At elBulli "Morphings" were what everyone else calls mignardises - the little treats that appear after dessert in fancy restaurants. These chocolate bars, together with with other morphings, were presented at each table in a fancy box that opened to reveal the treats. There's a picture of the Morphings box in this thread on eGullet Forums (I encourage you to read the whole thread) that shows the chocolate bars (6 flavors) at the right.
The 2008 recipe pages list 7 flavors but I've noticed while browsing the various photos on the web that the number served varied from as few as 2 to the full 7. The flavors are:
- 74% Chocolate bars (plain)
- 74% Chocolate and nib bars
- 74% Chocolate and freeze dried blackcurrant bars
- Milk Chocolate and passion fruit bars
- Milk Chocolate and Caramelized Cinnamon bars
- White Chocolate, freeze dried strawberry and yogurt bars
- White chocolate, matcha tea and mint bars
The 74% Chocolate bars
Well, my Dagoba 74% Chocolate arrived (not surprising this time of year), partially pre-melted. So I just popped the package in the microwave for 30 seconds to finish it off, ooozed it into the mold and there you have it. Half an hour in the 'fridge and the little bars are perfect.
74% Chocolate and Nib bars
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74% Chocolate and Freeze Dried Blackcurrant bars
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As easy as all the rest. Whizzed the freeze dried black currants in my not-for-coffee coffee grinder, melted the 74% chocolate and stirred 'em together.
Milk Chocolate and Caramelized Cinnamon bars
This one is the "hardest". Chop up some cinnamon sticks. This turned out to be tricky - my cinnamon sticks tended to flake apart into unfortunately small pieces. Eventually I gathered up enough bigish chunks to make up the recipe weight.
Heat sugar in a small pan until it starts to caramelize. Drop in the cinnamon sticks and continue to caramelize until it's "well caramelized". I dropped the cinnamon when the sugar was light golden like this:
And cooked it a few seconds more to fairly dark brown.
Then I poured the caramel out on a piece of parchment paper and picked out the cinnamon chunks. . The recipe says to crush it with a rolling pin into a coarse powder. I found it was much easier to use a knife to crack it into tiny pieces. If it's pouring rain outside like it was when I made this you have to work fast - even the crispest caramel quickly turns into sugar glue. I had to pop mine into a 300° F oven to re-melt after I left it out cooling (and soaking up moisture) too long.
White Chocolate, Freeze Dried Strawberry and Yogurt bars
White Chocolate is a sort of weird cousin to real chocolate. I made these with Hershey's White Chocolate Chips because for some unknown reason we had a bag of 'em in the pantry. As anyone who knows anything about chocolate knows, these things are actually vanilla flavored palm oil and sugar blobs. Not surprisingly, none of the temperatures you can find online came anywhere close to to what I ended up with. If you use Hershey's just melt 'em and stir in the yogurt and strawberry powders.
White Chocolate, Matcha Tea and Mint bars
This time I got smart and picked up a couple of Ghirardelli white chocolate baking bars - they actually have cocoa butter in them. As a result these were much easier to work with. They're also much softer at room temperature. Since the recipe's mint extract powder was nowhere to be found in Philly, I used a teaspoon of regular grocery store peppermint extract. This was a "half batch" (learned again!). I added the extract to the squares before they melted and the matcha tea after. Stir and smooth into the mold. Easy peasy.
Dagoba Chocolate - Oh man is this good. If you make these bars this is the stuff to get.
All the recipes make a bit more twice the chocolate my little mold holds. After the Strawberry bars I made half batches.
Freeze Dried Passion Fruit - I couldn't find it for sale in less than commercial quantities (one place had 8 oz packages but the shipping cost was ridiculous) so I skipped that bar. If you know where to get it, please clue me in.
How it tastes: Real good. Simple flavors by and large, but that's probably what you want after an elBulli meal.
74% Chocolate bars - Just plain chocolate so buy the good stuff.
74% Chocolate and Nib bars - A texture thing. Somewhat crunchy version of above.
74% Chocolate and Freeze Dried Blackcurrant bars - Sweet blackcurrant and bitter chocolate. Tasty
Milk Chocolate and Caramelized Cinnamon bars - NomNomNom. These are amazing.
White Chocolate, Freeze Fried Strawberry and Yogurt bars - Makes White Chocolate worth eating
White Chocolate, Matcha Tea and Mint bars - Very good. Who doesn't like mint and chocolate?
Equipment and Ingredients
The Books: El Bulli 2005-2011 - Yes, freakin' expensive. Check with your local library - they may well be "in the system" and available to be reserved.
Mini Chocolate Bar Mold - the linked one makes mini-bars that are 1.5 x 1 inches - just a bit smaller than the elBulli ones.
74% Chocolate
Freeze Dried Black Currants
Matcha Tea - OK technically not real matcha, but cheaper.
Cocoa Nibs
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