The Sphere

A couple of weeks ago Nancy and I were rebuilding our piece from Pastry Live at the Chicago Mold School for the Chicago Restaurant Pastry Chef Competition.  I had been wanting to post how I assembled the sphere and almost forgot to take pictures while I was assembling.

This piece was originally conceived as an interesting technique that I felt would be suitable for a competition where you bring your piece mostly assembled.  When I completed, what we lovingly referred to as "the helmet", Nancy loved it and we incorporated it into the piece.  Now my biggest concern was trying to figure out how to assemble it in a way that would be efficient and clean.  After thinking it through I developed a system to speed up the assembly.

This was the prototype

The fins were created using a simple chablon
This was made using a piece of vinyl flooring

Before the fins set they were placed into a mold to shape them.
The outer sphere was cut using a warmed round cutter

The center was composed of a half sphere with a plate to attach the fins

Once the fins were attached the sphere was placed over them

The piece has the appearance of being able to move.  One of the aspects I enjoyed most of Pastry Live was that we were not allowed to use any commercial molds, other than simple geometric shapes.  We really wanted to play with many of the traditional showpiece elements and break them down and transform them.  That way the basic technique was there, but we gave it our own touch.  The stand you see in the images was what was used in the competition.

Rock n Roll

This is the first technique post, please let me know what you think.

This technique was shown to me by Nancy Carey as we prepared for the National Showpiece Championship.  At first I was a little apprehensive to use it, seemed to be too time consuming.  In the end we were able to streamline the process.  In the end the judges loved the idea, it helped to transition our piece from the white boxes we were using to the darker color of the chocolate.  We also used them to give the piece the appearance it was growing out of the ground.

What you will need -
Formula
1000 gr Dark Couverture
1000 gr Granulated Sugar
Method
1. Combine melted chocolate and sugar
2. Spread evenly between metal bars
3. Allow to crystallize

Tools
Wood rasp
Scraper

Scrape surface with rasp

Continue until surface is evenly scraped

Use scraper to smooth out the surface

Break sheet into rocks

Use the rasp to finish the edges

I have tried this working with tempered couverture and no tempered, there was no significant difference in the final product.  This batch was made with some recycled chocolate we used for another showpiece, as you can see it was a nice finished product.  These rocks were created for the rebuild of our winning piece we are assembling this weekend at the Chicago School of Mold Making.