Day 9: The One with the Fruits

Today we said goodbye to chocolate making and said hello to lifelike fruits. We started the recipes to make a lifelike strawberry, raspberry, apple, and hazelnut. We wer also given the recipes to make the lifelike peach but due to time we may not get to it. Each recipe came with a whipped white chocolate ganche for the outside along with an insert and some sort of glaze and chocolate shell for the outside.

We started with the strawberry and apple inserts, using fresh fruit and fruit puree as well as gelatin to thicken the insert. We then piped these in spherical molds and put them in the blast chiller to freeze. After this we worked on the whipped ganache to set as the outer layer to the inserts. Sometimes in shops they may use a mousse instead of a white chocolate ganache however Damien has found that the ganache holds the fruit shape better and lasts longer in the fridge.

We then worked on the hazelnut which is slightly different as instead of a gelatin based insert we created a hazelnut sponge. We baked the sponge in a spherical mold and then when we took them out of the oven we piped in some extra hazelnut praline to give it more hazelnut flavor. We then put this in the fridge to set and created a hazelnut whipped ganche for the outside.

Most of the components are all in the fridge or freezer to fully set and assemble tomorrow. We did place the strawberry inserts in a larger spherical mold after piping in some of the whipped ganache and then added the top of the mold to pipe the rest of the ganache and create the full sphere. This was then placed in the freezer to set for tomorrows final chocolate shell and glaze. We also inserted skewers into the apple inserts and placed those in the freezer to crystalize more.

Damien specializes in lifelike fruits so we did not use fruit molds but instead will learn how to carve all of the different options ourselves out of the sphere shape. Tomorrow we will finish all of these fruits and close out week two!