Today was the first day of chocolate.

I can now temper chocolate.

So, first, I would just like to say that the world of chocolate is a weird world. I began my day with a chocolate tasting. Afterwards, we watching an instructional video that starred a hot-pink, dancing clip-art beta crystal and two young men typing away very intently on mid-90′s laptops, which ran what appeared to be DOS. Last night, as homework, I read an article by a woman who literally gave her job title as Quality Control Officer and Tasting Panelist for X- Chocolaterie. My chef spent the day singing Big Band-era show tunes about chocolate and doing Julia Child impressions. (Ok, the behavior described in the last sentence is, admittedly, not that unusual. But still. It added to the overall carnival atmosphere.)

OK, yes, this is ugly and kind of boring to look at. But it’s chocolate that I tempered myself, for the first time, without messing up horribly. For the non-specialists among you, what this means is that you heat up chocolate, then cool it down, then heat it up again and stir it a little. If you do this, you end up with chocolate that dries shiny and does not melt when you touch it. (It obviously will melt eventually, if you hold it long enough, but you know, not when you convey it from the plate to your mouth. It will hold for that long.) This is the first step towards being able to make my own truffles, bonbons, molded chocolate bunny rabbits, etc.

Also, as kind of an educational experiment, rather than, you know, something you would actually want to do in the real world, we are making chocolate from scratch. This giant pile of ground-up brown goo that appears to be dripping from the end of a meat grinder? Just all part of the magic.

This is a long post, longer than I like to write (it puts too much pressure on me the next time around, plus I think the writing can start to drag). But it was a big day. Stay with me here.

After class, after chocolate, I volunteered to help with a demonstration put on by Ron Ben-Israel. Click that link by the way. The man is a genius with a sugar flower. Anwyay, I helped make this.

Sorry about the picture smallness. I did not take this photo because I was busy cleaning up after I, with only the minimal supervision of one master chef, 2 other students, and a roomful of audience members, molded and glued on several pieces of fondant all by myself.

In conclusion, booyah.

For those of you less dorky that me, Bloomsday is a thing that happens every year in which people around the world (Ok, not a lot of people, but still, people, get together and celebrate the release of James Joyce’s book Ulysses by holding masive 36 hour events at which they read the entire 1,000+ page book aloud. Interestingly, the holiday is not celebrated on the book’s publication date. (Admittedly, there sort of is no publication date; it was published in installments, and there are several editions, and a raging debate among Joyce scholars about which edition constitutes the most ‘authentic’ version.) Nor is it celebrated on Joyce’s birthday or deathday. It is celebrated on the date of Joyce and his wife’s first romantic outing, in which they walked around Dublin together for a long time. It is called Bloomsday after one the book’s characters, Leopold Bloom.

If you are still interested in this, here. I linked the wiki article for you. You’re welcome!

Anyway, today was my cake exam/midterm, and I made I Bloomsday cake.

I’m nto sure if the writing on that is going to be legible because 1) It’s a smallish picture, 2) I kind of suck at writing with chocolate still, and 3) there’s a slice missing, but the top of the cake is last line of the book, spoken as part of Molly’s monologue: “…and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will yes.” The fondant is blue hypothetically as a tribute to Stephen Daedalus’ mirroring monologue as he walks along the beach but really because I think chocolate brown and pale blue look nice together. The inside is a genoise sponge cake, flavored with Grand Marnier, and filled with orange butter cream, in tribute to the Lotus Eater’s chapter when Leopold’s quasi-mistress writes him a letter asking about Molly’s orange-flower perfume and he takes the bath (water again). I cannot believe I just admitted I am this uncool. On the internet. Oh dear.

Blurry, but an ugly (if fairly delicious) cake anyway.

New York style:

Much better.

Chocolate sponge cake, filled with Creme D’Or (rich whipped chocolate ganache) and cherry compote, covered in stabilized whipped cream, and infused with a cherry liquer.

I’ll write about these later. Right now, I have to go make croissant dough. (More croissant dough, I mean. For a different thing. At home.)

Pictured above: A brioche loaf, and little individual brioches that are not filled with pastry cream, but certainly could be, and it would be delicious. I personally enjoy brioche and coffee together, so I might go with that flavoring.

I am suffering from mild writer’s block today, so I asked for help with the title. These were the other candidates:

B.Y.O.Brioche

Brioche: An Approach

Brioche a la Gauche (Trans: Brioche On the Left)

Brioche, Shmi-oche

In conclusion, my friends are giant dorks.

But if you eat only a Danish for lunch, you will have twenty minutes of greatness, followed by a sugar crash guaranteed to leave you teetering on the brink of the abyss.

(UPDATE:  A friend has just pointed out to me that there is something incredibly obscene about this picture. She is right, but I have no clue why. If you have a theory, leave it in the comments.)

So, the thing is, this particular version doesnt have the opening sound. But, before he begins singing, usually, he shouts “HOLLA!” So thats why the challah bread made me think of this song. Which in turn makes me think of middle school, which was, quite frankly, not my favorite. So yes, screw you Nelly and your stupid incomprehensible song lyrics.

Ok. I feel better now and and also I have a delicious loaf of challah bread in my kitchen. Did you know you made challah by braiding strands of dough together? I did not. This is a six-strand loaf:

Also, a fruitcake cupcake. (It was less gross than it sounds. Fruitcake, it turns out, does not have to be unfortunate.)

I didn’t want to enjoy it. I wanted to hate it. If things go on this way…well, you know that 3 am phone call Hillary warned us about? That will be my boss calling to tell me I’m late for work.

Maybe I can condition myself. I can learn to hate the deliciously warm, sour smell of the proof box, the sticky yet firm texture of the dough under my palm, the  way the caramel brown of the crust contrasts with the soft, pale interior…

Oh God.