Experiments | Q Chocolate

Category : Experiments

Degustation after a month – Chocolate beer

July 25th 2010 Posted at Alcohol, Experiments, General, Projects, Test
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Saturday, July 24th 2010

Tonight the pressure was getting too high. I had to open one of these bottles that have been looking at me for almost a month. The fermenting is over. the second fermentation on the bottle should be over now. Time to open one and check how it tastes.

I have a friend, Jim, from the USA and the first sip was left to him.

Oh yeah, and it was worth it. Combined with Belcolade Papua New Guinea64 chocolate, the beer is dark in color with a smooth head. The flavor of oats, malts and a chocolate are balanced perfectly with the right amount of hops for a bittersweet finish.

You will hear more the upcoming days about the beer evolution.

Cheers

Alain

Herbs and gelification

April 29th 2010 Posted at Chocolate, Experiments
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Thursday, april 29th 2010

A few days ago I was strolling in one of these flower malls and something caught my attention. There was a stash of different herbs standing on a trolley and I found out that there was something special in it.

I found a mint plant which has a very specific mint chocolate taste. Imagine yourself eating a chocolate with mint cream in it. Amazing !! I also bought a normal mint plant to compare both tastes in chocolate. As you can see the leafs and the colors are a bit different. I wonder what the difference will be in pralines with ganaches based on fresh mint.

Chocolate mint plant

Normal mint plant

I also bought a new product that is used in a lot of kitchens by pastry chefs. The product name is Kappa. It’s a carragene made from sea alges. It has been re-invented by El Bulli in Spain. It is used to make gels of products with preservation of the taste. Once the product is ready I will post more about it. (Thanks for the tip Xavier De Smit!)

Thats all for now, enjoy the last sun and perhaps a terrace and a good beer.

Alain

Easter eggs for Easter bunnies

December 18th 2008 Posted at Experiments, General
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Wednesday, december 17th 2008

Darkness falls at 5 pm, it’s getting cold outside, it snows, it freezes. Time to make some Easter eggs. Easter eggs come in a lot of different flavours. You can let go your creativity. Now that things go smooth. Milk chocolate with white chocolate, dark chocolate with ganaches, alcohol eggs, the sky is the limit. Check out some pictures :

These are eggs filled with a glucose solution with strawberry compound and Kirsch

Standard eggs filled with hazelnut praliné

Easter egg with fondantchocolate ganache and prepared advocat

All kinds of seafood chocolate, different colours and praliné filling

These are 2 surprise pralines. One is filled with Kasteelbier-kriek ganache and the other one is filled with glucose-kirsch-cherries ganache. It’s up to you to choose what you like.

Enjoy the end of year festivities, I will do the same and produce some pralines for the friends.

Cheerz

Alain

Chocolate Marachino cherries

November 8th 2007 Posted at Experiments
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Last saturday I tried to make some different things. First of all I tried to make Fondant chocolates with nuts which worked very well. I don’t have a picture of it since they have been eaten already. The other thing I tried was making chocolates with marachino cherries. It works well and tastes very good. The only problem is that the cherries have a lot of fluid in them and this is being released when the chocolate dries.

Nuts, Almonds, rice crisps and nuts

October 11th 2007 Posted at Experiments, General
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Wednesday, October 10th 2007.

It was the time to make some more interesting things. Chocolate with rice crisps, chocolate with almond and other nuts. Wunderbar ! It’s amazing what you can do with chocolate and how the taste is afterwards. This is the result of lesson 4 :

Meanwhile I did a bid on some iron moulds with flower prints on Ebay. I hope I win the auction since this stuff is pretty expensive if you have to buy it new.

Experimenting with chocolate at home

October 8th 2007 Posted at Experiments, General
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Monday, October 8th 2007. I bought some stuff to experiment at home.
Two bags of chocolate, one milk chocolate and the other dark chocolate.

Butter/bakepaper, some moulds to make differents forms (seaanimals, bears and corn). After preparing the chocolate to get a good temperature I moulded the stuff. The result looks ok but not perfect yet.

Moulds :