Temper, Temper

We have just had the two best days ever on the course! Chris, our resident chocolatier, has been passing on his secrets to us, and we have been in constant amazement, not just at his skills, ideas and proficiency, but at the fact that we can actually reproduce some of these stunning objects ourselves. We have tempered chocolate, made marbled sheets, bows, boxes, hand-made chocolates, you name it. It's a fascinating area, and right now the majority of us want to do nothing but play with chocolate mainly because we know we can impress everyone we meet for ever more. The secret to all this is the word "tempered". This means treating the chocolate in a certain way so that beta crystals form, which when the chocolate sets, guarantee it is smooth and brittle, and not soft and dull.

Photo above: this is a stage in the production of marbled chocolate bows. The white chocolate has been dribbled onto an overhead transparency closely followed by a coat of dark chocolate which is spread over the transparency using a palette knife to create the marbled effect. Once semi-dried, the chocolate is cut in strips, then the transparency folded over as shown, and the two "ends" stuck together. Once fully dry the chocolate separates itself and the bows can be easily parted.

You will have noticed the wordplay in the title. One or two people are losing theirs, including - you've guessed it - Boston Kate, and to match that, the rest of us, and the staff, with her. Now that we are rapidly approaching the start of the diploma lunch marathon (with yours truly heading up the pack - and I have to say I am very grateful to be going first)), we can't afford disruption, and there are currently ripples aplenty (she should have been a James Bond heroine). So much so that Ian, the school owner, has had to get personally involved, which should never be the case. I can't say too much, but I think things are getting out of hand on some fronts.

Stepan and I seem to head out for a drink most Mondays these days. Now Monday is not my favourite night for a drink or two, being the first day of the week n'all, but it is one of only two nights Stef doesn't work (the other being Sunday). This week we met at the Café Royal, then headed off to the Oxford Bar (some of you will undoubtedly realise without me telling you that these are both nominated by the editor of the Good Beer Guide as 2 of the best 25 pubs in the UK), and finished up at the Thistle Street Bar, just a few yards along, which didn't have any real ales, but did have a great atmosphere, and Leffe to soften that particular blow. Having solved most of the problems of the world, we got onto the subject of how the course is changing rapidly from what it was, mainly due to the school being sold to Ian at the end of last year, and this therefore being his first year in full charge in which he can start to ring the changes, or as Stef succinctly put it "We are like some sort of bloody testing rabbits".