Ooosha Raw, Amy Levin's Raw Chocolate Class

Raw chocolate folk and the hand of Amy Levin.

Price: £200
Time: 11am - 4pm
Location: East Sussex

A few weeks back I was looking through vivapure's monthly e-mail, tucked away at the bottom of the page was an advertisement for a raw chocolate class with Amy Levin. The woman who is at the forefront of raw chocolate and patisserie.

Having classicaly trained as a chef and training at the Institute of Integrative Nutrition, Amy has worked (and consulted) for a number of the UK's best raw food and chocolate companies, not to mention Saf. Amy is a veritable supernova in the raw universe (of course, I mean that as a compliment).

The first thing that I have to say is that this lady is stunning - I don't know whether it's the chocolate, the rawness or just good genes, but this lady got it going on. Some might say that this alone is advertisement for her courses, which is fair but those people would miss out on all of the photographs of chocolate deliciousness.

Raw white chocolate enrobed mango & dark chocolate truffles

I've been making raw chocolate and cooked chocolate at home for what seems like years now, but I love learning and was desperate to find a course that give me some inspiration and cover chocolate making in detail.

I packed a water bottle (as advised), an apron, snacks, a notepad, a pen and bundled myself into the car at 6am. We arrived 4 hours later and the only item that I ended up using from my bag of tricks was....the pen. Some people took lots of notes, but I found it easier to observe and make notes in the hefty booklet provided. (If you do go on the course, Amy will likely tell you that the booklet has everything you need to know but that you are welcome to bring a notepad. She is right, unless you need to take lots of notes you'd probably be better off with a set of pens).

Raw chocolate windfall

We started by covering tempering which, if done correctly, sets your chocolate with a glass and a satisfying 'snap' when broken or bitten into. If done incorrectly,your chocolate will be dull and have white streaks, spots or a white film over the top. This does nothing to the flavour of the chocolate but the texture will be slightly grainy and there won't be any satisfying 'snap'. To do so, the raw ingredients were brought up to temperature in the vitamix or a bain marie, and swiftly popped into a bowl and whisked until brought down to, approximately, 31 degrees. At which point it is ready to use.

We made raw, vegan white chocolate, milk chocolate, dark chocolate and gianduja (similar to a hazelnut fudge). Learned how to coat chocolates without getting covered in chocolate (use a fork- this had never occurred to me before) and make coloured white chocolates using natural colourings like raspberry powder, turmeric, spinach powder and red pepper powder. Magic. One of the most interesting tips with regards to using  fruit in chocolate was to use freezedried fruits. But I've found that dehydrating raspberries for a few days (until it becomes a small crunchy treat) gives a similar result. After each creation, a little quality control was required...so obviously we had to taste the chocolates. The result? Sooo delicious and 'snappy'.

Raw peppermint crunch

Amy mentioned that she doesn't like using coconut oil when making chocolate, and that if you are to add more than 10% of an additional fat to your chocolate mix it can negatively affect tempering. One of the things I enjoyed most about the course was seeing how someone else works through the creative process. I suppose that coconut oil reduces the melting temperature, chocolate melts at body temperature whereas coconut oil melts at a much lower temperature so it must affect the texture of the chocolate.

As a word of warning; water is disastrous to tempering. If you do plan to temper your chocolate at home make sure that all of your equipment is dry. This week, while experimenting with a new recipe, one solitary drop of water trickled from my fingertip into the chocolate. "What, in the name of Horatio, have I done?!"* I thought to myself, praying that the chocolate would ignore the water and proceed to shiny snappable glory. And you know what? It didn't. The chocolate itself came out beautifully, but it had teeny streaks running through it. Dag nabbit! Thankfully, it didn't affect the flavour too much.

Amy told us that, when chocolate making, you need to be in a happy place. Things can go wrong fast and you need to be able to jump all over it, figuratively speaking. To help this along, I can recommend playing some Jackie Wilson, Yerba Buena or, if you want muchos personality when in the kitchen, Gogol Bordello in the background. The latter, however, might take a bit of getting used to.

Raw Orange Gianduja dipped in chocolate.

The class had a great atmosphere, Amy explained everything thoroughly and was more than happy to break it down for us if we got confused. Another bonus was that the group was small, so everyone got a chance to ask questions and get a good grasp of everything that was being taught.

Previous reviews have mentioned that the course is better suited to commercial purposes, but I'd tend to disagree. It's informative without being overwhelming and is so very inspirational. If you love chocolate, raw or cooked, or just love to create then this is the course for you.

If you'd like to know more about the lovely Amy and her classes click here to be taken to her blog, Ooosha...Raw Culinary Artistry and click here to be taken to the Ooosha site (complete with accompaniment from one Joshua Bell) where you can buy her chocolates and check out some of her recipes. If you get the chance, have a go at making one, they are a real treat!

* For the record, I don't adopt the name "Horatio" when I'm cooking (Although thinking about it now, it could be pretty cool...I could adopt a persona and wear a character based hat. Or a T-shirt that says "what would Horatio do?"), I had just finished watching CSI Miami. Is it just me, or does it look like Horatio really wishes that he had been a swimwear/underwear model at some point in his life?

.   .   .  Ahem