Vernacularism

January 21st, 2010

Understanding How Chocolate Tempering Works

Posted in Creative Arts, Eating Out

Before creamy, shiny, smooth and crisp chocolates, you may find your resolve to diet waiver. But these great qualities are instilled into chocolates only by tempering them. Heating, cooling and reheating to specific temperatures are the steps involved in tempering.
Tempering of chocolates will also keep blooming under check. Blooming will cause dullness and crumbliness to chocolates and you’ll see white spots on the chocolates. You cannot sell such chocolates.

It is the tempering machine that has eased the process of tempering to a great extent. Despite the difficulty, some chocolatiers continue to do tempering by hand because they probably think that it’s the only way of creating extremely attractive chocolates. But both learners and experienced chocolatiers opine alike that manual tempering could be tedious work.

The shine, smoothness and firmness of chocolates are all due to type V crystals and hence production of more quantities of type V crystals is the aim of tempering. But you face difficulty in this process because the fatty acids of the cocoa butter take shape into six different forms which, in turn, multiply at six unique temperatures. If left unchecked, this obviously will hamper the production of type V crystals.

But if you monitor with an accurate thermometer and maintain the specific temperature at which you can increase type V production, you can successfully temper. If you do not maintain these temperatures, your chocolates will remain distempered causing you to iterate the tempering process.

You have two techniques in tempering by hand. In the first, tabliering, you melt and cool the chocolate strips at pre-determined temperature ranges; cooling will be carried out on a heat-absorbing surface like a stone or marble slab. In the second technique, which is “seeding”, you’ll also need to watch temperatures closely but you use tempered chocolate bits as “seeds” to temper the melted chocolate.

But in crafting large quantities of chocolates for gifting purposes or for commercial intentions, you should utilize tempering machines because you cannot turn out chocolates of standardized quality with the vagaries of manual tempering.

A tempering machine is fully automated so your chocolates will be of the same high quality whenever you make them. Only type V crystals are produced and you have a computer chip on the machine to ensure that this is so as well as to maintain temperatures in their correct ranges.
Such advantages of a tempering machine free you from a lot of tension and you can use the free time obtained for creative planning so that you can expand your business and enhance the quality of your chocolates.

January 5th, 2010

In Poetry: Meaning of Words [And “…Rocket-belt”]

Posted in Creative Arts

In Poetry: Meaning of Words

When I write poetry, I check out the meaning of words for too often they sound the same, but once written, and if spelled wrong, in consequence, give a complete different meaning of what I had intended; this I call a moment of damage control. If my rhyme is flat, and my cadence is off, so what, I can survive, as long as the meaning of my words are not; and are as I meant them to be. Even punctuation can be off, and not do too much damage, but not so with my meaning of words, when they are off; or, is not as I intended them to be. I am not a professor, or perfectionist in/of English, nor need to be, a minor in literature is it and will do, but here is the bottom of the iceberg in poetrythe meaning of words. Write what you mean in words, and mean what the words say in writing poetry; or so I must remember for myself; or at least now and then remind myself; remind myself that poetry is the highest point or form in/of writing. Yet, sometimes I must give up something to get something, but never the meaning of a word. Well, that is how I feel anyhow. Why? it is damaging not only to me, but to the reader.

A poem on Vietnam called:

“Corporal Siluk and the Rocket-belt”

“It’s a ‘ell of a night
for rockets in flight,”
Private McGee reminded me…
thinkin’ we’re done for the day
ready to go to sleep
(perhaps, thinking about his pay).

When, out of the clear
we both could ‘ear
the whistle of a rocket’s thrust
‘verour little tin-roofed hut.

“Got to grab our rifles again,”
said I, to Private McGee
“Steady there, ol’ pal,”
half drunk, falling to his knees…;
as the rocket explodes
somewhere, nearby
in the shrubbery.

#738 6/24/05

EzineArticles Expert Author Dennis Siluk

Dennis Siluk’s new book, “Spell of the Andes,” presently on http://www.amazon.com; he lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, and Lima, Peru. He is working on two more books, and several short stories.

May 20th, 2009

A Look at How Banksy Creates His Artworks

Posted in Brands, Creative Arts, Graphics + Design + Layout

Stencil graffiti, made famous by Banksy over the last couple of years, has actually been a form of street art for 25 years. You can apply paper, cardboard or other forms of surfaces (such as plastics) to create templated graphics and text. You simply cut out the design from your paper/cardboard/other surface, put said surface onto a wall (example), then spray or roll-on paint.

The definitive principle of stencilling is creating outlines via cutting shapes, and spraying paint within these cutout shapes - creating unmistakable images on the surface underneath. It’s also feasible to use multiple layers of stencils to create an illusion of depth or even add colours.

So why do some people opt to be a stencil artist? For a few, it is an easy method to produce a political point. Many artists appreciate the publicity that their artwork can receive. Some only want their art to be seen. As the stencil stays unchanged throughout its use, it is easier for a stencil artist to rapidly copy what could be an involved piece at a very quick rate, when compared to other conventional tagging methods, so without doubt, there is also a powerful promotional reason to get involved with stencilling.

Banksy has applied stencilling as a means to make a political statement, often quite succinctly, leaving the witness to work out that very point in their head. This is often why people enjoy his artworks so much, as they force the viewer to meditate on the meaning behind the artwork. Banksy artwork is now being reprinted on canvas, t-shirts and posters, such is the popularity of Banksy.