Today was the final day of chocolate making and we were able to finish all of the bonbons and make some boxes to take home. We started the day by making the last four bon bons, salted caramel peanut, and black sesame vanilla. We made four different designs today using a few new techniques, one of them being using a stencil. Andrey used a stencil by pushing it into the mold and spraying bronze cocoa butter and then moving it slightly and using black cocoa butter to create a shadow.
Andrey then used brown cocoa butter to spray and create a shadow around the sides. After this we worked on the other three designs and then went to the fillings. The first filling was a salted caramel, peanut gianduja, and crunchy peanut layer. The second was a vanilla ganache and a black sesame filling, both really delicious and a perfect balance.
Once the bonbons were filled we then capped all of the bon bons from yesterday and capped the four from today. He showed a third was to cap the bonbons by using acetate. This way of capping the bon bons creates a very smooth bottom and can be helpful if your filling is uneven. However it can cause more of a mess as the chocolate falls out of the sides.
Finally we sat and learned about Andreys backstory and how he started from nothing, he is all self taught and very impressive. We also learned about the different equipment you could use for chocolate bonbons and the brands to use and styles. When making the chocolate bonbons you need to think about the nozzle size of your air gun, compressor pressure, and of course molds.
Lastly of course Andrey flipped out all of the bonbons and we were able to take lots of pictures and taste them all. My favorite was the coconut lime as it was super tart and just a lovely bite!
