Chocolate Apprentice

Bread and Chocolate

Is there a better combination?

There is a bakery in this city that makes a delicious, small, buttery, flaky chocolate croissant that is to die for.  They also don’t make very many of them, wisely not wanting to be stuck with day-old croissants, and increasing their appeal by their very limited daily quantity.  I make a pilgrimage into that bakery whenever I am down on Granville Island:  the reason is often an audition, and I have on occasion walked into said audition with delicate crumbs and morsels of melted chocolate clinging to my mouth. [Read more…]

Changing Shapes

I decided to give myself a bit of a challenge, this week.

Flush with the (relative) success of enrobing some pretty nice looking cubes of ganache, topped with gold transfer sheets, and upon presenting these bonbons to my grateful students, who could not quite believe I had actually made them, I thought I would notch it up a bit, this week.

I am venturing outside the relative safety of the ganache cube.  In mathematical terms, I am going off the grid. [Read more…]

Marzipan Pig

 

I always wanted a pig.  I have fond memories of pressing my small (and not terribly clean) nose against the glass cases at Notte’s Bon Ton Pastry and Confectionary, a wonderful old-fashioned cake shop, which used to be on Granville Street in Vancouver, before it moved to the Kitsilano neighbourhood where it now resides.

The Bon Ton, as it is known is Vancouver, had the most wonderful, colourful menagerie of marzipan animals including a seal balancing a ball on the end of its nose, a grey elephant, and my favourite:  a bright pink pig with chocolate nostrils.

[Read more…]