I finished a 3 day chocolate flowers class today. This class involved producing a showpiece of flowers. We had to produce bases, support pieces, vine tendrils, buds & 5 different varieties of flower. Every piece is out of chocolate & is edible.
Each chocolate (dark, milk & white) has its own working temperature & needs to be constantly monitored to ensure it is tempered. The aim of tempering chocolate is to give the chocolate the desired characteristics of snap, shine & contraction. We do this by ensuring the correct cocoa butter crystal (there are 5, but only 1 is stable & gives the characteristics we desire) is present in the correct ratio. This is ascertained through testing the setting qualities of the chocolate.
The petals are produced using varying shaped knives, depending on the shape of petal required. The knife is dipped into the chocolate & the back of the knife is dragged against the side of the tank to clean it of chocolate. The chocolate laden side of the knife is then dragged onto silicon paper to create the shape of the petal. Only a few at a time are done, as once the chocolate starts setting, the silicon paper needs to be placed into the curve of a half piece of PVC pipe to set. This gives the petal the curved shape you can see.The petals are then attached to a chocolate sphere using tempered chocolate as glue & freezer spray, which sets the chocolate instantly.
The flowers are spray painted the desired colour. They can also have a highlight colour sprayed on, have colour splattered on with a brush, or be dusted with metallic powders to give different effects.
The aim with doing flowers in chocolate is not to have it actually represent a flower, for example a rose, as there is little chance of replicating it exactly. It is more an abstract interpretation.
Photo: flowers prior to spray painting
The petals are so fragile, that even high pressure from the spray gun can blow petals off. One girl today lost her whole piece in this manner. The air just blew her whole piece off the turntable. Smashed! I lost some daisy petals when spray painting
Photo: my finished piece. The perfect angle - you can't see my poor daisy, which lost some petals during spray painting & assembly
Photos: views of my flowers
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