Friday, February 1, 2019

The story of Rose Gold

Maybe you'd guess it, but maybe you wouldn't -  a lot of thought goes into making up these little chocolates, and the story behind the Rose Gold that is a limited edition debuting on Valentine's is one of those little love stories with a big back story.



Those of you who have been over to Sin Confections have seen the gardens in the front, and maybe seen the roses in bloom.  Sin is housed in a Carriage House, it was built in 1903 before there were cars and the Carriage House was built to hold the carriage.  The horses were in the yard, or stabled nearby.  In keeping with the theme of staying historic, we decided to plant roses in the front of the house that were around in 1903.

Antique Roses may not be as big or as showy as modern roses, but they sure smell great, and I got to thinking that it might be interesting to see how roses could be used in a confection.  Most folks just candy the rose petals, which I've done, but I wanted to take it a step further.  I made a couverture out of rose petals which tastes mighty amazing.



Dr. Jaman is the name of the antique rose that was harvested for the couverture.  This rose has a very heady scent, a beautiful color and thankfully was a prolific bloomer.  Sin grows organically.  We compost with yard waste and fertilize with worm castings from our worm composter.  We don't spray, period.  I say this because most roses are sprayed or have systemic pesticides and artificial fertilizer used in their growth, which makes for beautiful roses but not so nice for being edible... So, it not for the worms, we wouldn't have these special roses to make into couverture.

Petals are collected in the morning hours when they have the most flavor and scent, frozen, dried and powdered.  An entire season of petals yielded less than 5 ounces of powder.  This is the key ingredient for the couverture that makes up the outside of the rose gold bon-bon.  There are no artificial flavors or colors.  What you see and taste is Dr. Jaman.  It didn't make much.


The gold on the outside of the confection is 23K gold leaf that was left over from when we did the restoration of the interior of the house.  We have compo molding running around the bottom of our tin ceilings and when we stripped the paint and restored,  the craftsman who had worked in the national cathedral and palace in Mexico City was very excited to gild the molding as he had done years ago in La Cuidad.  I got to watch him do the painstaking work of gilding the molding, and learned a bit on how to work with the gold leaf.






Finally, the terrific shine on the chocolate to complement the gold was a technique I learned just a few weeks ago at a class in Las Vegas.  Take a good look at the top photo, and you can see my reflection in it when I was taking the shot.  By mixing cocoa butter with the couverture and spraying the mold under the right conditions, the beauty of the rose petal color has a shine that compliments and competes with the gold leaf.  It is a wonderful confluence of nature and beauty that makes up this special couverture for Valentine's Day.




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