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What did you do in school today? Unless you’re one of Chef Vanessa Traver’s confectionery lab students, chances are you didn’t concoct Nibby Horchata, that delightful Mexican drinking chocolate. Nor did you shape fudgy, nutty, cinnamon-y Nibbun yeasted buns, using the nibs from the cocoa beans you roasted last week. But if you are one of her students — and then, lucky you — you know your nibs from your chocolate, how to roast and winnow cocoa beans, and how to temper on a marble slab. You’ll also be among the first to add Bean-to-Bar Chocolate expertise to your resume when you graduate from SUNY Schenectady’s Community College’s School of Hotel, Culinary Arts and Tourism.
“Chocolate is an ingredient, not a sweet,” Traver tells her students. “You have to respect it.” And they do, learning to distinguish the tastes — fruity, floral, earthy, spicy — in beans from all over the world. They learn their way around a winnower to separate cocoa nibs from their shells, and how to make a smooth ganache to use as filling for their handmade bonbons.
The program excites Deanna Amore-Mies, who plans to graduate this spring with dreams of becoming a professional pastry chef. As she practices the art and skill of tempering chocolate in the college’s new Mill Lane Confectionery Lab, she’s learned that “all chocolate is not created equal.” Amore-Mies, who is pursuing a new career (she used to be in journalism and public relations), can now point out that milk chocolate, dark chocolate and white chocolate (“which is not real chocolate — it’s cocoa butter”) each have different heating and cooling points. “You pour the melted chocolate onto a cool marble slab,” she says, and manipulate it to eventually create a chocolate bar that will have nice snap, sheen and mouthfeel. “You’ve got to have a lot of patience to work with chocolate.”
This depth of understanding, practical application and level of engagement is just what the college intends to accomplish with its culinary programming. In addition to a baking concentration, there are certificate programs in craft beer brewing and craft spirit distillation. Two on-campus dining rooms give students practical experience running a restaurant (one open to the public and the other to cater events). And now this spanking new Confectionery Lab, where Traver reigns, offers students competencies in a highly specialized and desirable segment of the dessert world: artisanal chocolate.
Traver’s students clearly love her. An HCAT graduate herself, Traver spent 10 years in the restaurant business, working her way up from dishwasher to garde-manger to pastry chef at the Saratoga Reading Room (a position she still holds during track season). “I did it a little backward,” she said. “Worked my way up in the real world, then went to culinary school.” Traver was lucky that her graduation coincided with the opportunity to join the teaching staff and head up the new Confection Lab. To prepare, she completed post-graduate chocolate studies at the Institute of Culinary Education in New York City, studying the full cycle of bean-to-bar production. She now traces the chocolate journey with her students, from harvesting cacao pods to transforming them into finished bars with distinctive and complex flavors.
Her students, ranging from BOCES grads in their late teens to mid-career changers well into their working years, are passionate about their studies. Maddie Mancuso, who had dropped out of college, said she always loved learning, describes being in the HCAT program now as “the best decision I ever made.
“I needed to be interested in what I was learning,” she says as she melts her homemade 70-percent chocolate for the custard Nibbuns filling. Not atypical of her fellow students, she cites the proximity to home and “relative affordability,” as selling points for the college program.
Another plus for the school, according to HCAT Dean David E. Brough, is the fact that the culinary arts program is one of only two in New York that is “Accredited with Exemplary Status” by the American Culinary Federation. And he’s proud of the entrepreneurial opportunities for students whose contributions support the real-world butcher shop, bakery, and on-site restaurants, and that by offering concentrations in artisanal areas like craft brewing and bean-to-bar chocolate, graduates will be well qualified to join the current workforce.
Gaining experience with professional equipment is part of the process. Taylor Wagar is intrigued by the power of a brand-new Vitamix as she is taught how to operate it to blend her horchata. “Wouldn’t mind having one of these at home,” she said aloud, as her classmates bemoan its retail price and call out the other machines on their personal wish lists. For Shane Campbell it’s a blast chiller, a super freezer that blows chilled air onto ingredients to rapidly cool their core temperature.
There’s glamor in exotic machinery, but cleaning up is on the day’s agenda, too. “Washing the dishes is the most challenging part of working with chocolate,” Taylor said. “It seizes up on you.” But sanitation is one of the disciplines each student is graded on, along with being on time, uniform and equipment, and the outcome of the dishes they make. Attention is given to the art of plating as well.
Toward the end of each weekly class, the students gather to become a tasting panel. “Unless you’re allergic, everybody has to taste,” Traver said. Then she prompts her students to describe the taste profiles of each dish steering them away from words like good, yum, and yuck. “Can you detect the hint of nutmeg?” she asks as they all try Amore-Mies’ gingerbread hot chocolate.
Some professors grade papers or tests to assess their students’ progress and proficiency. Traver tastes. “Ballerina portions today,” she says as she stares down four drinking chocolates, nibby scones and buns, Double Shot Cookies, gingerbread cake, and PB & J brownies, all made from the craft chocolate she taught her students how to make. “I have to fit into a bridesmaid’s dress soon.”