Chocolate 101 - A Delicious Step-by-Step Guide | Jami Lynn | Skillshare
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Chocolate 101 - A Delicious Step-by-Step Guide

teacher avatar Jami Lynn, Artist, Designer, Lifelong DIY-er

Watch this class and thousands more

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Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Lessons in This Class

    • 1.

      Chocolate 101 Introduction

      1:06

    • 2.

      Chapter 1 - Types of Chocolate

      4:04

    • 3.

      Chapter 1 - Basic Tools

      2:43

    • 4.

      Chapter 2 - Melting the Chocolate

      3:19

    • 5.

      Chapter 3 - Molding the Chocolate

      2:43

    • 6.

      Chapter 3 - Molding the Chocolate pt 2

      2:57

    • 7.

      Chapter 3 - Molding the Chocolate pt 3

      2:54

    • 8.

      Chapter 4 - Making the Bowl

      3:57

    • 9.

      Chapter 4 - Making the Bowl pt 2

      4:06

    • 10.

      Chapter 5 - Demolding the Bowl pt 1

      1:01

    • 11.

      Chapter 5 - Demolding the Bowl pt 2

      3:07

    • 12.

      Closing

      0:27

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About This Class

This is a class for the chocolate lover who has always been curious about working with chocolate, but may have been intimidated by the seeming complexity of it. I will take the student through all the basics - we'll learn how to melt and mold the chocolate and make a beautiful chocolate "lace" container in which to present our finished candies.

If you've ever wanted to get started working with chocolate, this is the perfect opportunity. Now let's go make something delicious!

Meet Your Teacher

Teacher Profile Image

Jami Lynn

Artist, Designer, Lifelong DIY-er

Teacher

From my early life filling the end pages of my Little Golden Books with drawings and making dolls out of wooden ice cream spoons to years spent rehabbing and renovating houses, I have spent my time striving to learn as much as I can about a number of topics - drawing, sculpting, molding and casting, making and setting tiles, furniture design, pattern design, doll and toy creation and cooking.

I have insatiable curiosity and a desire to always be improving and growing, which fits in beautifully with Skillshare's mission - I can share my knowledge with others while simultaneously learning from the wealth of options available.

See full profile

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Transcripts

1. Chocolate 101 Introduction: chocolate worshiped by the ancient as taxes, an aphrodisiac and gift from the God of Wisdom, worshipped by people worldwide, now is a luscious indulgence or everyday necessity. Chocolate holds a place of honor in the culinary world, used in everything from luxurious pastries, too fanciful handmade confections and inspires creative cooks around the globe. If you've ever wanted to try working with chocolate but been intimidated by the seeming complexity of it, this course is a quick and easy introduction. That's the perfect way to get started. We'll cover the basics. The types of chocolate necessary tools, the proper melting procedure. Using a simple chocolate mold and making chocolate lace. I'll help you put all these skills together to create your very own customized chocolate Candies and a beautiful chocolate bowl in which to display or gift. Um, I'm very excited to help you take your first steps in chocolate. 101 Let's get started 2. Chapter 1 - Types of Chocolate: thank you so much for joining me for my skill share class. We're going to dive right in, and the first thing we're going to address is the types of chocolate that are commercially available and the forms it comes in. There are five commercially recognised forms of chocolate. First is unsweetened or baking chocolate, which is pure cocoa, has no added sugar, no milk solids, no flavoring. Nothing like that. This is not something that's meant to be eaten directly. Number two is dark chocolate. This has Onley sugar added to it. No other flavorings, Um, when you buy it in a baking bar form and it should be at least 70% cocoa solids. It's become much more popular over this past several years as its high level of antioxidants has come out. So a lot of people are now enjoying it in a candy form, and you can find it very easily at most stores for dark chocolate bars or dark chocolate Candies. There's also semisweet or bittersweet chocolate that should contain at least 35% cocoa. This is what most people are familiar with in terms of chocolate chips such as chocolate chip cookies. There's milk chocolate, which is basically semisweet chocolate, too, which milk solids have been added, which give it the lighter form, the very creamy kind of caramel lee taste. And this is what most people are most familiar with in the terms of candy bars. Commercially available candy is gonna have that very soft, luscious milk chocolate form. There's also white chocolate, which technically is not a chocolate, because it doesn't have any cocoa in it. But it is made with cocoa butter, to which sugar and milk solids have been added. And you can see the various forms. Here we have, um, right here is the Hershey's cocoa. This is powder chocolate. This is for cooking. These are the bar chocolate's and these air. What will be using today, Candy melts. They are chocolates to which additional fats have been added to make them melt easily and gently. And for beginners, there really the most friendly form of chocolate when your terms of melting it because they don't need to be tempered, which is a special heat treatment that you use when you want to have a really beautiful, glossy, smooth finish on a candy. Now the candy melts are commonly available at craft stores such as a Seymour Michael's. Some of the larger Walmarts or Kmarts, might have them. I like to get thm when I have coupons. Frankly, if you sign up at your local craft store very frequently, they'll give you coupons. These air very economical and I recommend them is a great way to start because you can buy a few bags, and if something doesn't go right, you have another one right there. It's not a big investment. Think these bags were about $3 I had a coupon, so I got them for $2 apiece. The projects that we're going to be doing today. The moulded chocolates take only one bag and I used the milk chocolate one, which is why this bag is empty. That's the one that I used. That is enough to make 16 molded chocolates and Little Chocolate bowl in, which will be displaying them. So moving on, we are going to now look at different types of tools that you'll be using 3. Chapter 1 - Basic Tools: what we have here are thief you tools that we're going to need for today. We have, Ah, nice, sturdy plastic spoon down there in front, you can use a spatula. I like using the spoon. Um, next to it, you will see a long, straight spatula. This is used for cleaning off the molds and leveling the chocolates. If you have a bench scraper or a pastry blender, you can use that. I will be also be using this when we make the chocolate bowl and I'll show you why I use it for that now. Right here I have a little stainless steel bowl. This is the form that I'm gonna be using for the chocolate lace bowl. This is approximately five inches in diameter, and the reason I like it is because there's no lip on the bottom. It's very smooth, which will make our form look that much cleaner. This is a scale cooking scale. If you don't have one, you don't absolutely need it. But it is very helpful just for baking in general, and it's helpful because a lot of times the chocolates are measured in grams. Over here, you have our my little pouring bowl. There's a set of these, and I like these because they have a little spout, which makes it easy to pour the chocolate directly from the bowl. You can use a big glass measuring cup. I like using anything with a spout. Sometimes people just use bowls and use Ah, large ladle to dip out the chocolate. And that's something that you can work out for your own. Based on what you have available, the only thing that you should really have to buy, especially for this project, is the chocolate mold. This is in the form of little rosettes. You can see this is a plastic mould. It's pretty sturdy, but it does flex now. They have silicone moulds. I did not choose to get one of those. For beginners. They can be a little rough to handle because they tend to flop around a lot. They're very soft, but it is easy to get the chocolates out of them. There are also professional grade moulds, which are called polycarbonate molds. They look like plastic, but they're very rigid. They don't fold, they don't bend over, and if you take care of them, they will last a very long time. That's not something you need to invest in for beginners, but if you really enjoy chocolates and you want to do it on a consistent basis, it could be a wise investment. 4. Chapter 2 - Melting the Chocolate: Okay. What we have here are the melts. You can see They're just little wafers, very small, about the size of a bit bigger than nickel. And these have been treated so that they melt smoothly. You don't have to temper it. You don't have to worry about it balling up for the most part, as long as you've heat moisture from entering the chocolate. So this is how they start out. And I prefer, as I said before, using these little bowls with spout, it makes it a lot easier without having to dip the chocolate out into your mold. So what I'm gonna do is put it in the microwave and I'm following the directions on this bag of melts which says that you should Meltem either on 50% power in the microwave or on the auto defrost setting. You don't want to just set it for three minutes and walk away and do something else because it can start to scorched from the inside. So what I'm gonna do is nuke it fallen 30 seconds at a time, take it out and stir just to make sure that one area doesn't get too hot and scorch we'll come back and show you that as it goes. Okay, so here they are. After the 1st 30 seconds, you can see most of them. Are there a little bit warm? But they're not at all Moulton. But you can see on the bottom that they're starting to get liquefied just a little bit. So I'm gonna stir them. And this is why you never want to fill whatever container you're using, more than half to 3/4 of the way full. Because as you go to stir it, if you have the impact all the way to the top, you're gonna end up some of them falling out, making in us. And as you can see, they start to stick to the spoon as they begin to melt. So just pride as off. And then we're gonna go and put it back in the microwave for another 30 seconds on defrost . And here we are after the second bout of 30 seconds in the microwave, did see some of them were still retaining their shape, but they are definitely melting the short stick together. So again, we're just gonna stir them. Make sure you have everything around trying not to leave any stuck to the bottom because that's where you have to worry about them scorching. She was gonna go back into the microwave. I'm actually going to do two more cycles because this is just going to continue to melt and you don't need to watch it melting. So I'm going to do two more cycles of 30 seconds apiece and then we'll come back and see how they're okay. This is after two more times in the microwave, 30 seconds each. And in case you're thinking to yourself, Wait a minute. That ball looks bigger than the letter she had a minute ago. You are absolutely correct. This is the largest of my melting bulls, and I had some leftover chocolate in that. So I just combine the two. But I wanted you to see the process from the beginning with the wafers, how they would look and how they would act. So this is totally melted. And what we're gonna do now is for the chocolate into the hold. So let me prepare them old, and I'll show you my set up. And look, it started on that in just a moment. 5. Chapter 3 - Molding the Chocolate : I haven't set all the trade because I have a white tablecloth here, and chocolate does tend to splatter of it, at least when I use it. So we're gonna keep that there when I also have is a large wide glass bowl, which you will see why I need this in just a moment and a spatula with a straight edge. Now you can use a bench scraper. I'm going to use this today and this is how we're gonna clean the edges of our chocolates after their poured. And I have the If you can see back here, I have the bowl sitting all of a length of paper towels that will catch it when it's bladders. So what we're gonna do now for the chocolate? Looks like we're gonna have enough for three lives. Here it was. Make sure these were killed. We were quickly would smooth this out to make sure that the little wells are filled up as much as possible making even. And then you're going to be very patient for a few seconds and wait for the chocolate to start to set up. You want scraped, um, to clean most of this off but we wanna wait till the chocolate begins to set just a little bit. The way you're gonna know when that happens is when this begins to lose its gloss. If you can see here, it's very shiny, very glossy, which is typical of molten chocolate. As it begins to set and it begins to dry, it will start to look less glossy. So we're going to sit here for a minute and you could hear it running in the background. I actually had a small space heater running in this room, working in my dining room right now, and I'm in New Jersey and it's about 30 degrees outside today, so my room gets very cold and the chocolate will definitely react to the temperature of the room you're working in. So to avoid it, setting up too quickly had small space heater running in here 6. Chapter 3 - Molding the Chocolate pt 2: do this. We're just hanging in a little bit. And if you can see they're very small air balls that are coming to the surface, that's pretty typical. You're working with melted liquid. It's very common that you're going to get some air trapped in there. Let them come to the surface and break because I'll avoid them being stuff in the chocolate . We're gonna wait a few more seconds is it's still very molted break to start to set up. Okay, we've waited about three minutes, and it's starting to set up. So what I'm going to do ISS just scrape directly across here into the bowl. Thing is cleaning off the edge is now. The problem with this sometimes is that since this is a plastic mould, as opposed to origen polycarbonate mold is that it does tend to flex is you saw that rained on the vegetable. So sometimes you're just gonna have to use your hand or another solid surface to keep it steady. As you can see now, the edge is a relatively clean. They're even. Not only is this going to make them were attracted when you pop them out, it's also gonna make it easier for them to release from the mold because if you have little bits, this might be a little hard to couple when you have little bits that attach to you. See, this is already setting up to the side. You could make it difficult to pieces to release cleanly from the old. So what we're gonna do now is let it set up so that it's no longer warm. Well, let it sit out for like, five minutes or so that what you can do is put your hand underneath. Right now. I can feel it's more a slightly one. We're gonna do that. Let it sit out in the room at room temperature for a few minutes, maybe 5 10 until it no longer actually feels war. When you touch it, it it's closer to room temperature, and then we will put it on a stable surface and even surface like this trade and put it into the refrigerator to finish, saying 7. Chapter 3 - Molding the Chocolate pt 3: Okay, We're going to de mold. I had these in the refrigerator for 12 minutes and I checked them and they were not ready to come ill, so I put them in for another five. So let's see how we dio flex this a little bit. We can help. Especially where there is a little bit of chocolate still left on the top. It can help to release it. We're gonna tap it against the trey pretty firmly and see what happens. Oh, and there, Here we go. So you see, when the chocolate has been properly set up and it's been in the refrigerator cooling for the proper amount of time, it comes up very easily. And as you can see, they are beautiful and shiny and glossy and picked up off the lovely detail in the Rose bud mold. So I think these are very successful, and I'm gonna show you now a little extra topping that I like to use. Okay, What we have here is Molden, sea salt. This is one of my favorite types of salto work with when you work with desserts. And the reason I like it so much is because it has a different structure than standard salt . If you concede E, it actually has kind of flaky, some people say, almost like a pyramid shape, which gives it this lovely, delicate crunch. And it's a little bit less salty than regular table salt, which is granular. And if you are a fan, they salted caramels. You might want to try salted chocolates as I personally really enjoy the contrast, uh, a little bit of chocolate that a little bit of salt think they were beautifully together. Sometimes chocolate straight can be a little bit too sweet with salt. Their assault both did loots the sweetness of the chocolate just a touch but also in a way enhances the same way it does with carols. Now, since these air already set up, it's not really going to sink into the chocolate, so you have to press it a little bit. And this it's how I love to present him. A lot of people really enjoy the salt 8. Chapter 4 - Making the Bowl: In our final segment, we're going to create a filigree style chocolate container in which you can present the chocolates we made earlier. The easiest way to do this is to take a form over which you drizzle the warm chocolate, allow it to set up and then release it. There are several ways to do this. Some people used balloons drizzle the chocolate over that some people have used ice forms. Some people use the outside of larger silicone moulds. What we're going to be using today is the little Steel bowl that you see there, and the reason I've chosen this is because it's completely smooth on the bottom. There's no little ridge like you see on some balls, which will make our mold much cleaner. We're going to wrap the bowl in a little bit of plastic wrap, which will allow the chocolate to release. We're actually going to spray the plastic wrap with a little bit of vegetable spray, which will also help it come loose. This I will explain once we've started the process, and I've covered the tray with a little bit a parchment paper which will just help keep it cleaner, especially when it comes time, Teoh. Drizzle the chocolate so you don't have to actually wash the trade. When you're done, you can just throw this away. The first part of the process involves covering the bullet with plastic wrap. You said it a little, and I'm just going to very neatly old plastic over trying to keep it as tight as possible and also trying to minimize any folds or wrinkles. Try not to just want it up and pull it into the center cleaner. You keep the outside smoother, more professional looking, your containable, and it should claim to the inside of the bowl just fine, surely should meet tape or anything like that that you can see here that we have a couple little bubbles taking some time right now to smooth this down as much as possible, I will definitely make a difference when you pour the mold and release going to be a lot smoother. I just have a much nicer to prepare the container to release. As I mentioned before, we're gonna give it a quick spray with a little vegetable spray, just a very quick spritz. I'm gonna do that off camera, just a light coating all the way around the outside. I can see a little bit pulled loose. We're gonna talk back, back underneath, can. In case you're wondering what's up with the spatula that is going to make it easy to lift the bowl once all the chocolate has been drizzled on top. And the reason we want to do that is because if you let it sit in the chocolate, that's gonna pull around the base. Sometimes when you go to release it, that chocolate will break off parts of what's actually still on the bold. So the method that I've come up with so that you don't actually have to touch the bowl before the chocolate sets up is to set it on something like this, where you can just pick up the handle and move it to a clean section of the Parchin. It so you don't have chocolate puddling around the base 9. Chapter 4 - Making the Bowl pt 2: you have various options on how to actually control the chocolate as you drizzle it over your form. Some people have special spoons that have a little notch cut in the front where they can drizzle it. Some people will put it into our there, a parchment cone or an icing bag with a very small tip. I'm going to show you the easiest and cleanest and probably one of the most popular ways, definitely a very cost efficient way. This is just a little plastic baggie, and what I'm going to do is cut off the very tip. It's a very small opening. I like to stay with small opening just because it's easier to control a small stream of chocolate as opposed to this big gush that's going to come out if you cut a large hole. So don't underestimate how much chocolate can come out when you slice off one of these corners. Also, the filigree look is going to look a lot more authentic and a lot Niedere if the little strands of chocolate are smaller and more delicate. But obviously that's something you can decide for yourself Once you get a look at it, we've loaded the chocolate into the day and be careful how much pressure you apply is liquid. It's not like I sing. You're not gonna have to use a tremendous amount of pressure. So I'm going to do is just start moving it back and forth and you want to go all the way down the sides. You're gonna get a nice latticework going first, and you can see it's dribbling a little bit screaming out in a nice, delicate pattern, which is what I'm aiming for again. You may decide later on. You want something a little bolder, little thicker on. That's something you can experiment with, and now I'm going to start going in circles. Most important thing is that you take it all the way down the sides, as I mentioned, But you also want to make sure that you don't have any big open spaces in between the latticework because that's going to be weak. This is the structure of your bowl, and if you have big spaces, there's the possibility that when you unmold it, those could sit working my way all the way around. Now you do want to stop before you cover the entire thing. At least I do. In this example, I want it to be more of a lacy filigree effect. So I'm going to stop there. We'll set this aside. Can, as I mentioned, I'm gonna hold for Parchin it down. Lift the bully you can actually see, was already starting to set up a little bit gently said it over here. I'm gonna give it a moment, a little bit more, and this is going to go into the refrigerator. Once it started to set, we'll actually see missed a couple places over here in this thing about chocolate, even go back and catch up. And sometimes you have to kind of take the nozzle right up to the chocolate. The sides are going to be more difficult to reach. We're gonna give that a couple minutes. This will actually set up very quickly. So we're going to give it a minute or two so that it's no longer actually war. Put it in the refrigerator. Let's say 10 minutes, maybe 15 and then we'll come back and I'll show you how to one mold it 10. Chapter 5 - Demolding the Bowl pt 1: Now we're going to de mold or bowl. Just took it out of the refrigerator, going to gently put it over and from the center, start just peeling it back. You're not actually pulling it this way yet. You're just moving and out from the center so that it's free. Kind of like the petals of a flower, you know, pulling anything down. Yet it's moving it away so that the rim of the bowl is not covered in any direction with the plastic wrap. The reason we want to do that because when we convert it, the ball will just slide out, and we don't have to tug it loose. 11. Chapter 5 - Demolding the Bowl pt 2: now this is the test. Would you want to try to dio start here? Because there's a good amount of chocolate right here. Some of the other areas, they're a little bit lighter. They'll be more prone to break someone to start here towards myself and very lightly start to peel the plastic wrap away from the edges. I'm not tugging a little bit of a breakage there. This is not the end of the world. This happens quite a bit. This he's where you're going to have to be very patient. Work gently, don't yank, and I'm pulling across the bottom now is the bottom is pretty solid, has the most chocolate on it, so that's gonna release pretty reliably. Try not to press in words with your favors because you can accidentally crush the bull. And I've done that. It's actually going pretty well, you know, just the final bit. There is a little bit folded up in the chocolate. Sometimes that happens. Can we just lost a little bit. But all in all, this was pretty successful. One way we could make that more successful would have been to include more chocolate around the base and that was my error. But again, that's why when you're laying the chocolate down, you want to go all the way across, back and forth and try to fill in these areas. Here, set this over here. You may have noticed this big swivel of chocolate right here. I put this on here deliberately. This was a little bit that was left. You have extra chocolate and you're not gonna use it right away. The easiest way to take care of it. Used to just pour some out on a sheet. You see, when it's totally dry, it releases very easily. You could just break this up into smaller pieces. Put it in. I like using a slip zip top bag because you can squeeze all the air out of it, the more air you can squeeze out, more likely you're gonna squeeze out any moisture that's in the air. Humidity otherwise, and just squeeze out as much airs. You can seal the bag up, keep it in a cool place until you're ready to use it. I don't keep it in the refrigerator just because if it's a while before going to reuse it, you can sometimes get some moisture in there, which, as we said before, moisture and chocolate don't mix 12. Closing: Thank you so much for joining me for my skill share Class chocolate 101 I really enjoyed our time together and I hope you did as well. I also hope you enjoyed working through these projects along with me on. I would love to see pictures of what you created. Please upload them in the project section below. Thank you again and have a great day.