Easter (Pâques in French) is widely celebrated by many cultures, a time where families and communities share meals, traditions and quality time. Although there are many ways to celebrate, chocolate is a common theme!

 

Did you know chocolate is our baker’s first love? Our chef Sam trained with a chocolate master before his journey into breads. He is sharing his recipe for the famous handcrafted chocolate eggs! Below is the amazing recipe to enjoy with your family and friends. 

 

CHOCOLATE RECIPE / TUTORIAL BY SAM

 

STEP 1: Choose a chocolate with a high fluidity (e.g. Valrhona or Weiss brands). Select your favorite flavor: dark chocolate or milk chocolate, or both if you cannot decide!

STEP 2: Follow the bain-marie technique (French for water bath). All you need is a small saucepan with high sides, and a large heat proof bowl to put into it that covers the top of the saucepan. Place your saucepan on the stove over a medium heat, followed by about 4 inches of water. Then, add in your heat proof bowl. Be careful, as you don’t want the simmering water in your saucepan to touch the bottom of the bowl. You want to make sure your bowl fits snugly over the saucepan, so the steam is trapped beneath it.

STEP 3: When melting chocolate, you don’t want steam to come out from the sides of the bowl, as the moisture can make your chocolate seize, which is hard to fix. Heat the water to a simmer, then add the chocolate chips into the bowl and melt them at 45-50 Celsius.

STEP 4: Temper the chocolate as follows: 1^st phase > 45-50 Celsius / 2^nd phase > 28-29 Celsius / 3^rd phase > 31-31 Celsius

STEP 5: Cool it down to 29 Celsius to get the perfect chocolate texture and then fill up the mold (you can choose any fun shapes you like)

STEP 6: Shake several times the mold (upside down) to remove the chocolate excess and take out air bubbles. Scrap the mold in a nice and neat way. Repeat this step twice.

STEP 7 (if you chose an egg-shaped mold): Unmold and melt the surface to bring each side together, et voilà!