Chocolate pearls

Valrhona "Les Perles"

What a great day today was!  I was up early to do some practice on the piano, about 2 hours on Beethoven, Bach, and Chopin.  Then I listened to Mozart piano concertos all morning and early afternoon while I did some experimenting on a couple recipes in the kitchen.  Afterwards I taught a few piano lessons late afternoon and early evening, and followed that with a good run on the treadmill while I watched part of Avengers: Infinity War.  It was a full day and a fun day.

I made some cookies today and whenever I make something I always reserve a little of the dough or batter for experimenting.  I like to write down ideas that come to me, such as a modification to a cooking process or an addition of a new ingredient to an existing recipe that I already work with.  Today I decided to add some Valrhona chocolate pearls to a cookie.  So I whipped up a batch and cooked most of the dough but reserved a small amount.  I pulled out an almost empty bag of these tiny little chocolate pearls and inverted the bag to pour them into the bowl.  Some were caught in the folds of the bag and so I shook it.  Big mistake.  These chocolate pearls are like BBs or tiny beads or tiny ball bearings.  They are round and smooth and very shiny and chocolaty.  And they roll everywhere if spilled which is what happened when I shook the bag.  The bag wasn't filled with more than a couple tablespoons of these pearls.  But it still took a while to gather them all up since they rolled various directions and bounced off things and wound up under shelves and under the oven.  I'm sure sometime in the next while I will run across another one or two that didn't get picked up.  My cat, Tom, might even find one and play a little soccer with it.

I keep Valrhona chocolate pearls around for multiple recipes that I routinely make.  They are fantastic additions to certain cookies, brownies, and even cakes and muffins.  They are also great to eat by hand right out of the bag.  I try not to do that very often, but I'm only human, and I sometimes succumb to the desire to indulge in these diminutive bits of chocolate.  I keep lots of chocolate around, various brands, some in chip form, some in feves, etc.  It's always nice to know that when I feel like making something I've got a variety of things to choose from when it comes to chocolate ingredients.  Thank goodness I don't spill any of it very often.  I think I'm going to check one last time tonight with a flashlight to see if I have any more of the pearls to pick up.  Maybe I'll grab a few to eat out of the new full bag I just opened, too.