How
to cast white chocolate
without melting or tempering.
(*Be sure to see how to bend chocolate at the end of this story.)
Chef Omar Martinez demonstrates this great classic; how to use white chocolate couverture without melting or tempering. To do this, he first puts a handful of chocolate pistoles into a food processor.
Next, Chef Omar runs the processor on high for a minute or two.
He chops the chocolate until it looks like this.
Working quickly, Chef Martinez kneads a small amount in his hand and then
presses it firmly into the mold. (The following steps take place in less
than 2 minutes.)
Using a offset spatula, he levels off the excess chocolate and further compresses the chocolate in the molds.
The back of the mold is scraped clean with the spatula.
Allow the chocolates to chill a little before releasing the chocolates.
The castings are pushed
out of the mold (#033
Urchin Bloom).
This process allows you to produce many castings very quickly. Using three molds, Chef Omar made these castings in less than twenty minutes. (Using traditional casing methods, it would have taken that long just to temper the chocolate!)
Bending Chocolate:
Using this technique to make "pliable chocolate dough" changes the casting properties of the chocolate. The chocolate will remain stable enough for you to remove it from the mold while still soft. This unusual characteristic allows you to bend and shape the chocolate without it cracking or breaking easily. Look how mold (Ostrich Plume) is curled to make the feather look even more dynamic!
Want to see what else Chef Omar made with the castings?