Cooking Archives - Page 2 of 2 - Macarons and Mischief

November 28, 2012

My Chocolate Making Class at Cocoa Nymph

My friend and I bought a Groupon for a Chocolate Making Class at Cocoa Nymph‘s new location! They have two stores and recently opened a new branch on East 7th and Ontario. We got the deal for $35/person instead of the regular price of $70. We’ve heard raving reviews about their chocolates, so we were excited to go behind the scenes and make our own truffles!

The class is from 2-4:30, and we spent the first part of class learning the history of chocolate and how it’s actually made. Making chocolate is definitely a lot harder than I thought. Our very own Vancouver Aquarium actually has a cocoa tree! After our lesson, the real fun stuff began as we headed to the back of their kitchen for some hands on chocolate making.

First, we did a bit of taste testing and tried some chocolate that originated from various countries. The yellow bits on the far left of the picture is pure cocoa butter, and it tastes quite waxy and fat. Then we have some dark chocolate from Mexico, Cuba, and other exotic places I forgot. The little brown bits on the right are cocoa nibs. The long bar of chocolate at the very right is the ganache which is the centre of the truffles we will be making.

To begin, we started breaking the ganache and molding it into small bits. We were given cookie cutters to shape our ganache, but I failed to make nice shapes, so I just made squares or rolled them into balls. After I made separate ganache pieces, they were dipped in 100% chocolate!

Dipping the chocolate was not easy either, it was a goopy mess! After dipping the ganace in the chocolate, we could decorate them with strawberry chooclate pieces, cocoa nibs, cocoa powder, or these little plastic sheets that adds pattern on the top of the truffle!

After they were all decorated, the chocolate truffles were placed in the fridge for around 5 minutes, then they were ready to be taken out and boxed! The plastic sheets are peeled off after taking the chocolates out of the fridge. I love the heart pattern!

I had three more chooclates that couldn’t fit in the box, so I thought, why not, and ate them in store! They were delicious for every chocolate lover and every dark chocolate lover, which is me!

The Chocolate Making Class was such a fun cooking experience! It’s a really good deal if you find a groupon deal on it, since a truffle costs around $2/piece at Cocoa Nymph and I made 18 (in box) plus another 3 which I consumed, which is 21 pieces! They’re also a great homemade gift for anyone special! (Also, in store purchases during the day of the class gets a 10% discount!)

Also, the chocolates don’t have to be fridged and can be left in room temperature for a week. Needless, they were all devoured by the second day! Being a true chocolatier is a talent; my truffles had awkward sizes and randomized placement of toppings; but nevertheless fun! Definitely try out the class or chocolate at Cocoa Nymph.

Hope I made you all hungry!

May 25, 2012

Easy Eat: Kimchi Fried Rice!

I’m not a great cook, but making Kimchi Fried Rice is fast, easy, and something I can accomplish without on the verge of burning on fire! Korean food is delicious, and I always have kimchi stocked up in my fridge. They make great side dishes for rice or thrown into cup noodles for a spicy flavour. sI had some kimchi in my fridge that were going to expire in a month, so I decided to make fried rice with it to spice up my lunch meals! I used to surf the net for recipes, but now I just throw things in the frying pan and I’ll get a decent meal out of it!

What I used

Some precooked minced pork my grandmother made
Thin slices of red onions
3/4 cup of kimchi
As much rice as I could eat (approximately 1.5 cups of cooked rice)
olive oil
1 egg

I heated up the frying pan to medium and covered approximately a tablespoon of oil in the pan. Then I threw in onions and kimchi, stirred it around a bit, through in the rice, and then the meat. I stirred around until the kimchi sauce covered the rice thoroughly. After stirring a while to make sure everything is cooked (approximately 5 minutes) I scooped it up in a bowl.

Then I added some more oil in the pan, and cracked an egg and let it fry by itself. At first, it was sort of sunny-side up, but I like my eggs more cooked, so I tried flipping it, but the yolk sort of spilled. Nevertheless, it was still tasty!

Photo 2012-05-25 12 04 12 PM — Homemade Kimchi Fried Rice

This was very simple and quick to make- and easy to pack for lunches! I may have added a bit too much kimchi (because I love kimchi) so it was a bit on the spicy side. The rest of the ingredients were throw in random- you can seriously put in anything else you want to eat- garlic, green onions, veggies, shrimp, bacon…I just found what I had in my fridge and put it in for a nutritious meal.

Everything goes in my thermos and it’ll still be hot when I take it out for lunch! Things always taste better when you make it yourself!

May 11, 2012

Making dessert with Dr. Oetker’s Creme Caramel

Since I was at home today with a swollen throat due to some unknown food allergy, and I finally opened my box of Dr. Oetker’s Creme Caramel mix I bought from Superstore (approximately $2.50) couple weeks ago.

This is a mix that comes with one pouch of custard powder, and another pouch of caramel syrup.

Photo 2012-05-11 10 14 23 AM — Creme Caramel mix

On the back of the box are instructions:

After all the prepping and boiling; pre-chilling

Photo 2012-05-11 10 39 59 AM — Before putting them in the fridge to chill

I only had one ramekin bowl (that I bought from Las Vegas and brought it to Vancouver) and used glassware instead. Because the dessert mixture was hot and I don’t like putting hot things in the fridge, I put them on a cold towel before chilling them in the fridge.

Some problems I encountered

Syrup was very thick so it got a bit messy with me when I was trying to pour them evenly.
I was impatient and set the milk to boil a bit over the medium so the milk almost spilled out of the sauce pan.

All in all, I think I got most of the steps right. I put the serving dishes in the fridge and they were in a jello-ed state after several hours. They were quite tasty, and a bit sweet, but not too sugary.

I tried this before turning it upside down on a dessert plate:

Photo 2012-05-11 3 24 13 PM — Creme Caramel- slowly being eaten

Couldn’t get a picture of the ramekin with the upside down dessert, because my parents ate it before I even knew.

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