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If the NSF grant pays for the $30/bag chocolate chips, I’m all for it.
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How do you get paid to spend three years doing something no one asked for? Asking for a me.
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Are these the people who tore apart Mast Bros? More like this, please.
Fuck that… watch this instead…
This lady is magic with candy and chocolate.
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Who gives a flying fornication at a rolling donut about the shape of a chocolate chunk? I mean, sure, if you’re a pastry chef specializing in chocolate and your gimmick is making chocolate sculptures, that’s cool. But if you’re just the average schmuck making cookies, you’re missing the point: how do the goddamn things taste?
Most people don’t know decent chocolate for jack. It took me decades to learn, after growing up with that waxy, industrial, tasteless crap pushed by Hershey, Nestle’s, etc. There is an insane complexity and range to the flavor notes of good chocolate, on the order of what you encounter in wine. Getting consistency of these flavors is difficult if not impossible (though I’ve encountered small chocolatiers who manage to do it fairly well).
But everybody’s looking at the idiotic shape of the chocolate, rather than focusing on the all-important degustation.
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I’d sit still for a chocolate degustation! Actually, I’ve made them for various places I’ve worked, and parties at conventions.
The problem with these bigger, flatter chips is that they throw off my preferred cookie:chocolate ratio. These are pretty, but a pistole, as sold by Cocoa Barry, Callebaut, Valhrona and so on has much the same profile and doesn’t cost 30$ a pound (and a bit ((how did they ever come up with that size bag?)))
I would wager that the engineer was chatting with the owner and the project grew from there as a fun side gig.
And these big pieces seem less than optimal, too. I buy good cooking chocolate that comes in the form of small disks, of maybe about this size, but I’d never put them in chocolate chip cookies, because the result wouldn’t be nearly as good. Maybe even a mess.
Which seems especially dumb because they won’t maintain their shape when cooked. Even if the chocolate itself is perfect for this kind of use (it does seem like it might be decent chocolate, but what kind of chocolate you want is completely contextual to the specific thing you’re making), there’s no point paying extra for difficult-to-fabricate shapes when good chocolate already comes in easy-to-manufacture disks.
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“I don’t like having disks crammed into me… Unless they’re oreos. And then ONLY IN THE MOUTH!”
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Part of the success of the chocolate chip cookie is humility… simple but not easy, it’s a satisfying moment removed from the complexities of life.
I’m not convinced that a top shelf chocolate is key to making a top shelf cookie. But I prefer to eat cookies by the handful, and not sniff them, take a bite and spit.
This is not baking or even about confectionery, this is marketing.
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Even though it’ll end up hurting like hell, Tesla engineer designs anally-inserted device to make your feces come out shaped like spiky dodecahedrons. Because people will buy anything.
Because, just like the chips, the truck has a broad surface area better suited to maximize taste and melt-in-your-mouth texture.
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I think there’s an opportunity for cross-marketing:
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We had a scientist sort of like that at my first employer. He had a gift for getting the company to fund his off-the-wall pet ideas (deviating from what he was hired for), none of which ‘flew’ or even provided data beneficially supporting current applications or hinting at new ones. His song and dance (aka briefing style and academic bearing… I’m sure you can fill in the blanks) was honed to a fine point, resulting in vast wads of money for his lone ranger projects which we were forced to work with him on. I wonder where he is now.
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Holy shit.
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If you sell them the new owner doesn’t get flavor unless they pay $8000
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None of this is a coincidence because nothing is ever a coincidence.
