My, it’s been ages since I last posted here, and I apologize for that. The last two months or so have been very busy, and many a pastry has been baked in that time. Now, I could use this post to give you all a quick overview of the last dozen or so classes, but instead I will pretend that I have not been remiss in posting and simply tell you about last week’s classes.
I’m not sure how familiar you all are with the different components of chocolate. Good, basic chocolate has four ingredients. Coco solids, Coco Butter (the two combined are called Chocolate Liquor- don’t worry, there is no alcohol in it), Sugar and Milk (or oil/other substitution for parve Paskesz lovers). The percentage you find on commercial chocolate refers to the amount of Chocolate liquor – 70% bittersweet chocolate has only 30% sugar added, Baking Chocolate is 99% liquor and 1% sugar (don’t make the rookie mistake of eating baking chocolate- you’ll regret it). White chocolate, it might surprise you to know, has absolutely NO coco solids in it. It is made of Coco Butter, Milk, and loads of sugar (some foodie snobs claim to hate it and make snide remarks, refusing to call it true chocolate. We all know they have a stash of Hershey’s Cookies and Cream bars under their beds. But I digress).
Now that I have provided the background knowledge, let me set the atmosphere for my embarrassing story. Last week was Cookie Week. My classmates and I baked dozens of different types of cookies, making thousands of cookies in all. 0% exaggeration and about 150% sugar. There were loads of ingredients strewn around the room, with and without labels, and we were working double time to finish in time for Milk and Cookie Night- when we were allowed to invite friends and family to eat the cookies.
A running joke in my class is that while I don’t sample any of the baked good we produce, I eat more than any of classmates anyway- the raw ingredients that is. Oranges, figs, bananas and chocolate- ALWAYS chocolate. I was happy, on this Sunday night- the production frenzy night- to find every type of chocolate available. Bittersweet, semisweet, milk and white. As the night progressed, no one was surprised to find me snacking at the chocolate bags. To be tricky, I’m sure, Chef hid a small container of small white chips at the bottom of the pull box (for definition of “pull” see an earlier post, not sure which). Nonchalantly (I always “play it cool”) I dipped my hand in the container and popped a handful in my mouth. And then I chewed. Then I chewed some more. They were smooth, had an initial crunch, were NOT melting and had NO flavor, but were kind of oily. These were not white chocolate chips. I had no idea what I had just put in my mouth, which I risky, as they could have been a) something so rancid that had no discernable flavor or B) something not kosher (gelatin pellets? Did those exist?) In any case, I spit them out and continued my work, hoping no one would find out.
Finally, Cookie and milk night arrived. After days of crazy production, we made gingerbread, linzer cookies, chocolate chip, rugalah, ice box cookies, lemon bars, brownies, white chocolate macadamia, macarons, macaroons, spritz cookies, rum cookies, ginger cookies, snicker doodles and MANY more. Avi brought Trader Joe’s Cat Cookies (chocolate) and we snaked in the back and watched people sample and box up their holiday cookies. It was a truly great party.
The next day (two days after the initial incident), I was still pondering about these odd mystery chips. On a run to the equipment closet with Chef, I slyly asked her, as though the thought had just occurred to me, what the white small chips were. It took her a moment and then she said “Coco Butter”.
I had eaten pure cocoa butter. The stuff used in hand lotions. Apparently, it is one of the most stable fats, used as an emulsifier in baked goods. Again, it is also used in its pure form in Hand Lotion.
Happy Chanukah,
Sarah, the ultimate food snob who will only eat pure Coco Butter, none of that adulterated, sugary “chocolate” made for the masses.
PS. Fun Fact- Those poor souls who are allergic to Chocolate cannot eat White chocolate, even though it lacks Coco Solids- the butter is enough to elicit the allergic reaction. Learned that the hard way, Dad, didn’t we?
