Wednesday - Friday

The next three days were pretty uneventful.  I got better at riding my bike to work, so I can get up later in the morning (4:40 tomorrow!).  I also got better at removing the ganache from its frame, scraping the frame, and cutting the chocolate.  We also had fewer to do some days.  This meant that I started being done with the cutting chore by noon or even 11 one day, which leaves much more time to learn and try other activities. 

On Wednesday I helped enrobe turtles, a few truffles, and toffee.  Enrobing, in this context just refers to the process of coating a truffle (or turtle, or toffee) in its outer coating of chocolate.  At home, this is a frustrating process of dropping them into a vat of chocolate and then trying to get them out with a "good amount" of chocolate.  This is frustrating because the act of putting these objects in the chocolate often changes the chocolates chemistry and because it seems impossible to keep the chocolate at a constant temperature.  At the shop they have machines that help this process, including keeping the chocolate at a steady temperature (although I've seen that be temperamental too) and pouring the chocolate so that there is no dunking going on.  For this reason I'm getting better at asking the "old timers" how they did things before the machines, as that will be my approach --- no fancy machines for me.

Thursday was my first foray into painting molds and Friday brought some helping with cooking caramels and slave duty helping Danielle with the limes (zesting and squeezing).  Someone has to do it. 

Every day has shown me that no matter how easy any job looks when they do it, it is pretty much impossible the first time I try it, but that I will get it, if I keep at it.  Several people have pointed out that everything I'm trying took them months to get even close to as consistent as they are now, as well as months, to get as fast as they are now and I should be happy with my progress.  So I'm going to go with that. 

I'm amazed at how hard the work is and how much fun I'm having anyway.