Category Archives: Food science

Mmm, tastes like plastic

Posted on July 17, 2009 | 2 Comments

So, Cadbury is cutting back on the cacao in their Dairy Milk bars and replacing it with palm oil.

I’m not going to start on the ethics of using palm oil (you can read about it here) or that eating mass market chocolate means that you’re supporting appalling working conditions and child labour.

Let’s talk about taste. Do you eat Cadbury chocolate? Do you actually taste it? I have my annual Cadbury Creme Egg, max out on sugar and fillers for the year, and call it quits. I’m imagining what my tasting notes would look like for a Cadbury Dairy Milk.

Hrm. Aroma of sweet (not sugar, just sweet). Tastes like milk powder, wax and sugar. Long finish of slick, oily petroleum residue.

I’m being facetious, of course. Cadbury just doesn’t warrant that kind of thought. It’s the kind of thing you pop in your mouth, forget about, and go back for more.

And isn’t that the problem? Since I started actually tasting – not eating, but tasting – chocolate, I eat a lot less of it. I actually concentrate on what I’m eating, and there’s something about the consciousness that makes me satisfied with one piece. It’s an experience, and not just something to eat.

Just try it. Take a moment to actually taste what it is you’re eating. It doesn’t even need to be chocolate. Choose one thing each day and actually stop to taste it.

I’ll leave you with this lovely tidbit from the Cadbury FAQ page:

Q) Why have you done this [introduced palm oil in to your Cadbury Dairy Milk Chocolate]?

A) We have done this for a number of reasons. Primarily it is because our consumers have been telling us that we could improve their enjoyment of our chocolate by making it slightly softer to bite. Vegetable fat helps deliver this softness whilst at the same time maintaining our chocolate’s great taste.

Oh, thank you Cadbury! Thank you for anticipating my needs before I even knew what they were. I’ve really been having trouble with snappy chocolate. I’ve always thought that it should be “softer to bite.” I’m glad that the addition of random vegetable oils won’t affect your chocolate’s, ahem, great taste.

From the bottom of my heart, thank you.

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Posted in Food science

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Chocolate and coffee

Posted on July 6, 2009 | 2 Comments

It’s a pastry chef’s secret that if you’re making something chocolate-flavoured, a little bit of coffee acts like an invisible flavour enhancer. This is true for chocolate cake, chocolate icing, chocolate pudding, chocolate pastry, chocolate pudding pie, chocolate souffle…wait, what was I talking about?

Oh, right. Chocolate and coffee.

When used properly in chocolate recipes, you don’t even taste the addition of coffee. But there’s something about it that makes the chocolate taste more robust, more chocolatey, more kick-ass. As if it needed any help.

This is one of the few cases when I’ll actually advocate the use of freeze-dried coffee. No longer the stuff of camping trips, a teaspoon or two can make a surprising difference.

When I have the time and inclination, I’ll make a batch of espresso and then boil it down until it’s a thick syrup. I keep it in the fridge and add it to recipes that can accommodate the extra liquid.

So there you go. The cat’s out of the bag.

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Posted in Confessions, Food science

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Let’s talk about layers

Posted on June 29, 2009 | 3 Comments

Let’s take a quick break from chocolate to talk about layers. More about texture than taste, layers make things delicious.

For instance, Chinese green onion pancakes: this simple mixture of rice flour, water, salt and green onions is wholly unremarkable on its own. But consider that a great green onion pancake is characterized by a thin, crisp crust and lots of beautiful, flaky layers inside.

I think the ultimate example is baklava. Think about it: layers and layers of filo, each separated by a thin coat of butter, the entire mass drizzled with honey and topped with nuts? And then baked until it rises into a pile of flaky, buttery pastry? Sure, it’s messy to eat, but there’s something about the insane flakiness, tempered with sticky honey, that makes baklava one of the most delightful things on earth.

And for you Vancouverites, a variation on a theme: the pistachio baklava at Mediterranean Specialty Foods is amazing. Imagine a few sheets of filo, each one brushed with butter before the next one goes on. In your mind, take this multi-sheet thing of filo and roll it into a very tight cylinder. Cut the cylinder into small sections, and bring the ends together to make a donut out of the filo. Finally, imagine filling the inside of the donut with honey and toasted pistachios, and baking this creature until it’s golden-brown, crisp, and delicious.

The resulting pastry is so insanely flaky and fragrant that it’s almost heartbreaking. The effect of rolling, rather than stacking, the filo creates the sensation of tens of thousands of layers in your mouth, each one exploding with each bite.

At just over a dollar per piece (I think it’s $1.25 each), it’s an amazingly cheap way to get an epicurian high. And if you’re craving savoury, the spanakopita is the best in the city.

Mediterranean Specialty Foods
1824 Commercial Drive
Vancouver, BC
604-438-4033

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Posted in Food science, Restaurant reviews

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Caramel is magical, and science is delicious

Posted on June 26, 2009 | 1 Comment

I’m a big nerd. I may not wear a lab coat anymore, but I’m still conducting experiments all the time. Case in point: when I visited a friend in Boulder, Colorado, I knew that it was one mile above sea level. The first thing that popped into my head was “high-altitude baking experiments,” the results of which I still have to document.

When it comes to food, I’m always thinking about the science behind it.

Take caramel, for instance. It seems simple, right? Put sugar (white, crystalline) into a pan and heat it up to 165 degrees Celsius. The resulting caramel (brown, liquid) looks, tastes and smells nothing like sugar. How did it do that? What were the molecular changes? At what temperature? It gets me every time. I think it’s magical and fantastical.

And then there’s Christopher Elbow‘s vanilla bean caramel. It’s lovely, honest flavour. In fact, this chocolate was missing from my chocolate menu and I had to guess what was in it. Sometimes, this is fun; often, it’s a crapshoot as flavours are muddy or, ahem, overly subtle. Well, this was clearly vanilla bean caramel. The caramel was rich and buttery, and just sweet enough. The fragrant vanilla floated on top of the caramel – and who doesn’t love seeing vanilla bean seeds in their food?

But let’s get to the cool science. The mouthfeel was amazing. It was perfectly smooth, but not oozy. As I do with my chocolate tastings, I cut this one in half to get a cross-section view. The caramel looks solid in the shell: it flows a little bit, but it stays in the shell. But then you pop it in your mouh, and your tongue is, quite literally, bathed in liquid caramel. It’s partly to do with the heat of your mouth, but there’s also the molecular structure of the caramel. The study of things that are sometimes liquid, and sometimes solid, is called rheology. I think it’s pretty freaking cool.

But even if you don’t, appreciate this: it makes for lovely caramels.

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Posted in Food science, Product reviews

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Chocolate bars and chocolate confections

Posted on June 2, 2009 | Leave a comment

Most chocolatiers don’t make their own chocolate, nor do they have to. I don’t know when people started thinking that these were one and the same skill, because they’re very different. Making chocolate isn’t something the average person can do in their kitchen. It can be done, but it’s pretty messy and the results aren’t pretty.

Making chocolate confections, on the other hand, is something that you can do in your kitchen, with varying degrees of success. And most chocolatiers stick to making things out of chocolate, rather than making chocolate.

And let’s be clear: the skill set required to make chocolate and to make confections is quite different. Both are a science and an art, but most people concentrate on just one.

There’s also the misconception that a “good” chocolatier will make his or her own chocolate, or that it’s a “lazy” chocolatier who doesn’t. That’s as preposterous as thinking that a good baker will grow his or her own wheat.

Anyway, Soma Chocolatemaker, as I’ve discussed in previous posts, makes delicious chocolate drinks and confections. But, they also make some pretty mean microbatch chocolate bars…

(How’s that for a teaser?)

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Posted in Food science, Travel

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