During our week long trip in Belgium, we knew we had to enjoy some famous Belgian chocolates! After a little searching online we found a Belgian chocolate making workshop for 35 euros each. We signed up before our trip to reserve our spots in the class. At 11 am on the day of the workshop, we met our guide, Effie, on the Grand Place just outside the tourist office. Effie then led our group of 22 a few streets away into a building nearby. We split into groups of 2-3 people each with a crockpot of molten chocolate!
In the class we made two different types of chocolates: pralines (hard crisp chocolate on the outside and a soft ganache filling inside) and mendiants (hard chocolate discs with nuts or dried fruits on top). We started the class by tempering our chocolate. Tempering the chocolate is a process to make it smooth and glossy for the shells of our pralines and it is achieved by heating and cooling the chocolate in a specific sequence. We cooled our chocolate from 50 degrees Celsius, down to 33 degrees then back up to 35 degrees. Now our chocolate was all set to start making the shiny shells of our pralines!
Armed with our molds a spoon and a spatula, one by one we prepped the top layer of our pralines. Praying for perfection we each carefully poured the molten chocolate filling our molds. Since we wanted to leave room for the ganache filling we poured most of the chocolate back into the crockpot hoping for a thin shell. We placed our molds into the freezer to set and moved on to making some mendiants!
The mendiants were much simpler and almost impossible to ruin. The first step was spooning a thin layer of chocolate on our own wax papers in any shape you wanted to try. Not as easy as it sounds: after attempting a K, I ended up sticking with simple ovals! Next we had an assortment of nuts and dried fruits to chose from to garnish our mendiants. When we put them in the freezer to cool it was neat to see the fun shapes other people attempted!
After we set our mendiants aside to cool, the class came together to make the ganache filling. A few volunteers, myself included, made our the filling from scratch! Mixing milk chocolate, dark chocolate, cream and honey we created our ganache. We filled piping bags to pass around and everyone took turns adding ganache to their cooled shells. We left a little room for a bottom layer of hard chocolate adding this layer much like we did the first. After the last layer was applied our pralines joined our mendiants in the freezer for one final cool down.
While we waited for our chocolates to set, we used the leftover dark chocolate to make some delicious hot chocolate for while we waited! Each person got their own little chocolate box to put their chocolates in once they cooled. Overall the workshop lasted about 2.5 hours and we walked away with over 30 chocolates each! This chocolate making workshop was definitely a highlight of our trip and none of our chocolates made it back home, they were too delicious to save!
