Make your hand-made chocolates with
the easy to follow recipes and step by step techniques.
Chocolate
is one of life's great pleasures. Its rich consistency
and distinctive flavor appeal to almost everyone's sweet
tooth. It is also a prime source of instant energy as it
is full of carbohydrates and contains traces of the
stimulants caffeine and Theo bromine.
This
site teaches you how to make your own hand-made
chocolates with individual illustrations, step-by step
recipes and easy-to-follow methods. There are simple
recipes for beginners, or you can make more
sophisticated chocolate to round off a special occasion
wit real style. And there are chocolate cookies, cakes,
layer cakes, and every kind of exotic dessert.
History of Chocolate
Look for compound chocolate or coverture chocolate
for handmade chocolate.
The less sweet, good quality dark or plain chocolate
blocks are satisfactory for cooking, or you can use good
quality baking chocolate.
Chocolate
was first brought to the western world 400 years ago,
when Spanish explorers came across it in South
America.
At first it was used only as a drink, but in the 19tj
century the familiar chocolate bar was invented in
Switzerland and quickly became the world's most popular
confection.
The tree
that yields chocolate is aptly named Theobroma, which
means ' food of the gods.' The tree has been cultivated
for so many centuries that there are probably no wild
tress left. It is from the pale purple-pink beans within
the pulp of the hanging fruit that chocolate is made.
The beans are fermented, dried, roasted and processed
into a paste called chocolate liquor. Chocolate liquor
is richly colored and bitter, and is most generally
available as it is difficult to cook with.
Cocoa
powder is made by pressing the cocoa butter (vegetable
fat) out of the pure chocolate liquor and then
pulverizing the remains. Extra cocoa butter has to be
added to chocolate liquor to turn it into block
chocolate or compound chocolate. Cocoa has less fat and
sugar than block chocolate, but also less of the true
chocolate flavor.
The less
sweet, good quality dark or plain chocolate blocks are
satisfactory for cooking, or you can use good quality
baking chocolate. Chocolate with a fairly high cocoa
butter content has more fluidity and won't ball around
the spoon when melting. Thick, chunky chocolate may not
melt quite as easily as thinner blocks, but some cooking
chocolate is labeled easy-to-melt. If chocolate is not
melting easily, add a little copha fat (2 to 3 percent
or weight of chocolate) shortening, or vegetable oil.
