Chocolate Fondant

Photo by Jun Pang

When I was in Oxford, England I worked in a restaurant run and owned by Raymond Blanc, great French born chef cooking traditional French cuisine in England.  I learnt a lot at this place.  It taught me to be calm under pressure (eventually).  It taught me that to survive in such a high pressure kitchen, you must be organised, determined, resilient  and passionate.  The culture in this kitchen was nothing I had ever been a part of before or now.  It was an intense little place with such huge turn over of numbers on a daily basis, the pressure for perfection and the pressure of not letting your chef down or your team mates was huge.  The camaraderie was also amazing.  We were a tight team that seemed to function like a well oiled machine and with very little words being said to each other.  We worked hard together and played hard together.  I learnt so much about my trade in Oxford, about my self and of course, cooking.

One thing I will always remember were the little rivalries!  With me, it was with the pastry chefs.  You see, they had very little room for burners and the closest burners to them were mine.

You must understand first, that all hot section chefs had to detail their stoves, benches, pass, ovens and services fridges before and after service. Seeing that the pastry chefs didn’t have huge flat top burners that they had to scrub back to shiney metal every night after a huge night of service and after being there since 7 in the morning, I thought it would only be fair if they helped out with the scrubbing every now and again, but they never did.  They always used to do their sugar work on my flat top burner and it would splatter all over my well kept hot plate, leaving burnt sugar all over it and since they did their sugar work in the morning, it would keep burning all fricken day, leaving it caked on at the end of the night which meant more scrubbing for me.

So as a peace offering, they would cook extra petit four fondants before service so I can get my sugar fix.  I don’t eat sweets, very rarely but these things were just wonderful!  Warm gooey chocolate balls that would explode with a huge hit of chocolate when you placed it your mouth.  It’s hard to stop eating them and when matched with ice cream it’s heaven on a stick baby or in this case, in a petit four!

Try this recipe out, courtesy of those annoying pastry chefs!

Photo by Jun Pang

Chocolate Fondant

Serves 15

Wet Ingredients

600 gr Chocolate (%66)

650 gr Butter

11 Whole Eggs

5 Egg Yolks

500 gr Icing Sugar

Dry Ingredients

75 gr Cocoa (Powder) (%70)

340 gr All Purpose Flour

20 gr Baking Powder

Method

1. Melt Chocolate and Butter
2. Whisk eggs, icing sugar and yolks to foam stage
3. Fold in melted chocolate and butter to foamed eggs, this forms the wet ingredients
4. Fold in dry ingredients into the wet ingredients until smooth, well incorporated mixture.  Do Not whisk, fold ingredients together with a rubber spatula
5. Butter 8cm diameter Ramekins
6. Spoon the mix almost up to the top of the rim and bang the bottom of the ramekin on top of the bench to remove air bubbles
7. Bake at 190C until it slightly pulls away from the edges about 14 minutes if it is in an 8cm diameter ramekin.  It must be left a little gooey in the middle, so press on the top, it must be a little soft with the edges firm.

Photo by Jun Pang