02/15-16/10 - Class - Crystallized Sugar Confections

Nothing really last week. Because of the snow, both my days of Chocolate class was canceled and one day of my Advanced Patisserie class. On Friday in Advanced Patisserie we continued work on our wedding cakes-we cleaned them up and iced them, and we'll finish them this week.

This week in Chocolate and Confectionery we began crystallized sugar confections, which means that instead of avoiding sugar crystallization, we're inducing it through agitation.

Our first product were pecan pralines. They came out well but I needed to scoop them out faster; they began getting grainy by the end of the batch.

After the pralines we made chocolate fudge. It came out decently but was rather soft. I think that may be a result of not agitating it enough but I'm not really sure.

Next we made peanut butter fudge. Pretty similar to the last one. This one turned out better though; it had a good, hard consistency and tasted pretty good.

Last I tried making a batch of fondant. Most of the recipes called for fondant but we used pre-made fondant for them. I wanted to give it a try anyway. It is rather simple, just sugar, glucose, and water, but takes upwards of 20 minutes of agitation so it isn't the easiest to produce. It seemed to turn out pretty well but it was pretty hard so I think I over-agitated it. But I think it is still usable and would just need to be melted some first.