Tien Chiu

  • Home
  • About
    • Honors, Awards, and Publications
  • Online Teaching
  • Gallery
  • Essays
  • Book
  • Blog
  • Dye samples
You are here: Home / All blog posts / Breakfast of champions
Previous post: …and, the pattern for all those curvy lines…
Next post: Curves and chocolate

October 31, 2011 by Tien Chiu

Breakfast of champions

I got up this morning and tasted sixteen flavors of chocolate ganache!  I will probably be on a sugar high all morning, but here are the winners:

  • Kaffir lime, lemongrass, ginger, in a coconut milk ganache.  Complex and interesting.
  • Pink peppercorn, “Buddha’s Hand” citron (fingered citron), candied yuzu peel in dark chocolate.  Peppery and aromatic with a high citrus note from the citron, and a flowery overtone from the yuzu.
  • Rosemary quince – rosemary turns out to be an interesting flavor with chocolate, and the quince adds tartness and fruitiness to what might otherwise be too sharp.
  • Cardamom, ginger, rosewater – the ginger adds a little “kick” and keeps it from being too blandly sweet.
  • Three-chili calamondin – guajillo, ancho, and chipotle chiles, plus calamondin (a small citrus, like a tart, orange-y kumquat).  Rich, deep flavor with a smokiness and a tiny bit of “kick” from the chipotle.  The chile overpowers the calamondin, though, and is fine by itself, so for the actual production run I may just leave out the calamondin.
  • Cherry rum – dried sour cherries soaked in rum, chopped, and added to ganache.  The sweetness of the rum works well with cherry, and is less cliched than cognac.
Non-starters included:
  • Beer.  It’s OK, but not exceptional, and I don’t much like beer, so I’m skipping it.
  • Elderberry – overpowered by the chocolate
  • Dried cranberries soaked in various liquors (Armagnac, rum, cognac) – not enough distinctive cranberry flavor to be worthwhile
  • Armagnac-soaked fruits generally – the flavor is too strong.
So now I have the final flavor list, with six new flavors added to the lineup – time to start calculating recipes and amounts, in preparation for a BIG chocolate order going in later this week!
I have also printed out all the patterns for the latest muslin, cut out all the pattern pieces, and pinned the darts.  I hope to start sewing tonight.  It will take longer than the other muslins since I will have to staystitch and match curves on almost all the seams – but hopefully will be worth the extra effort!

Share this post!

  • Tweet
  • More
  • Email
  • Share on Tumblr
  • Print

Filed Under: All blog posts, food, chocolate

Previous post: …and, the pattern for all those curvy lines…
Next post: Curves and chocolate

Comments

  1. Cassandra Nancy Lea says

    October 31, 2011 at 4:49 pm

    Just reading that post makes me want to go lie down and rest! Actually, I have a great excuse for not moving much right now. I had to drive over to Atlanta and present myself in person to the Passport office, since I had left getting one with my name-change to the last minute. Last of the great procrastinators. I will probably put off dying indefinitely.
    A few years ago, a friend of mine did white chocolate in various colours and did a large “Nutcracker Prince” on a base of regular chocolate for each one of her co-workers. Downside of that was that she had given each of them a “gift-voucher” to come in and pick up their chocolate. The cheap SOB’s started xeroxing them and coming in demanding more. Kind of a sad epilogue.
    Well, have a wonderful time doing your wonderful chocolates!

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Information resources

  • Dye samples
    • Procion MX fiber-reactive dye samples on cotton
    • How to "read" the dye sample sets
    • Dye sample strategy - the "Cube" method
  • How-Tos
    • Dyeing and surface design
    • Weaving
    • Designing handwoven cloth
    • Sewing

Blog posts

  • All blog posts
    • food
      • chocolate
    • musings
    • textiles
      • dyeing
      • knitting
      • sewing
      • surface design
      • weaving
    • writing

Archives

Photos from my travels

  • Dye samples
    • Procion MX fiber-reactive dye samples on cotton
    • How to "read" the dye sample sets
    • Dye sample strategy - the "Cube" method
  • Travels
    • Thailand
    • Cambodia
    • Vietnam
    • Laos
    • India
    • Ghana
    • China

Travel Blog

Entertaining miscellanies

© Copyright 2016 Tien Chiu · All Rights Reserved ·