Hello class!

Just wanted to start off by saying thank you for showing up to class today! We had a full house so we were all able to have enough team members on each group. So today we took on the making of Nougats and Torrones. These recipes although very simple were still very difficult to handle control over. Our production day consisted of making Pistachio Almond Nougats (Team A), Soft Chocolate Nougats (Team B), Chocolate Cherry Nougats (Team D), Torrones (Team C) and Chef Jacque John Torrones (Team E), which was added today in the morning. Although we are in October, the weather was higher than normal today making it more humid inside the kitchen which were not good for the Nougats. We were introduced to new ingredients such as the Rice Paper, Cocoa butter chips and Glucose; plus new equipment such as the blow torch.

Today we had a series of trial and error. Two groups, unfortunately had to restart their recipes due to complications. That is why making sure we have our mise en place and we have scaled out the ingredients correctly plus read the recipe in advance is crucial to avoid mishaps like what happened today. On the bright side, we learned from our mistakes, adjusted and the outcome was beautiful. Also, the teams who didn’t have any problems with their recipe and procedures, were able to finish early and thankfully they jumped on to other groups to lend a hand and also helped clean around the kitchen. Thank you for helping us out!

The nougats and torrones were a hit, that even Professor Claude loved them! Great job today everyone and remember “in order to succeed you must fail, so you know not what to do the next time.”  See you all next week!

Mise en place for washing down the sides of the pots to avoid crystallizing

Attempt #1

Attempt #2: Success!

Blow torch required in the recipe

Flattening out the Chocolate Cherry Nougat

Close up of Torrone

Counting the total amount of products

Wrapping Soft Chocolate Nougats

Dipping the Chocolate Cherry Nougat into tempered chocolate

Chocolate Cherry Nougat, final product

Production Presentation