Roasting Beans

The whole house was scented in a yummy cloud of roasted chocolate – I did find it odd that every time I opened the oven to stir the beans my nose was assaulted by a slight acidic almost vinegary scent which quickly went away.

Cocoa beans in coco mill

Once the roasting was done and the beans had cooled completely it was time to place them in the coco mill.  Which cracks the husk from the nibs of the bean. As soon as everything was cracked it was time to move outside to begin winnowing the beans – I used a blowdryer to blow the husks away from the nibs. It felt like I was out there forever baking under the hot Florida sun. I was covered in coco husks  from head to toe and so was our patio. Luckily we still had Don’s leaf blower to blow the discarded husk into the flower beds (where they will do some good).

After winnowing

I got most of the husks separated from the nibs so now it was time to extract the coco liqueur from the nibs and remaining husks using the Champion Juicer. A very long and noisy process and after running it through twice it was time to clean the juicer to get it ready to run the liqueur through a final time (but that will have to wait until tomorrow as the juicer components need to dry 100% because if even 1 drop of water gets onto the liqueur its ruined). So tomorrow  I will run the liqueur through a final time in the juicer then place it in the  melanger to conch it with sugar and coco butter.

Extracting chocolate liquor from the nibs and husk

Chocolate liqueur

That’s it for now

Homemade Apricot Jam

 This is how I made apricot jam:

1. Chop up  8 oz bag dried apricots
2. Pour boiling water over top of apricots so they are completely covered and let them soak for and 1 1/2hours
3. Strain apricots and save the liquid
4.  Pour the reserved liquid in a pot  add i cup organic cane sugar and juice and zest  of 1 lemon and  and bring to a boil  and  reduce to quarter of it’s volumePlace soaked apricots in a food processor and pulse a couple of times
5. Add the apricots to the pot and simmer until it is nice and think about 15 minutes.

Since I like cold jam on biscuits I had to place the jam in an ice bath to cool it down quickly. You may ask was it worth putting the movie on pause just to make some jam – YES. That yummy sweet tart flavor on a buttered biscuit with a pot of tea watching a good film. nothing could be better.

That’s all for now.

Melanger, Juicer and Cocoa Beans

So I was looking for something to make when I ran across a Thin Mints recipe from Heidi Swanson’s blog 101 Cookbooks which is really a wonderful blog with great recipes. Her recipe called for whole wheat pastry flour which I didn’t have so I substituted   a 1/2 cup cake flour and 1/2 cup whole wheat flour to equal ! cup whole wheat pastry flour. I also thought tempering the chocolate for the cookie was a better way to go than just melting it, that way the chocolate would not melt on your fingers when eating it. I also ended up using a 53% Callebaut Dark Chocolate since that’s all I had. They came out rather yummy and I just love the mint with that nice crisp cookie inside!

Homemade Thin Mints

Thin mints anyone?

Tahitian Vanilla Bean Panna Cotta with pears poached in Pear Williams

Cinnamon Graham Crackers

Coconut Graham Cracker Bars

I ended up baking over 10 different batches of raspberry and chocolate Macaroons  two batches a night with some success and others complete disasters. I did learned a few things along the way, such as: 1. When I baked Raspberry Macaroons at 350F for 15 mins. they came out a light brown color, but when I baked them at 300F for 18 mins. they came out a lovely shade of pink. 2. Make sure egg whites are stiff with a nice satin sheen. 3. When folding the powder sugar/almond mixture into egg whites the consistency shouldn’t be too stiff nor too loose. With all the ups and downs I experienced with making macaroons It was a lot of fun, I do look forward to the day when I can constantly make a prefect batch every time. So I will keep practicing, I just won’t be eating them all other wise I will be as big as a house.

Chocolate Macaroons with a Pear williams chocolate ganache

more Chocolate macaroons with a raspberry/dark chocolate ganache

But for the moment I will take a break from macaroons. Since all the equipment for my chocolate from bean to bar experiments have arrived. I haven’t unpacked the boxes since I told myself that I wouldn’t open them until I quite smoking. So tomorrow will be the big day, I can’t wait to get my hands on everything and see what type of cocoa beans I have to work with. As you can image tonight will be spent smoking like a chimney, saying good-bye too my old friend tobacco for tomorrow will say hello to my new friends taste buds. I’ve heard when you quit smoking your taste buds and sense of smell improve dramatically. I’m sure it doesn’t happen the day of quitting, but I would like to think so.

Raspberry Macaroon with a Vanilla bean buttercream baked at 300F

Raspberry Macaroon with a Milk Chocolate ganache baked at 350F

P.S. If anyone out there can recommend an amazing macaroon recipe it would be greatly appreciated. Even though I’m getting back to chocolates I just love those little things so much.

Here are the recipes I used over the course of last week and how I changed them: 

Tahitian Vanilla Bean Panna Cotta from Epicurious

1. I Spilt/scraped 1 Fresh Tahitian Vanilla bean and steeped it in heavy cream for 10 minutes.
2. I also used organic cane sugar.
3. The recipe came out quite nice the only thing is that I wish that the Vanilla bean was suspended throughout the Panna Cotta instead of settling on the top and bottom of the bowl.

Cinnamon Graham Crackers from Smitten Kitchen

1. I used 1 cup of whole wheat flour and used dark muscovado.
2. They came out fantastic, better than any store-bought brand I have ever had. differently a winner. The only thing I would do different is to roll them out thinner they where a bit to thick. And next time I will dip then in Dark Chocolate.

Coconut Graham Cracker Bars from All Recipes

1. I didn’t add the layer of chocolate on to because I thought they where already a bit to sweet for me. I don’t think I would make these again.

Chewy Granola bar from Joyful Abode

1. I did  make a few changes to the recipe since I wanted to use what I had on hand.

2 cup whole oats
1/2 cup wheat gem
1/2 cup wheat bran
1 cup pecans
a handful of sour cherries and dried apricots

Macaroons from David Lebovitz (My favorite recipe out of all the ones I tried)

1. For the raspberry Macaroon I just substituted freeze-dried raspberry powder for coco powder and baked at 300F for 18mins.

I finally ordered all of the equipment that I will need to make chocolate from bean to bar. So hopefully within the next couple of weeks I will be ready to start making my first batch of homemade chocolate from scratch – I am really excited about this! In the meantime I have been doing a lot of baking and sadly I haven’t posted any of it, but over the weekend I decided to tackle French Macaroons which turned out to be rather challenging. I tried quite a few  different recipes but none of them came out as well as I would have liked. I was about to give up then I came across a great recipe on   David LeBovitz‘s blog. I did make a couple of changes. I replaced cocoa powder with equal amount of powder sugar, vanilla extract and powdered orange food coloring. All in all I was happy with them, but the color wasn’t as vibrant as I wanted, will figure that out next time.

French Macaroon Recipe

Adapted from The Sweet Life in Paris by David Lebovitz

Batter
1 cup plus 3 tablespoons powdered sugar
½ cup ground blanched almonds
3 tablespoons cocoa powder
2 large egg whites, at room temperature
5 tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon Vanilla extract
1 tablespoon food coloring

White Chocolate and orange ganache
½ cup heavy cream
1 teaspoons light corn syrup
4 ounces white chocolate
1 tablespoon butter
3 drops orange oil

Preheat oven 350F

Ingredients

grind almonds until you get a powder

ground almonds

add powdered sugar

grind almonds and powdered sugar together

beat egg whites

add sugar to whites once you get peaks

whip for 2 minutes

add powdered food color

add powdered sugar and almond mixture

fold

pour batter into pastry bag

pipe little circles .

bang tray on counter to get ride of air bubbles, let rest for 30 minutes then bake at 350 for 15 mins

Yummy

Today we had to shoot a few drinks for  Eden Roc magazine and one of the drinks called for a pineapple garnish.  Since I had so much pineapple left over I wanted use it and  not let it go bad. But I wasn’t sure what to make with it, then it dawned on me that I haven’t made a pineapple upside cake in years. I found a great recipe at Bettycrocker.com, I made a few adjustments.

Adapted from Betty Crocker

Pineapple Upside Down Cake Recipe

1/4 cup butter
2/3 cup muscovado sugar
pineapple slices
maraschino cherries
1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup butter
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup milk
1 egg

1. Heat oven to 350°F. In 9-inch square pan, melt butter in oven. Sprinkle brown sugar evenly over melted butter. Arrange pineapple slices over brown sugar. Place cherry in center of each pineapple slice.
2. In medium bowl, beat remaining ingredients with electric mixer on low speed 30 seconds, scraping bowl constantly. Beat on high speed 3 minutes, scraping bowl occasionally. Pour batter over pineapple and cherries.
3. Bake 50 to 55 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Immediately place heatproof serving plate upside down over pan; turn plate and pan over. Leave pan over cake a few minutes so brown sugar mixture can drizzle over cake; remove pan. Serve warm. Store cake loosely covered.

That’s it for now

pineapple upside-down cake

All in all it turned out to be a lovely cruise end we met some really great people along the way. In particular Dorol, who is in her 70′s, from Pennsylvania who was such a delight to talk to and I just love the fact that she travels around the word by herself. Thanks Dorol for the great tips on Kenya!  We have packed our bags and had our farewell brunch as we turn our attention to work, creating great chocolates, and planning where the next great adventure takes us.

Stay tuned!

Last day

Well today started out as a complete mess. When we arrived at port we couldn’t  find our tour guide for the chocolate excursion we booked – he was nowhere to be found. I was furious since that was one of the reasons we booked this trip! The port of Limon isn’t really setup for tourists per say as its really a cargo/industrial port. So unfortunately the only option left to us was to try and book a excursion through the ship at the last minute.

We ended up going to the Veragua Rainforest Research Station which is a privataly held sanctuary and eco lab that teaches and promotes rain forest conservation and awareness through an eco tourism program. We had 2 wonderful guides Wilhelm for the bus ride and Hurben Tuma. On the bus ride up to Veragua, Wilhelm gave us a fascinating lecture on the history of Costa Rica and it’s people for example we learned that Costa Rica had disbanded its army and used that savings to help the people of Costa Rica through the additions of social medicine and to fund public education for all its citizens. Once at Veragua we were greeted by our guide Hurben who took us on a tour of the rain forest and its unique exhibits which showed the biodivercity of the region and the important role the forest plays on all aspects of our lives, including the medical uses of some of the plants. For example It was fascinating to hear that through research done there they had discovered that the venom from a scorpion unique to Costa Rica reacts to black light and glows blue and that this venom and its reactivness to black light had been adapted to help identify cancer cells in humans with a success rate of identifying close to 75% of cancer cells as opposed to only around 60% using traditional methods. Towards the end of our tour we took an open air gondola (cable car) ride through the upper canopies of the rain forest with views down below. We saw Tucans, Howller monkeys and even a sloth, it was really fascinating.  All in all it was a wonderful day and I even got to see a lone Cacoa tree through the bus windows as we headed back to the ship!  So of course since we didnt get to see the Cacoa plantation our post poned trip to Nicaragua has moved up on our itinerary as our next destination in the months ahead.

Limon, Costa Rica

Our wonderful guide Hurben Tuma at Veragua Rainforest

In the Veragua Rainforest

In the Veragua Rainforest

In the Veragua Rainforest

Veragua Rainforest

Veragua Rainforest

On the way to the waterfall

Veragua Rainforest

The only Cacao tree I saw through the bus window

We woke up bright and early to see the approach of the Panama canal. It was absolutely fascinating to see how the lock system works. As the ship goes through a series of locks rising and lowering with gravity being the only force at work as the ship transited to Gatun lake (we were only doing a partial transit). Normally for a full transit it can take as long as 27 hours to go from the Atlantic side to the Pacific ocean which is considerably faster than the weeks it would take to transit around South America. We know this of course because early in the morning we stopped to take on the Panama crew chief who takes over the ship for the transit and we also took on a historian who was relaying over the loudspeakers the history and operation of the Canal for all of us who were out on the decks to watch the transit.

We had booked a ships excursion to the Embera Indian village deep within the Panamanian rain forest. It was truly one of the most amazing excursions we had taken. Andy was expecting a Disney Epcot experience which as it turned out was the furthest thing from the truth- much to our delight! After the 2 hour bus ride on a bumpy road we were greeted by the Embera Indians with motorized wooden canoes and proceeded to their village which was easily an hour’s voyage  deep within the rainforest. Once we reached the shores of their village we were greeted by a festive group of Indians playing an assortments of their native instruments all wearing the traditional native clothing of the Embara (which is basically nothing much at all – think loin cloth and no more for both men, woman and children) Once we climbed out of the canoes and made our way to the village we were all invited to enter the village council hut where they receive visitors and conduct village meetings. The chief through the use of a translator gave us a lecture about their lifestyle and customs and general way of living which was fascinating.

We were then invited to explore the village on our own where we happened to come across a Peace Corp worker who was living amongst them for a period of 23 months as a teacher for the young children, she had to dress and live as the indians do (this is a village with no electricity or other modern amenities of today) she explained to Andy and myself the challenges that the tribe faces to retain their cultural identity with the encroachment of the modern world (including the decision to allow tourists to the village as a source of revenue) for example one of the tribe members brought up having solar panels installed withthin the village but the tribal council decided it would be damaging to their authenticity and since their only source of income are selling their handicrafts to the tourists that are allowed in there could be a substantial loss to the tribe if tourists felt the village wasn’t authentic – she also us told us of two of the tribe’s children who would be heading to college which was a first for the Embara tribe since to go to high school the children who decide to go have to travel an hour down river plus a 2 hour bus ride just to get to school each day.  After this we were invited back to the village council hut for an authentic Embara meal (to which Andy expressed concern that the meal might be us!) But alas it was not to be – instead it was fried Talapia and plantains served in a banana leaf bowl. The fish was delicious which they catch locally in the river that we traveled on.  After lunch we were presented with some tribal dances and music, it was one of the best days we have ever had on a tour! If you ever make it to Panama make sure to check out this experience!

Panama Canal

Panama Canal

Embera Cheif

On the way to the Embera Indian Village

Embera Indians

Embera Indian Village

Andy at the Embera Indian Village

Women making lunch at Embera Indian Village

Lunch

Embera Indians

The whole tribe