Spent the morning mixing up ganache, an emulsion of cream, cocoa butter, and butter. 12 batches in all:
- cinnamon-pistachio-white chocolate
- coffee-milk chocolate
- blue chanterelle mushroom
- jasmine tea
- rose geranium
- Mandarin orange marmalade
- goat cheese + honey
- caramelized banana
- lemongrass
- fennel and basil
- Xocopili, a spiced chocolate from Valrhona
and, uh, one flavor I’ve forgotten. The chai infusion didn’t “take” – wasn’t strongly flavored enough – so I didn’t mix it up. The peanut butter “broke” (curdled), so I discarded it. I added the marmalade on the inspiration of the moment, and it seems to be working very well.
The ganaches are now cooling slowly and I’m taking a very short break before I prepare the molds for filling. It’s important to pipe the ganache before it gets too cool as otherwise it doesn’t fill the molds evenly. So I’m on a tight timeline, but since I also need to eat I’m taking a short break to devour some pastries from this morning’s farmer’s market and type up this blog entry. I’ve been working 5+ hours without a break and this (1:30pm) is the first time I’ve eaten all day.
The rest of today will probably be just as intense – once you mix the ganaches everything has to happen on a pretty tight schedule. More tomorrow.
