Our Sous Chef Jasmine Aquilina recently attended the world renowned Chocolate School by Ruth Hinks at Cocoa Black in Peebles.  During lockdown she has been experimenting with the techniques she learned and shared some pictures of her creations, which we thought you might be interested to see.

Thank you, Jasmine!

First of all, I’d like to thank Barony Castle for sending me on the Chocolate Course, being taught by Ruth Hinks was a dream come true. I learned a lot of new skills, as well as the history of where chocolate comes from and how it has evolved throughout the years. I learned how to temper chocolate, using several different types of chocolate, filling the beautifully tempered chocolate with different types of fillings and flavours.

After completing the course, I had a new skill that as a Chef I wanted to develop and experiment with. I’ve learned to fill up the chocolates with ganache, alcohol as a bonbon, some fruit gels and more. Here are some photos of the new recipes that I have been experimenting on during lock down.

I enjoy keeping busy and teaching myself to learn new things and techniques. In the future I would like to learn how to spray paint these beautiful chocolates to get a more refined colour on them and learn more recipes, with different flavours. The skills I learnt from the chocolate course will help with refining desserts at work, using this delicate chocolate as an ingredient and presenting it as part of our dishes. I plan to teach my colleagues what I have learned throughout the experience, finding new exciting ways to use chocolate and learn more about it too.