All you chocoholics who work with bulk chocolate know that getting the blocks broken down into easily melted chunks can be problematic. I was fortunate in that when I first started taking classes in truffle making from Alice Medrich, of Cocolat fame, I was living in San Francisco where there are a lot of antigue [...]

I came to using candy thermometers late in life. So many recipes just gave visual instructions (candy should form firm ball when placed into water) that it was possible to complete the recipe without that tool . However, it became obvious that successes were more the result of luck than skill in deciphering recipes. So, [...]