Posted by Clay Gordon, September 24, 2008 at 5:15 PM
The ingredients for Hershey's Special Dark® Chocolate, which contains cocoa butter. Others do not. Photograph by Robyn Lee.
About a year ago, a "citizen" petition was sent to the FDA, asking if chocolate manufacturers could replace cocoa butter in chocolate with "cocoa butter replacements" or "cocoa butter substitutes," while still calling the misbegotten product "chocolate." (I guess you can tell where I stand on that issue, and many of you have your own opinion.)
Believe it or not, despite the United States' bad reputation for chocolate, we're actually ahead of the European Union on this one. The EU version of this Standards of Identity (the documents that specify what ingredients can or cannot be in food, and what you can call them) allows manufacturers to substitute up to 5% of the cocoa butter in chocolate and still call the resultant—whatever it is but it's not chocolate as far as I am concerned—"chocolate."
That does not keep manufacturers from replacing the cocoa butter with other fats; they just can't call them chocolate anymore.
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Posted by Clay Gordon, September 17, 2008 at 2:30 PM
Photo composite by Clay Gordon
In my last post, I wrote some first impressions of the World Pastry Team Championship, a biannual competition that challenges teams of top pastry chefs from around the world to create an astonishing amount of work in a surprisingly short time period.
It is not, by any stretch of the imagination, the only pastry competition in the world. Soccer has its World Cup, as does pastry: the Coupe du Monde de la Patisserie.
First contested in 1989, the Coupe du Monde—as it is invariably referred to by pastry cognoscenti—will be up for grabs again in late January 2009 in Lyon, France. In the first competition in 1989, twelve countries fielded teams comprised of three competitors (a pastry chef, a chocolatier, and an "ice specialist") each with a minimum of seven years of professional experience.
Over the course of ten hours, each team had to produce a chocolate dessert to serve eight people, six different bonbons (two each for a total of twelve), and one frozen dessert with an ice sculpture as part of its base. Strict rules the presentation of each of the required elements, which were prepared in front of a live audience and a panel of judges.
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Posted by Clay Gordon, September 4, 2008 at 3:15 PM
Photo composite by Clay Gordon
Every year for the past seven years I have joined hundreds of other pastry professionals in an annual pilgrimage to two of pastry's meccas: The World Pastry Forum and the National and World Pastry Team Championship. I have just returned from my 2008 journey, which took me to Nashville, Tennessee, and the Gaylord Opryland Hotel.
The World Pastry Forum is actually an educational event. More than a dozen world-class pastry chefs present a program of hands-on and demonstration classes in all aspects of pastry, baking, and confectionery. Highlights this year included the hands-on Chocolate class taught by Stephane Glacier MOF and Stephan Iten, the hands-on Wedding Cake class taught by Colette Peters and Nicholas Lodge, and classes by Anil Rohira and Ewald Notter (chocolate), Ciril Hitz (breakfast pastries), En Ming Hsu (sugar confections), John Kraus (frozen desserts), Derek Poirier (plated desserts) and more.
Students in the demo classes attend ten half-day sessions where students in the hands-on classes spend two-and-a-half days with each chef instructor. Before, between, and after classes provides opportunities for networking and brushing up on the latest tools, techniques, and industry gossip. Evenings also provide an opportunity to take classes and this year's roster featured a demonstration of a pretty amazing device called the PacoJet by chef Kriss Harvey as well as a chocolate tasting class presented by yours truly.
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