What are we doing now Tasha?
So now we're going to make a solid chocolate bar inspired by the history of chocolate.
So before, in the hot chocolate, we looked at things like cinnamon and vanilla and chilli
and those ingredients might have been substituted with other things.
So for instance, if you could get your hands on chilli you might want to use pepper.
And originally the sort of Mesoamerican origins of hot chocolate they would use something
called Amazonian ear flowers.
Exotic.
Yes, which many of us have never heard of, I've certainly never tried them.
So we're going to use rose petals as a stand in for those.
Brilliant.
So they will need crushing down with a pestle and mortar.
So the process we need to do though, which is different to hot chocolate, which is tempering
the chocolate which is the recrystallisation of all the crystals and molecules within the
chocolate to make it shiny, crisp to make it emulsified so it's smooth and most importantly
so it shrinks.
So it will come out of this beautiful mould which you had commissioned especially
Yeah so the British Museum has very kindly recreated a section of the Parthenon Frieze
which has obviously been scaled down - the original is much, much bigger
But the detail is still there, there are some very, very fine hairs on the mane on the horse
there which will come off once the chocolate has been in there and has come out - that
detail will still be there.
So I''ll put two teaspoons of the pink pepper in there.
Do three of the rose because there's quite a lot of chocolate in there and there's a
delicate sweetness in there so the pepper will add a bit of heat and spiciness.
Now it doesn't need to be ground to a powder just smaller than the whole peppercorns so
that it blends into the chocolate well.
Then we get good distribution of flavour.
Wow I've got the smell coming off that.
It's an amazing smell.
Right so that goes to the side.
that won't go into the chocolate until it's tempered - you'll see why.
So we've got a marble slab - it could be granite or a composite stone of some variety - this
is so that the chocolate will cool down quickly.
We've got chocolate - any percentage you like.
We were talking earlier - you and I privately - about liking 60-68% dark chocolate it doesn't
need to be 70% or above.
It would have been a much higher percentage, these lower percentages are a more modern
invention.
Even doing it in 100% would look beautiful but you probably wouldn't eat it you have
it as a display piece.
So we're going to tip this out, nearly all of the chocolate from the bowl.
And in here is about 500 grams - half a kilo of chocolate.
And it's been melting to about 55 degrees C.
Actually we should probably say as well that this is very different chocolate from the
chocolate that you can buy in the shops.
This is a cook's chocolate so a lot of shop bought chocolate, if it's a packaged, well-known
variety will have other things added to it.
So it will have different rules.
Yes this is just cocoa beans, or cocoa liquor - they're all the same - sugar, cocoa butter
and sometimes vanilla.
So pure chocolate, milk or dark or even light would work as well.
So 55 degrees C it feels warm but not hot.
We're going to tip out onto the slab just over two thirds.
So I'm leaving in the bowl some chocolate and we need that for later.
That warm chocolate is going to stop this chocolate from setting solid.
I've got a palette knife and a scraper.
So the chocolate's on the slab, we're going to spread it out to increase the surface area
so the chocolate cools down rapidly to 27 degrees C.
This is the 'ooo' and 'ahhh' bit.
I can see how at home this might be daunting.
It can be but it won't go onto the floor unless you push it onto the floor - it's not liquid
enough.
All you have to do is spread it out and then we started with a circle of chocolate in the
middle and then we're going to scrape in all back in.
Not really fast, just fluid movement, scraping it all back in.
This is just the mixing part.
If you had a tempering machine it would melt the chocolate and mix it.
We're doing exactly the same thing now.
We've melted it, we've spread it, then we've mixed it.
I'm tired now so you can have a go.
Oh god no.
I'm going to make a mess of this.
So you've got to scrape in, all the way in and then scrap off with the palette knife.
That's in, scrape in then scrape off.
This is backwards for me because I'm left handed.
You are.
It does look slightly different.
It's just about keeping the chocolate moving and this is building up the crystal structure
of the chocolate and all the particles of the chocolate.
And you can spread it out again with you palette knife please.
This is the wrong hand I'm going to swap them around.
So this could take four or five spreads so about five or six minutes for it to start
to crystallize and you'll see the chocolate will begin to thicken dramatically once we
get to that stage, but it is messy.
Shall I jump back in?
This is the pro at work.
We just need to scrape everything from the edge in.
If anything sets at the edge and you scrape into the chocolate it goes lumpy.
So which chocolate are you using?
So this is a chocolate which is fairly traded it's from a company called Guittard in America
where the family still run it after 150 years and they started with tea so similar to what
we were looking at earlier where tea, coffee and cocoa were grouped together in grocery
stores...
Yes.
... the same thing happened there.
We know that the growers have got the right money, we know the quality of the beans is
fabulous and we know that what we're producing is something that is ethically sound.
So we're nearly there.
Can you see the difference now?
It's much thicker so when I let go of it it's holding its shape.
Before it spread into a disk, so we know now that the temperature is nearly at 27 degrees
C where chocolate wants to become a solid but we're going to stop it becoming a solid.
So now I'm going to take the chocolate off the slab.
I do this by lifting my slab forward and I'm going to scrape this back into our warm chocolate
which will stop this chocolate going solid... without getting it on my shoes.
And then anything left on here I won't put in because it will make the chocolate lumpy.
Then I bring this back up and then stir.
So we've got cool chocolate from the slab, warm chocolate underneath, mix the two together
and we get what's called a working temperature and that should be 29-30 degrees C for dark
chocolate.
You can now add your lovely spice and rose petal blend into that, we want to use it all
because we want it to taste really vibrant.
Stir that through and we're just going to wait to see if the chocolate sets on the palette
knife evenly should take about two or three minutes.
If it does we're ready to go if it doesn't set at all it's too warm and we'll have to
temper again just by tipping a bit more out and going again.
And if it sets immediately we might need to warm the chocolate up again.
You can see the chocolate is starting to set it starts from this side, the thin side going
that way, with a nice satin sheen which means we know that the chocolate is tempered so
we can fill our mould.
So normal spoon, so the equipment we've used is not too technical.
We're going to fill the mould.
You can pour but I'm going to take a little bit of care because I want to be sure it gets
into all the corners.
We have enough chocolate here for two or three bars I think.
And now a really important part: tap the mould.
Do you see the air bubbles coming up?
They're from the bottom; we don't want them in the bottom.
10-15 minutes in the fridge - no longer than 15 because it will get wet on the surface
and that will ruin it.
So 10-15 minutes in the fridge.
We'll come back, and then we should be able to turn it out as a finished plague of chocolate.
So it's been 15 minutes.
Exactly.
To.
The.
Second.
So now we have to go and get it from the fridge.
It's looking good.
It looks set and rigid.
Now what we need to do is just ease it and we'll be really, really careful.
Are you ready?
Yep.
Do-delu-do-do-do-DOOOOO.
O my goodness it's amazing.
Look.
That's incredible.
You can see.
Put the two beside each other you can't really see all the detail on the mould but as soon
as it's made in chocolate you get to see every single bit of detail.
Better than marble.
It is but, would you like to highlight it even more?
I think we should.
With your very fancy brush, which I love and I'm keeping and some edible powdered colour.
And this will lift the whole thing and less is more.
I'll put the lid there so you can dab the brush.
With edible powders, they're metallic so you just need a tiny amount and brush it across
and it will just bring this to life.
Look at that.
Every little bit of hair on the horse's mane.
That's beautiful.
That's pretty impressive isn't it?
The detail is amazing.
I'm quite pleased with that.
Thank you for watching the Pleasant Vices video about chocolate.
Next week we have a video all about alcohol and for that and any past episodes please
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Thank you for watching!