Lakeland PBS presents Common Ground, brought to you by the Minnesota Arts & Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.

Production funding of Common Ground is made possible in part by First National Bank Bemidji continuing their second century of service to the community, Member FDIC.

Welcome to Common Ground.

I'm producer/director, Scott Knudson.

In this episode Katie Stumvoll, owner of Wildflower Chocolate in Nisswa, Minnesota creates one of her signature confectioneries, a salted caramel agate bonbon.

My name is Katie Stumvoll.

We're in Nisswa, Minnesota at Wildflower Chocolate and today we are making caramel agate bonbons, a bonbon shaped like a small gemstone like our semi-precious agates and we use a white chocolate with a little bit of semi-sweet chocolate for marbling effect and they're filled with a house-made caramel sauce.

So first we're going gonna make the caramel sauce and I have the sugar measured out here.

So now I am just making sure that there are no dry pockets of sugar so it looks good and once we get to this point where it is all incorporated then we just don't want to touch it at all, so everything dissolves and we don't encourage crystallization and it looks good as far as like sugar crystals around the side of the pan, so at this point we would let this boil and then find some other things to do while that's, all the sugar is dissolving and I'm just going to check on our chocolate in the microwave.

For white and milk chocolates it's a lower melting temperature it's called than a dark chocolate because of the milk solids and so I'm just going to slowly warm it up again.

Keep warming and now I've gone down to increments of about like 15 to 20 seconds because I don't want to burn the milk solids or the chocolate.

My degree is in sign language interpretation so the science of chocolate is my education and science and the crystallization and everything, food science.

We're at 39 which we're not going to be able to go through the whole tempering process just because we need to keep an eye on the caramel over here but we're getting a lot closer to our melting temperature and that'll just save us time, so we're going to bring this to a complete boil and then I add in the corn syrup after all of the sugar crystals are dissolved and that encourages the crystals to be like the syrup versus introducing a granular.

If we introduced sugar again it would cause the batch to crystallize and kind of harden and then you don't get that smooth syrupy caramel consistency that we're looking for in the caramel sauce.

Corn syrup is actually a great doctoring agent.

Well and it's not as sweet too.

I don't know a ton about the different types of sugar but it's like glucose, fructose and they all have different structures and corn syrup we like that syrupy structure in caramel sauce just to have a stable product that isn't going to crystallize later on in the jar or in like the solid caramel form.

The buzzing you're hearing on the microphone is from the induction burner and this is the only big source of heat that we use in the kitchen so we don't have an oven or stove top and we just have the burner, so this is our pastry brush and I'm just watching the corners of the pan here to make sure that there aren't any sugar crystals trying to clump up and encourage this radical mass to crystallize.

We do not want that.

That's sugar work and chocolate work is all about crystallization either controlling the cocoa butter or controlling the sugar crystals and the cocoa butter in chocolate is what needs to be tempered.

I am going to add my corn syrup and now we have introduced the corn syrup.

Now we are just going to watch this and have it caramelize, which will be burning the sugar to our desired amount of caramelization and we'll just judge that based on color and I don't know if you heard this chirp but that is our tempering machine and then on here we also have our molding table which we will use for casting the gemstone molds and these are vibrating tables to shake out bubbles.

This bowl down here with the rotating arm is a heated bowl so this tempers the chocolate for us and it's very helpful.

Yeah, so this goes to 1800 watts and it would be nice to have like a 3600 watt machine but it takes a different power source and whatnot and so, someday we'll get one of the big like copper kettle caramel cooker situation that you see at the bigger factories.

So my assistant chocolatier has a Golden Retriever and as we're like trying to measure the different stages of caramel and like what color we want it to get to we talk about different colors of golden retrievers and they're the different dog's names so it's like, like any brown.

My whisk is ready.

My cream is ready so and I'm gonna put a oven mitt on too so I don't get a steam burn.

It's okay.

So we have the cream in.

This is our house made vanilla so I use vodka and then vanilla beans and it's really an infusion and not so much of an extract and then cream of tartar so it creates a slurry and so that way when I put it in everything is mixed together and we won't get clumps of cream of tarter.

So this will just let sit and cool off.

So now we are going to test the temper of our chocolate in the tempering machine and then it's going to get a little bit of chocolate on here and then I set it on this little piece of parchment paper and then we'll set it on the table and see over the next few minutes just how it's crystallizing.

We can see that it has a nice shine and it's becoming kind of dull just in the sense that it's crystallizing but it's not looking grainy or it's not blooming at all which would be when the cocoa butter and sugar solids separate from each other and that wouldn't give us a nice temper so the qualities of well-tempered chocolate would be that they have a nice shine and we'll see that on the items that come out of the mold because they have a very smooth surface that they're hardening against versus this is just in air.

It has a nice snap when you break it and it is solid at room temperature which is a key part of tempering.

You want your chocolate bar to be solid at 68 degrees versus just kind of mushy.

So when we are tempering, right now we're at 40 and I want to get to 45 degrees celsius which I'm just gonna check my recommended temperatures for this type of chocolate and here, so like here's a little informational thing, melting crystallization would be if we were like table tempering and then back up to a working temperature but we're going to be going from melting temperature all the way to the working temperature just by seeding crystals in there so 45 to 48 and our working temperature is like 28, 29 and that's all in celsius.

That's what a lot of the chocolate equipment in the industry standard is.

I would say in the pastry world.

Okay, so we're at 40.

We want to get to 45, 46 and I really want to make sure that I'm heating evenly and I don't get any hot spots.

This is a caramelized white chocolate so it's heavy in milk solids and that can burn much more easily than if we were using a dark chocolate and we want to get it into that 45 to 48 degree range so that all of the cocoa butter crystals are in a radical state and ready to receive the seed crystal and become like the seed crystal.

Still 43.

I just don't want to burn it, and we have our seed crystal chocolate right next to us.

So I'm going to start off with about a third seed chocolate and then I just monitor the temperature as it's coming down and then our stone is a cool surface as well as the seed chocolate is cool and so that's where temperature comes into play so I can see our seed crystal, our seed chocolate is melting.

We're at 38 and it says on the bag a good working temperature is 28 to 29 and I know that once it gets below 33 I'm in a safe place as far as it going out of temper in the like 34 plus area so I'm just kind of chopping things up.

We're at 35 and I'm going to move to a cooler part of the stone as well and I think just for a demonstration we'll make a little temper.

See how it's going at.

So now we're at 34 which I'm just gonna get a pen quick and if we have a few little chunks in here we can kind of melt them away and one step that my assistant has already done for us is polishing the molds and so that is just so anything, any like fingerprints or water spots in there would transfer right onto the chocolate shell and so she uses a cotton swab and polishes all of these.

I like to check what the temperature of the stone is too, 72-73 so it's a little warm in here.

Ideally it would be at 68 but we were making caramel and doing a few things.

It warms it up.

I love the agates but they definitely take longer because of the white chocolate involved versus just quickly turning on the tempering machine and having in-tempered chocolate.

So we are at 33 and that's great because we're just getting into our working temperature.

I do see like a couple chunks like this one but I can mount that off easily without pulling everything out of working temperature and into an out of temper range.

If the chocolate is out of temper when we put it in the mold either you have to like refrigerate the mold for a long time for it to come out of the mold or it just sticks in there or we don't get like a nice shine and there's little bloom spots and it's not desirable.

So I have my chocolate mold.

I'm gonna get a little bit of tempered darker chocolate in here just enough.

So this is making the agate.

I'm going all the way up on the side of the bowl.

Okay.

So this is why we wanted the chocolate to be more fluid too.

Okay, I think we can get a couple more out of there.

Okay, we still have some in there from last time but I just want to make sure that it's like oops nice and stripey.

I wonder what the agate and mineral show people will think?

I'm just getting any bubbles out now.

Okay, I'm gonna flip it over now.

By putting them upside down it'll create just a little bit of a lip on the bottom so that when we cap them there's a nice surface for the chocolate to grab onto.

Okay.

Some of those chunks got a little big.

I think I will use some of this.

This just adds a couple colors and then it'll have a darker chocolate background.

So my next step is going to be with these bonbons and the tempering machine and then I'm just going to cast them.

Okay I'm gonna check on our fillings and then these need to harden a little bit.

I'll at least put one of the caramel ones in the fridge of agates so that it's finished.

Here's some of our caramel sauce that we put in the fridge and we just want to make sure that this isn't going to melt the chocolate which it is pretty warm right now.

We'll put it in here and then it just needs to chill for a couple minutes.

It's at like 37 and if we get it warmer than our working temperature then it will melt our bonbon so maybe we can take a little break while this is chilling.

It'll be like eight minutes.

Okay, first we're going to flip this over.

Something that I thought has been interesting learning about confectionery is that different regions of the United States have their own like signature thing, just like, different like food dishes, like hot dish or lobster and so like on the coastal cities they're more about the saltwater taffy's.

In the Midwest is very like fudge focused and like Buffalo Sponge Candy in Buffalo, New York, there's a candy shop there that is like famous for that but that's partially why I really like branding these as agates because it's so like Minnesota, Nisswa, centric.

So right now I'm just filling these with our liquid salted caramel and leaving just enough room that I can put a chocolate cap on them and that will be the bottom of the bonbon.

This is just a single layer bonbon.

There's all sorts of things you can do with like a s'mores marshmallow and then a chocolate ganache layer or if you wanted to do like a cheesecake and add some sort of like crunchy crust, the different layers.

One pastry chef that I like and follow says like food and especially bonbons or her candies are a vehicle of expression and I just, I like thinking of that when we're making different things or even like making...

I like to make birthday cakes for my family and friends as a personal like hobby but a vehicle to communicate or express seasons or traditions and... See how it's nice and syrupy like the corn syrup more so than like a granulated sugar?

So our next step will be to cap them with tempered chocolate and then they'll need to cool and they'll come away from the mold and then we'll be able to unmold them and then we'll have our finished product.

Another way that we're originally specific with the chocolates and confectionery items is through our own culinary garden where we have different perennial flowers and some herbs and then our different berries and fruits that we harvest to then bring into the kitchen.

I am going to heat up the tops of these just enough so that they are ready to grab on to this in-temper chocolate and so they'll bind together a little bit better.

Okay, so now we're just going to let that set.

I'm checking on our bonbons.

Some of them came out.

You have to be careful not to crush the ones that have already fallen out.

So these are our caramel agate bon-bons.

This is the part that is like so gratifying for me, to see the finished product after it's like, make the caramel, temper the chocolate, polish the molds.

My life outside the kitchen is a little hectic.

I have two young daughters, 3 and 5 and it's a nice artistic escape.

So we have fun doing our like acrylic painting and splashing around with stuff at home but in the kitchen there's a little bit more control and also the whole level of food safety and it takes a lot as you saw to build up to the final product so it can kind of test your patience I guess getting there but then when you uncast the mold or place the edible flower petal on the truffle the finished product is just so gratifying to make something so beautiful, that also tastes good.

If somebody wants to purchase our chocolates we're at the Nisswa Farmers Market on Thursdays.

We are open at the kitchen Friday and Saturday from 10:00 to 5:00 in Nisswa and we have an online store wildflowerchocolate.com.

Scott: Thank you so much for watching.

Join us again next week on Common Ground.

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Production funding of Common Ground was made possible in part by First National Bank Bemidji continuing their second century of service to the community, Member FDIC.

Common Ground is brought to you by the Minnesota Arts & Cultural Heritage Fund with money by the vote of the people, November 4th, 2008.

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