Look What I Made!

I consider myself very fortunate to live in New York’s Hudson Valley region, where the Culinary Institute of America is located. Over the years I have spent some time in the CIA’s kitchens. Last weekend I took a class on how to make chocolates and confections. Yes, of course it was the chocolate that got me there.

This was not an allergen-free class – lots of milk and butter went into the chocolates – but since we weren’t using wheat I didn’t need to worry about gluten. Luckily, I was able to eat everything we made in class. When I make these at home I will use some of my favorite allergen-free ingredients.

Of all the baking and cooking classes I have taken so far, this one may have been the most fun. Keep in mind that I’m the kind of girl that is very happy to eat chocolate chips straight from the bag, but most of the fun in this class was learning the techniques. Who knew that chocolate could be fun to play with?

To make these:

We started by dropping ganache circles (using a pastry bag):

We let them set, them use out hands to round them into balls. We let them set longer while we tempered the chocolate.

Then we dipped the chocolate balls into the tempered chocolate, and decorated.

Ans this  is what I brought home:

Jealous?

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