I was talking to a colleague and he was talking to me about a dish with pineapple and basil and I had a flash, can we make this into chocolate? We can sure try but would it be any good?The end result is not overpowering, subtle flavour and it’s quite enjoyable. Since the pineapple is cooked its note are not too strong and you only get the sweetness out of it.
You need
- 105g heavy cream ( 35%) + a little bit extra
- 10 basil leaves
- ~50g pineapple
- ~20g brown sugar
- 29g corn syrup
- 15g room temperature butter
- 200g dark chocolate + extra chocolate for the tempering
Instructions
- First, you need to caramelize the pineapple. Chop them in pieces and sprinkle some brown sugar on them. Put them on aluminum foil and toss them in the grill ( you could also broil them), cook them for about 7 minutes, remove and let them cool.
- In a pot brings to a boil then caramelized pineapple, basil and the cream, turn off heat, cover, and let it sit for about 5 minutes. We need to remove the pineapple/basil from the mix, I’m doing so using a chinois strainer but one could use a clean dishcloth to filter them out. With the leftover, I press them very hard to get all the cream and flavour out of them. In the process, you may have lost about 10% of the cream, simply re-add some to the mix until you are back to 105g.
- Start tempering the chocolate following these instructions.
- While you wait, you can pour back the pineapple/basil cream into a pot with the corn syrup. Bring it to a boil while mixing then let it cool.
- Once you have your tempered chocolate, bring it back to 90F and mix in the butter. Once there is no chunk left, pour the cream in and mix thoroughly for a few minutes. Scrape the side and make sure it’s well combined. It should have a nice sheen to it.
- Pour the mixture into a container and using a spatula flatten it to the desired height you need. Cover directly on the ganache with plastic film and let rest for at least 12 hours at room temperature. This will allow the mixture to crystalize.
- Remove the plastic film.
- Again, redo some tempered chocolate. A nice tip is to coat the whole top with chocolate and then cut it to the desired size. You can then dip the whole chocolate into the tempered one. This allows you to have a solid surface on the chocolate to work with.
