Master chocolatier

Last Christmas, I wished for a couple of vouchers for things that I wanted to do in Wellington. In March, I went to the zoo and had a close encounter with the red pandas and about two weeks ago now, it was time for me to have a two hours chocolate class with my favourite Wellington chocolatier: Bohemein chocolates.

The class was designed for someone like me: Having tried to work with chocolate at home and having run into problems. So instead of looking at all the maschines to work with 50 kg of chocolate, we started with a 2kg bag of chocolate chips on a stove. Just like you would at home. Well, probably not 2kg for you alone but we were 6 people in class.

We started with how to melt chocolate without spoiling it, checking temperature (I want a thermometer for chocolate!) and then the ‘stirring until your arm is falling off’. Working with chocolate is a science in itself as chocolate is the most squirmish material and hates a two degrees difference in temperature.

Chocolate truffels

We used the molten chocolate to make a ganache, dipped it in chocolate and rolled it in chocolate shavings. They were yummy. The reason for the exercise was that truffels are the easiest piece of chocolate to make and you can flavour it with almost anything.