Elevate Your Senses
COVID-19 taught us that we could do a lot of things from home. Big meeting with your co-workers? Zoom allowed us to keep our pajama pants on while still looking pretty good on screen. Stuck inside with little to entertain us, we started creating some clever ways to spend time together and shake off that cabin fever we were all feeling. Now that things have come back to a semblance of normal, we have still kept up with our video calls and expanded our view a bit. And our homes can be transformed into to places of fun, creativity, and adventure.
Have you ever thought of doing your own at home sensory experience? We have… a lot… and think that it could be a great way to bring friends and family together to do something with a bit more spice to it. These are some things we put together from what we had at home. Enjoy the following steps at home with Ilan’s Raw Chocolate.
Pantry Items:
Maple Syrup
Cacao Powder
Cacao Butter (or white chocolate chips)
White Sugar
Salt
Various Fruits (we recommend blueberries, strawberries, oranges, and mangoes)
Ilan’s Raw Chocolate Classic (or variety box!)
2 to 3 70% Chocolate Bar of your choice
Step 1: Look
Place maple syrup, white sugar, cacao powder, cacao butter, and salt on the table. These are some of the basic ingredients that make up chocolate. Although cacao paste is what is used for chocolate, powder can provide a good visual for you. If you are able to find cacao butter, white chocolate chips will suffice because they are the product of cacao butter, sugar, and some milk. However, if you can get your hands on real stuff, the sensory experience is a bit more true to life. Using spoons just put a bit on a spoon and take a closer look.
Ask a few questions:
Did you imagine that this is what chocolate starts as?
Do these ingredients surprise you about these?
What regions are you the most familiar with for cacao production?
Step 2: Touch
Pay attention to how the raw products feel in your hand and let them run through your hands a little bit. Note softness, roughness, smoothness, etc. Just touch it enough to get a sense of the surface feel.
Step 3: Hear
Try to crack or break some of the raw ingredients. Then snap the chocolate bars. Listen closely to the sound of the snap and whether it was clear or dull. The louder the snap, the higher the cocoa butter content, the higher the quality of the chocolate. Well-tempered chocolate will omit a louder snap, whereas a lower grade chocolate may not make any snap at all.
Step 4: Smell
After snapping the chocolate, get a whiff of the chocolate’s aroma. Circle on the aroma wheel what you might be smelling. Smell the tempered chocolate and do the same.
Step 5: Taste
Let the chocolate melt in your mouth. After just tasting the chocolate alone, have fun tasting it with fruits that you have chosen taking a bite of the chocolate and then a bite of the fruit. If you feel really adventurous, bring out one of your favorite bottles of wine and ask yourself?
How does it feel? Does it melt well? Does it make my mouth dry?
What flavors are present?
What does it remind you of?
