How did I get the chocolate?

Well, I was on a mission to get my hands on some high-quality cocoa beans, and I knew just the person to help me.

Stan.

He reached out to a local [Farmer] who specialized in growing and harvesting cocoa for cattle. They were more than happy to assist me in my quest for the perfect chocolate. The [Farmer] helped me roast and grind the beans to bring out their rich, intense flavor. The process was a bit rushed, but the result was not bad at all. The aroma of freshly roasted cocoa had filled the air of his workshop. Hell, he made me promise that I would bring them lots of the ‘real stuff’ as soon as I made more.

As I walk through the kitchen to look over what my people are doing, I can't help but take a quick glance at Flaminia, who is busy overseeing her team as they prepare the base for a sponge cake. She is also in the process of cooking up a large batch of caramel, its sweet aroma wafting through the air.

But then, I notice Violante, Flaminia's idiotic assistant, in charge of mixing the ingredients for the sponge cake. As she pours sugar into the mixing bowl, I can't help but notice that she isn't paying close attention to measuring the sugar correctly. I shake my head at the thought of how terribly sweet that thing is going to turn out. This is what I’m talking about when I say that the [Bakers] here don’t really have the right approach to stuff. Even the smallest error can have a big impact on the outcome of a dish.

Do you know, for example, that most kitchens do not taste their food? They cook by memory. They think they know better than their own ingredients. In several top Michelin restaurants where I worked, people obsessed about tasting. It’s funny because the thing most housewives do is seen as the mark of a great chef.

And I keep staring at Violante, noticing that not only does Flaminia want to do a caramel-based cake, but that her little right hand is pouring again way too much sugar into the mix.

Damn, that’s a lot of sugar.

I wince.

Wait.

Is she the one from whom Raissa learned to mix cake batter?

OHHHHH.

Suddenly, it makes much more sense that Raissa wouldn’t have any idea of how much sugar is too much. I keep staring at Violante mixing her ingredients without giving the mix a taste.

Embarrassing, I think to myself as I turn to an empty table where there’s the equivalent of an iron stove in the form of a heating rune on top of an iron square. I put a pot on it.

Let’s get back to us, shall we?

The most important step in chocolate making is cocoa butter. The better the butter, the better the chocolate. Honestly, I had no time to experiment with the seeds I sourced, but the butter tasted and smelled good enough for me—the guy seemed to know which one tasted the best, at least. And even though Belgians might tell you otherwise, the ingredients are the most important thing in the chocolate-making process.

It’s similar to Italian cuisine, in a way. Italian dishes are usually simple and based on sourcing the best, fresh ingredients; once you’ve got that down, you try to enhance the flavor of the good ingredients with good technique. Chocolate is no different. The industry that brings the cocoa butter to the table of a maître chocolatier is the most important thing… unless you like your chocolate in the shape of some weird furniture.

Now, Belgians are the most famous chocolatiers in the world. Sure, if Julius Caesar had actually finished what he started, that wouldn’t be the case, but jokes aside, they are the chocolate makers—so called chocolatiers. Now, a chocolatier shapes chocolate and, hopefully, also makes the actual chocolate mix.

It’s the second part that I’m about to do here. The cocoa butter I extracted was decently pure, with some contamination from the seeds. It’s really not that easy to extract chocolate from seeds without a hydraulic press, trust me. The big problem is that without working the cocoa butter, there will still be some acidic compounds that will make the final result taste slightly off for someone who’s used to normal chocolate.

Whatever.

I add some milk and sugar to the pot with the seed powder and cocoa butter, letting them warm up. I am going for 70% cocoa to keep some of that bitter note for the Cassata. Now, don’t be fooled–the final product is going to be pretty rough. Most of these steps should be made in a chocolate factory, not at the chocolatier’s table. Blending the particles of chocolate and sugar properly to avoid them feeling like little grains when you bite into the final product is not easy. I will be switching between heating and cooling, and then put it on the table to knead the chocolate paste as you would with any dough. The only difference is that I will be using two metal spatulas to mix it together on a colder surface and then put it back in the pot.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Yeah, not perfect. But…

I look at Flaminia’s team.

I don’t need perfect.

Not even close.

…

“So, what do we have here?” I look at the mix Raissa and Tiberius are switching back and forth on top of the two runes. Since we are making six Cassate – which is the Italian plural of Cassata – it’s quite a bit of sponge cake.

“We are following what you said, J—Chef,” Tiberius replies.

“Raissa, have you tasted the mix?” I ask the more experienced baker.

She nods.

“Yes, Chef.”

“Ohhh, she’s calling him Chef,” I hear some of the employees watching over the process make fun of the short Elf.

I briefly look at Clodia, who, not too pleased with my previous behavior, just lets them have it.

“I think y’all be calling me Chef very soon as well,” I say to the crowd, adding an inflammatory wink at the end.

I put a finger in the baking mix Tiberius and Raissa have been working on and nod.

“The fact that you are heating and cooling it regularly means that the sugar grains will be extremely small. In turn, this will produce a very smooth texture and feeling in our mouth once we get to eat the cake. On a little tangent, if you did this with yeast-filled bread, you would kill the yeast—and it wouldn’t rise. But here? Good job, both of you. The mix is good. Now, let’s move it onto the baking trays. We’ll need to shape the sponge cake into the shape of a Cassata. Also, once the glaze and the decorations are on, there will be another layer on top of our cake; that’s why we need the sponge cake to be thin.”

“Why is it called sponge cake if we are making another cake from it?” Tiberius asks.

“Excellent question. Because it’s wrong and stupid, my friend. The ‘sponge’ comes from the fact that you beat eggs, making them the main fluffing agent. Point in case, heating and cooling would make it more like a big biscuit if we made it too thick because the air gets out. Also, we’ll apply the cool-heat switch to other cooking processes as well today. You could say there’s some alchemy involved in the process. What we are doing right now is not too spongy because we do not have any baking powder, sadly. You can use skills, sure, but that’s not something we are interested in. Before I go and invent baking powder, you’ll just have to mix it more as it cools down. That will create small air bubbles that we kind of killed when we did the heating and cooling.”

“That’s a lot…”

“One doesn’t become a baker overnight, my dear friend,” I wink at Tiberius. “Anyway, Raissa, finish up and prepare the trays. I’ll have Truffles monitor the cooking.”

“Yes, Chef,” Raissa nods with a determined light in her eyes.

Attagirl, I think to myself.

“Truffles,” I say, moving onto the blondie. “What’s up?”

I look at the very soft sheep cheese, the ‘ricotta.’

“I am done,” he says.

“Great. Straining the cheese and separating the hardened pieces makes it fluffier. I’ll have Raissa start mixing some sugar in it. Do you have any questions?”

Truffles shakes his head.

“Good. Next order of business, then. I need you at the oven. Can you smell it when the sponge cake is cooked? I need it with still a little softness in it. Can you do that?”

“Yes.”

“Perfect. Get Tiberius to help you take out the trays.”

I move on to Stan and Quintus.

“Have you squished the fruit?” I ask the two, looking over what they are doing.

“Yes, Chef,” Quintus replies with gritted teeth. I appreciate that he doesn’t want to call me chef but still does it.

“Great. Now, we’ll mix it with sugar and slowly boil it,” I move in front of them, taking a bag of sugar and pouring it into the fruity juice. “This will make syrup. We will use the syrup to take the water out of the fruit and ‘candy’ it.”

I whip the sugar into a paste quite fast and then let the pot slowly get rid of the water as it starts to boil over the rune.

“This process is supposed to take ten days, but we’ll have to do it in less. We need to get rid of as much water as we possibly can without destroying the shape of the fruit. This is all going to be part of our decoration. So, what I want you to do is poke small holes into the orange slices, the kiwi slices, and the cherries. All at equal distances. Like this, look at this slice of orange, ok?”

I poke it at the top and the bottom, then put two more holes on each side.

“This will help us slowly let the water get out. After you have boiled the syrup for long enough, it will start caramelizing. We want to prevent that. You’ll take this pot off the flame in ten minutes. Let it cool a little, then dump all the fruit in it. The water will slowly get out of the fruit through an osmotic reaction. BUT! Only dump it when the syrup has COOLED! If you dump it when it’s still hot, the fruit might get cooked and become too hard. We do not want that. After it’s in the pot, stir it. Let the syrup cool even more. When it’s completely cold, fish out the fruit with a strainer and put it in a bowl. Then, boil the syrup again. We need to let the water from the syrup evaporate even more. Repeat this process five times. That’s all. Stanimal, you look like you got it. Are we good?”

Stan nods.

“Friend, I had never thought you’d show such great proficiency in cooking.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m a man of many surprises.”

I take a long look at everyone and then turn to Claudius, who’s done with the Rune-making.

“Want to get your hands dirty with something more complex?”

We are really doing an awful lot of heating and cooling. Joe Rogan and his sauna-cold-plunge mix would be proud of me.