First tasting results

I thought some of you might be interested in the process I am using for my chocolate taste-tests.  I am testing things in three phases:

1. Steep flavorants in boiling cream.
2. Taste.  If it tastes good and the flavor is discernible, continue.  Otherwise, stop.
3. Determine whether to try flavor with dark, white, or milk chocolate.
4. Reheat cream to boiling and pour over the appropriate amount of the appropriate type of chocolate.  Let sit several minutes, then stir to produce a smooth emulsion (ganache).
5. Taste.  If it tastes good and the flavor is discernible, continue.  Otherwise, stop.
6. Divide into as many parts as the additional (combination) flavors that you want to test.
7. Add additional flavorants, one to each part.
8. Taste, and record impressions.
9. Let sit 1-2 days at room temperature (to let flavors evolve), and taste-test again.

Tonight I trialed three flavors – guava, tamarind, and lavender.

With the tamarind, I tried using whole tamarind (minus the shell of course) and steeping it in boiling cream for about 7 minutes.  Didn’t get much flavor out of it, so I stopped there and tossed it out.  I may try it again with tamarind juice or something similar.  Probably not going to try it again this year as I think it is probably fairly marginal for a combo with chocolate – I was mostly just curious.

Guava – smelled fragrant, but flavor vanished completely under the dark chocolate.  Didn’t continue.  (May try this again with a white chocolate base and with more/riper guavas, if I can find any in November.)

Lavender – sampled it with white, dark, and milk chocolates.  Didn’t like the milk chocolate combination, so pitched it.  With both white chocolate and dark chocolate, I tested it with these four flavors:

• “plain” – just lavender-infused cream, no additives
• orange blossom honey
• bergamot syrup
• orange marmalade

Not particularly to my surprise (I’ve played with lavender before), the white chocolate-lavender combination was heavenly (lavender matches very well with vanilla, the predominant flavoring in white chocolate).  The remaining white chocolate combinations were all cloyingly sweet (especially the honey).

The lavender was considerably less pronounced in the dark chocolate, not too surprising since dark chocolate has a much stronger flavor/aroma than white chocolate.  Plain was good, orange blossom honey was better, the bergamot syrup didn’t show up at all despite adding in quite a bit of it, and the orange marmalade was surprisingly good.  If I had to pick one winner it would be the orange blossom honey with lavender, though.

Tomorrow I will taste-test the lavenders again.  The flavors in a truffle center “ripen” over time and it’s good to know how the flavor will evolve.  (I once taste-tested some MacAllan 12 whisky truffles once/day for four days in a row, and the overtones were slightly different each day.)  After that, it’s on to more flavors!