Chocolate 10. Magnolia flowers

Day 10: Magnolia flowers. Magnolia spp


A couple of years ago I began to see lots of chat about Magnolia flowers and their edibility, and most specifically their ginger flavour.  I love ginger in chocolate, and in the early years of the business, I would make a fresh ginger ganache in winter.  However, as my repertoire of winter wild flavours widened, I no longer needed the ginger to fill the gap.  So the thought that we could be wild and have ginger got me very excited.  

I had not noticed many magnolia trees in this area though - and I thought we were maybe too far north for the tree to survive; clearly I was just going around with my eyes shut!  I put a call out on Facebook and lovely gardeners with gorgeous trees invited me to come and pick flowers from their trees.  Now, of course, I see them a lot - and many are magnificent, even up here.

There is a ginger flavour to the petals, although not very strong, as well as lots of floral notes.  I have tried crystalising the petals and dipped in chocolate they really do fill that chocolate ginger gap.  This year I dried the bulk of the petals that I collected, and although they go brown in colour, dried carefully they seem to retain the floral ginger notes that are so attractive.  

I chose a lowish percentage cocoa content plain chocolate for this pairing, as I wanted the delicate magnolia flavours to be able to compete.  We used NearyNogs' Ecuador 60% plain chocolate - and the result is just as I wanted it - aromatic and warm

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