Chef H showed us how to make a chocolate showpiece last Friday. Today some of us got to make our own showpieces, which must incorporate the required elements determined by the chefs. (Some of my other classmates will make their showpieces tomorrow afternoon.)
Chef had specified the elements we must have in our showpieces: Flower(s) and leaves are compulsory, plus a number of other shapes and patterns, as well as demonstrating our carving, molding, cutting, and piping techniques.
Chef H's chocolate showpiece, demonstrating all the techniques he said we could use for our showpieces. It got us thinking quite a bit.
Each of us had to produce a sketch for the showpiece before class. I did mine over the weekend and I also wrote out a list of chocolate pieces I had to make before I could assemble the showpiece.
By the way, it was good to have Chef T in the workshop today, because I am never nervous or tense when he is supervising the class. And he even showed me a few good ways to assemble some of the pieces in my showpiece.
In the photos below, you will see the chocolate showpiece I came up with, after over 5 hours of hard work. My classmates came up with some wonderful themes and chocolate showpieces, but I might leave that for another time.
The theme of my showpiece is Divine Gifts. I tried to use chocolate to make pieces (parts/components) to symbolise what I consider to be divine gifts -- and these are the things we take for granted, but we really should be thankful for, in my opinion.
I am happy with the result, though I know my techniques appeared a little amateurish... Let me tell you, working with chocolate is not easy. Chocolate melts at body temperature, which means the chocolate pieces will melt in your hands if you hold them for longer than a few seconds (even with gloves on). And I have what Chef calls "warm/hot hands", which means chocolate melts even more quickly in my hands. I love working with chocolate, but I have to be really quick. Thankfully, I have learnt some strategies to deal with my problem of "warm/hot hands". Otherwise, I wouldn't be able to make this showpiece at all.
Also, I am glad I had learnt a number of the chocolate techniques during my stage (internship) at Stubbe Chocolates last term. Hence, I was on "auto-pilot" some of the time, and was able to make some of the items relatively quickly (well, quicker than I normally am, anyway). I could do the molded chocolate quite quickly.
Divine Gifts: The gifts and the way I represent them in my showpiece. Water (teardrop shape, dripping from a chocolate pipe), fire/light (lit candle), time/sunshine (sundial), the natural world (lotus flower, leaves and dragonfly), music (piped treble clef), language (writing in different languages), and planet earth (chocolate sphere).
Visually, I tried to connect or link all the components in my showpiece in some way. If you start with the chocolate sphere, your eyes will come down to the white teardrop (representing water). The lotus flower and leaf sit on water. The ripple in the water foreshadows the shape of the sundial (concentric circles). The gnomon on the sundial is the same colour as the candle flame, and the candle itself is roughly the same shape as the long vertical tube next to it. Your eyes go up to the treble clef, before coming back to the sphere again. The general shape of the showpiece is a teardrop shape (just like the white chocolate teardrop). I hope it achieved the desired effect.
Making the piped treble clef and molding the chocolate sphere were pretty straightforward. But the following items required some planning and thought.
My lotus flower and leaf, and dragonfly. I really liked being able to use chocolate to create texture in the leaf -- I smeared some chocolate onto the square piece of molded chocolate with my mini offset spatula, and gradually built up the texture as the chocolate hardens. Then I carved lines into the leaf to make it look life-like.
You will also notice a few concentric circles in the corner; I wanted to suggest there's fish in the water causing the ripple. That's just to represent life beneath the surface of the water. I must admit I was inspired by M.C. Escher's Three Worlds, which is one of my favorite artworks of all time.
This is a close-up of the sundial I made. The sundial is used for telling time, but I used it here in the showpiece to suggest sunshine as well (otherwise, I would have just made a clock).
Before I molded the chocolate for the sundial, I painted the acetate with some gold dust and a thin layer of green-coloured cocoa butter. This is to give the effect of verdigris (weathered bronze). Then I carved the chocolate to make the sundial look realistic.
This "candle" is made with 8 tube-like pieces of chocolate. I used drinking straws to make long tubes of chocolate, then I arranged the long tubes of chocolate in a daisy formation. Then I drizzled some chocolate down the side of the "candle" to make it look like melting wax. It was fun to make this item in the showpiece.
I chose to include a lit candle in my showpiece to represent fire/light, but also to remind everyone that our time on this planet is finite (much like a lit candle).
In this photo, you see "water" written in different languages, including in scientific language. I had to pipe the words in reverse (i.e. mirror writing) onto acetate, so that when I unmolded the chocolate, it would show the writing the right way. It would have been easier to make the piece of white chocolate teardrop and then pipe the words onto it. I wanted the challenge of having the words inlaid in the white chocolate teardrop (like the technique I used when I made my chocolate box in Intermediate Pastry). As you can tell, I will require more piping practice if I want to make it look nicer, but this is a good start.
In case you are wondering, the languages you see in the photo are: H2O = scientific, water = English, eau = French, wasser = German, air = Indonesian/Malay, voda = Russian, agua = Spanish, acqua = Italian, imaq = Inuktitut, shui = Chinese (or, mizu = Japanese).
These are languages
(1) that I speak/spoke/understand, or
(2) that I have tried to learn at some stage (but did not get very far), or
(3) that people I know (e.g. classmates, housemates, friends) speak
Oh yes, I also learned basic Australian Sign Language (AUSLAN) for fun a couple of years ago, but I couldn't think of a way to represent it in my chocolate showpiece. LOL
Anyway, the workshop today was exhausting. Not least because we spent nearly an hour cleaning up the mess we made in the pastry kitchen. Just imagine chocolate everywhere -- chocolate on our aprons and jackets, on our tools, bowls, pots and trays, on the kitchen bench, on the stove, on the floor, in the sinks, on the refrigerator door handles, inside the refrigerators... It is no wonder Chef H had allocated 45 minutes for clean-up. :D
Fortunately, I have a lot of patience for chocolate work. Even if it means I have to clean up afterward.
