My Difficulties with PvR Part 1

foom

United States47 Posts

November 17 2011 04:29 GMT

Four years ago I was introduced by my friend to Treatcraft. That day forever changed my life.

"Hey foom, I'm going to go pro." I had no idea what my friend was talking about. It was a saturday morning and I was in my senior year of undergrad. Stumbling to the kitchen of our three person apartment I opened up the fridge to grab some water, but the giant reeses peanut butter cup in the way stole my breath.

My friend was going pro. He was going to build awesome treats the likes of which you only see on the internet. Apparently he perused confectionery sites and watched french vods for years. I didn't even know the community existed. What he made was exquisite, it looked exactly like a reeses cup except ten times larger and a hundred times more awesome.

Fast forward to today. I am still at best a brownie league player. While I have a good idea of what build orders to use my ability to multitask and use the ingredients properly is non existent. Today's battle was against the Giant Reeses cup. The first of three person vs reeses battles until the weekend where I will hopefully have a beautiful giant reeses prepared for a LAN party.

I opened up with the standard build:

3/4 cup graham cracker crumbs
4 cups confectionary sugar
23 oz of milk chocolate morsels
2 Tablespoons shortening
parchment paper
1 Tablespoons butter
1 cup of peanut butter

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My opening was strong, I melted a third of the chocolate and 1 Tbsp shortening in the microwave without missing my stirs every twenty seconds. The foundation was wonderful, I put the chocolate base in the fridge and went to dinner before heading to mid game.

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The build order I was following called for all of the confectionary sugar, graham cracker crumbs, butter and peanut butter. Mixing it together in a bowl I was able to shape together the reeses filling atop parchment paper.

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Three hours had passed since I finished the chocolate base. Believing it done, I took the chocolate out of the fridge and prepared for the flip. I carefully turned the tin upside down on top of the reeses base and then flipped the whole thing over and removed the parchment.

Disaster! The flip turned out to be too much for the structure to bear and cracks were showing in the base. In addition to the weaknesses in the reeses base it turned out I stretched myself too thin. The base was significantly higher than what I had initially planned and with the late game chocolate barreling down on me I was worried.

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Panicing into late game I tried to melt the chocolate calmly, but I made the fatal mistake of missing my stir timings. However, I only realized that after I tried to poor the chocolate onto the pan. Not only were there unmelted chips remaining, there wasn't enough chocolate. At this point I conceded the game and threw it in the fridge.

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I learned a lot tonight and I hope to perfect the recipe tomorrow. It turns out that there needs to be more peanut butter to maintain the consistency of the reeses dough, but that is hard to determine because the volume of the four cups of confectionary sugar changes as it gets absorbed. The chocolate problem was really silly as well. I tried to finish the pie too quickly instead of getting more chocolate ahead of time after my strong start.

Practice makes perfect, and this best of three isn't over yet.