chocolate overload

chocolate nougat
Or in other words, Three Musketeers! I've been thinking about doing something like this for a while and I finally got around to it. The filling in a Three Musketeers bar is a basic nougat, a sugar dough made with a sugar syrup poured over whipping egg whites. I let Chris know that it is similar to a an Italian torrone, but he replied that he has no idea what that is because he is fake Italian. The syrup is a mixture of corn syrup, sugar and water cooked to soft crack stage, or around 270 degrees. While it cooked, I whipped up the egg whites then poured the syrup in and paddled it in my mixer until it cooled. I added melted chocolate to taste, rolled it out on the counter on a silpat and let it cool down. It tasted fresher than the actual candy bar and ten times more chocolaty, most likely because I used good chocolate, Guittard 55%. Here is the recipe I followed in case you want to give it a try. I cut the nougat into 1" square pieces before dipping them in chocolate, because smaller is always cuter...


ganache experiment
I made a ganache from a book that Chef lent me, Fine Chocolates by Jean-Pierre Wybauw. Usually, you make a ganache by pouring hot cream or milk over unmelted (or melted, depending on your preference) chocolate, then stirring to combine. For this recipe, I made a syrup of sugar, corn syrup and condensed milk, let it cool to room temp, them poured it over softened butter that I was whipping in my mixer. I then folded the melted chocolate into the butter mixture. I've definitely never done that before. It tasted kind of like chocolate buttercream but fluffier and smoother. I tried piping it into rosettes, in hopes that the ganache would harden slightly so I could dip them in tempered chocolate, but the rosettes never hardened. Drat. I will have to ask Chef about what I did wrong. That's an almond on top of the rosettes to complement the Amaretto I added to the ganache.


work update
We got a shout out on Grub Street, New York Mag's food blog. I wish I could say I got a chance to decorate some of the cookies, but the night shift people just don't have time. Hopefully that will change for me, though. Chef told me that I will be moving to the morning shift very soon! For now, I've been working mainly on the swing shift again, which is night time production. I'm slower than I was a year ago when I started on that shift, but I'm hoping to pick up speed as I work it more.