Robin Asbell teaches the art of making sweets.

Candy-Covered Classes

In Janice Rideout's kitchen, you'll find bottles of homemade vanilla, pots of melting chocolate, powdered sugar, and stacks of cocoa-smeared recipe cards. The only thing that seems to be missing is a gaggle of Oompa Loompas.

The fun part is dipping the filling into melted chocolate.

If Willy Wonka had a home office, it'd probably look like Janice Rideout's kitchen.

Indeed, if Willy Wonka had a home office, it'd probably look a lot like Rideout's kitchen - at least her kitchen in the months since she started taking classes at Kitchen Window Culinary Arts Cooking School near her home in Saint Louis Park, MN. It's there that, during a 3-hour class with local celebrity chef Robin Asbell, she was first exposed to the joy of homemade truffles.

When making truffles, there's something about the bubbling cauldrons of chocolate, the smells, and the possibility of playing with fillings (and molds, as you get more advanced) that bring back that sense of wonder you felt as a kid the first time you watched a bowl of disparate ingredients morph into cookies.

A candy-making class is definitely a hands-on experience. Rideout, a 36-year-old high school science teacher, discovered this during the 1st hour of her 1st class. The filling, in this case peanut butter, needed to be rolled and shaped; the chocolate had to be melted to a precise temperature. This melting process, which involves the constantly monitoring a kitchen thermometer, is called "tempering," and it definitely requires a professional's touch. Asbell, the instructor, made sure Rideout and the rest of the students understood the basics of the procedure by the end of the class, even if they were going to cut corners and use a tempering machine once they got back home.

Once the chocolate is oh-so-perfectly melted, the fun part begins: dipping the filling into the chocolate to be coated. Rideout, following her instructor's example, always gets more filling ingredients than the recipe requires because items such as chocolate and roasted almonds have a way of mysteriously disappearing from a kitchen counter . . .

The end result probably won't look like anything you've ever bought at a chocolate shop, but don't fret. "Homemade truffles are different than the truffles in the store because they capture both the culinary achievement and homemade nature. They aren't like perfect little cakes, they're little lumpy, dusty things," says Rideout. "Now I give unique gifts that reflect my love of cooking. When you make something from scratch, it's in the style of really giving."

Lumpy or no, they taste delish.

The only problem with finding the perfect class in your state is that there are so many to choose from . . . it's kind of the kid-in-a-candy-store dilemma. Some of the country's best classes are at the Cincinnati Cake and Candy Supply in Ohio and at Kake Kreations in Southern California. In these courses, students learn everything from how to make marzipan treats to how to create those sugar panorama Easter eggs that are almost too pretty to eat (almost). Then there are Cake 'n Crumbs instructors throughout the country who'll come to your home and teach you and your friends the basics of molding chocolate and hard candy. But the most serious candy-aholics matriculate at New York City's French Culinary Institute, where master chef Jacques Torres teaches the highest levels of chocolate making and sugar sculpting.

But be careful, because with great power comes great responsibility.

Rideout's new kitchen talents, for instance, have resulted in a fire that she must constantly stoke. "I'm looking forward to making other candies," she says, "but my husband says he needs those truffles."

Posted on August 21, 2006