out for ice cream” was a big treat, reminiscent of hot summer family drives, in very large cars.  I have fond memories of Saturdays when my Dad was “Parent on Duty” while Mum was at work.  [Read more…]

Saucy Chocolate

I still remember my first taste of Hot Fudge Sauce.  It was in a Tin Roof Sundae at Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlour, in the Lougheed Mall – the same mall where my mother sold shoes at the Hudson’s Bay Company.

I had never tasted anything so rich and exotic.  It was a warm sauce on cold ice cream!  And salty red skinned peanuts to top it all off!

After that first taste, it became a weekly ritual for me to go with my Dad to pick my Mum up from work on Friday nights, at 9pm.  [Read more…]

Composing with Chocolate

Two weeks ago, I was working “in the lab” (my kitchen) on an experiment to find the perfect balance of flavour intensity between a dark chocolate ganache and a very good Jamaican rum, to make a centre for a truffle.

This is a basic experiment, to help the novice chocolatier determine quantities needed for consistency of good flavour, without sacrificing a whole batch, if mistakes occur. [Read more…]

In Defence of Milk Chocolate

I had such fun with the first chocolate tasting we held, and was so fortunate to have the talents and insights of some wonderfully imaginative and passionate chocolate loving friends – that I was eager to do it again.

This time however, the focus is on milk chocolate.  Lately, milk chocolate has gotten a bad rap, as everything from insipid to kid stuff to déclassé.

While it is undeniable that some milk chocolates are all of those things, I feel duty bound to stand up for the substance that was, in my childhood, the taste of heaven. [Read more…]