On Monday, I was lucky enough to go to a demonstration by a Certified Master Pastry Chef named Frank Volkommer. There are really only a handful of CMPC's in the country so to see one at work is quite a treat. Chef Volkommer has taught at the Culinary Institute of America and is currently the corporate pastry chef for Cargill Cocoa and Chocolate.

Quite often these demonstrations are dressed up sales pitches for a brand of chocolate or other product. This one was no different, but that didn't make it any less interesting or relevant (at least to pastry professionals). While Chef Volkommer was using only Cargill brand chocolates, the demonstration was really about how to air brush colored cocoa butter into truffle molds to get colorful truffles.

Chef Volkommer made a tasty passionfruit ganache filling first. He then went into detail about a couple of different air brushing machines and how to use them for cocoa butter. The trick is to keep the parts of the air brush gun warm while using cocoa butter, if you're interested in trying this. The Chef went about finishing the truffles and set them aside to cool for later.


The next segment of the event was also informative and interesting. The chef put together a small chocolate showpiece. It was similar to what you may have seen on the Food Network Challenges, but much smaller. In the hotel world, they're known as ammenity pieces; just small constructions to hold truffles for a VIP room. Chef Volkommer explained, as he built this one, that hotel pastry chef's can put together a small centerpiece out of chocolate shapes they may have leftover from other chocolate projects.

Once our ammenity piece was constructed, Chef Volkommer placed our passionfruit truffles on it and invited everyone to taste what he had made. All in all, this was a very nice demonstration. Chef Volkommer was easy to understand and was very good about answering questions. Sure the event was a nice way to introduce pastry professionals in the area to Cargill brand chocolates, but we all learned something and had a good time doing it. Oh, and the samples of chocolate that everyone received didn't hurt either!

Cargill's Chocolate Brand