Howdy,
Today was an early start, being in at 9am to start producing chocolates wasn’t really helped by my current medication for kidney stones and the fact that I had accidentally skipped breakfast this morning.
We met the chocolate expert from the health sciences department – Ray Newbury outside the food labs, where we were invited in to undertake a little bit of health and safety training. This simply included the general rules as well as clothing we had to wear to ensure the utmost of hygiene whilst handling the chocolates.
Ray started by showing us the heating bowls, which allowed us to melt the chocolate in the correct industry standard way. This included heating the chocolates to 40 degrees centigrade, then cooling them to 20 degrees, then reheating them to 37 degrees, a process known as tempering.
The chocolate took about 20 to 30 minutes to melt fully, at which point we were able to start pouring into the moulds. The moulds had to be specially prepared by polishing the interior surfaces with cotton wool. This allowed the chocolates to adhere to the moulds with less likelihood of permanently sticking or having random debris stuck inside.
To pour the chocolates into the moulds, we needed to put the chocolate in a piping bag which allows precise pouring into the moulds. The chocolate is poured into the top, then the excess that hits the sides is squeezed down to meet the chocolate sitting at the bottom of the bag, then the air is squeezed out of the top and then finally the top is tied and the bottom cut with scissors.
Lorna decided to pipe the chocolate into the nicely polished moulds and once done, they we put on a vibrating surface which allowed the chocolate to expand into every detail inside the moulds. After ensuring the chocolate was evenly covering each object in the mould, the mould trays were put in th fridge to cool.
The process of cooling took approximately 10 minutes and once done, the chocolates we ready to be packaged and packed up for storage.
Ray very kindly introduced us to another machine which allowed us to individually wrap each chocolate in a little airtight cellophane bag. This would ensure that the chocolates would stay hygienically stored until bought by a customer.
Overall, our experience in the food labs has been very educational. I have learned a great deal about food safety, preparation and production, of course especially in the area of chocolates. Working with Ray, Lorna and Angelo has once again, built upon my team working skills.
This afternoon we had a lecture from Lauren Davies from GO Wales and the centre for student entrepreneurship. Lauren’s talk was greatly informative about the opportunities available from GO Wales and events run by the CSE. Lauren also ran an exercise aimed to get us to be able to sell ourselves and argue our case why we should be invested in. Lauren’s exercise was very interesting at making me thing about how exactly I would sell myself to either future employers or investors and it really brought forward the idea that I need to consider how I would present myself to these parties.