How to make chocolate pralines and Easter eggs

A while ago I was out at a Café Suesser-Loewer  (Sweet Lion) and found some Flyer's for different Classes. I decided to take up the chocolate class. And Saturday was the day.

Dressed in White paper cap, coat and shoe covers we went to work. Boeing a group of 10 people and the teaching couple, Master Patisseries.
We were overwhelmed by the 3 large machines spouting warm chocolate in White, Brown and Dark. That smelled so good.

We got several recipes and all the ingredients were stacked on a high waggon. We divided in several groups and started with different tasks. My first one was to knead Marzipan - which I hate since I was 12 years old and added freeze dried Passion fruit powder and chopped up candied orange peel and some Grand Marnier into the Marzipan dough. Since you have to taste to get the feel of what you are doing, I had to taste the high Quality Marzipan. Decent and not gross for me.

Now I have the recipe for candied oranges, I just have to divide it through 20 to make regular Household portions. The recipe called for 10 kg of orange peel. It takes 6 days to make this delicious candied orange peel. Next winter, here I come.

My next job was to help make a dark caramel over a large gas burner stove. It was getting hot over the time until the rich dark colour appeared. This had to go over 1,2 kg of fresh toasted whole hazelnuts on a Silicon pad.
Later that was broken into clumps and put into a strong blender, then  added a dash of Beurre Noisette or Brown butter. 2 Cups of melted milk chocolate were added at the end. A Dream!

Throw away all jars of Nutella! That made one of the fillings of our pralines.
The White chocolate reacts different then the other two. They had to rest in the cooler quite a while. Now we had to melt the seams a bit and stick them together to have a nice looking egg.

In nearly every Praline we made is a bit of alcohol in. That prolongs the shelf life. Kirschwasser (Cherry brandy), Galliano (Vanilla herb liqueur from Italy) and Grand Marnier, the orange liqueur.

We made pistachio pralines, little mountains of Galliano butter truffles and filled a lot of different hollow chocolate eggs with different creams.

My last job of the day was to coat 50 milk chocolate eggs in liquid milk chocolate. Getting my finger a lot of times under the warm chocolate. My hands even smelled like chocolate after 10 times of washing them and the skin was smooth. Better than any kind of hand moisturisers.

Now we were nearly finished with everything and had to pack up our Goodies. So satisfying.