WORKSHOP AT LINDT CHOCOLATE STUDIO

Let me start by some housekeeping: this is not a sponsored post. I participated at a workshop hosted by Lindt Chocolate Studio in Cape Town earlier this week where we made the chocolate cake pictured above and it was such a fun morning with really lovely hosts and great company so I thought I’d share these sweet images with you. Don’t tell me I didn’t warn ya, there’re a lot of saliva-inducing photos below! Scroll down with caution!

Talking of tempting photos, just look at this one! This chocolate ‘fountain’ keeps the temperature between 30-32°C which allows chocolate to flow. Continuously.

The studio currently is in Cape Quarter Lifestyle Village but the end of the month they’re moving to a larger space in Waterfront.

This is our friendly host and chef pâtissier,

and the recipe card that welcomed us on our work station.

We first made a milk chocolate ganache,

then prepared the chocolate cake, this time with dark chocolate.

We continued with the cake decoration, first making a chocolate wrap round the cake. To do this, we evenly spread a generous amount of chocolate from that fountain I showed you earlier on a plastic strip,

let it cool a few minutes before carefully lifting it up and wrapping the cake with it. Demonstration below by yours truly

We poured the ganache on top of the cake then continued spreading some more chocolate on the counter. That was a really fun part! This time we used a scraper to make chocolate shavings for decoration.

After the cake has chilled in the fridge for a few minutes, we could make the final arrangements, take a few photos, then dive in!

The cake itself is really simple with a great texture but I found the overall taste way too sweet. It’s certainly because I’ve been only eating dark chocolate for quite some time now, I mean really dark chocolate, nothing below 70% cacao content. This amount of sugar was way too sweet for my taste buds. Having said that, I will certainly use the cake recipe to make various desserts, mixing it with berries or orange zest to give it a tang. It would probably work well for cupcakes as well! Oh, now, there’s a good idea!