For you Hello everyone and welcome to the Fairfax scene. I'm your host, Rachel Roth. In this edition we're joining you from the 18th Annual Chocolate Levers Festival here in the City of Fairfax. Right now, we're at the Chocolate Challenge, where professional and amateur chefs have prepared their ultimate chocolate masterpiece. I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful One of the chocolate challenge judges was Norman Davis of the Sweet Life in Anondale, Virginia. He gave a demonstration on cake decorating. So, okay, let's get on to the demo. Okay, we make still-and-come molds. And there's a variety of different food-grade still-and-come molds. And that is how I made these petty pears. Okay, so once I've made a mold, this is plaster that you would have your arm in. And the reason, because there is a slit on this, that keeps it nice and tight into the silicone mold. You know, when you get to my age, sorry guys, I can't speed this up any IE. No need, but there we go. It's going out pretty good. So, once you feel the mold with chocolate, I'm sorry, let me get this out first and then I'll tell you what to do. Now you can go by, I mean look how cute that is. You can go by candy molds for a couple of bucks, very inexpensive. But once you feel your mold, tap and keep on tapping it and give it, you know, all different ways. and keep on capping it and give it you know all different ways because what you're doing is you're eliminating air bubbles okay so that's the secret behind it. So even the candy molds for lollipops or whatever you know put your chocolate in and tap it down on the table put in a refrigerator for a little bit. Don't let in a refrigerator too long. Moisture from your refrigerator in chocolate is enemies. They don't go along. Okay, so... If I'm not mixing colors, I'll just use the lid. And I'll just put a couple drops of lemon extract into the lid. Well, that was more than a couple. I usually have a baby eye dropper thing. I can't find any of them. Anybody have any under purse that they want to give me? I hear a baby somewhere. Okay. Now you can use these colors dry or as a paint. It all depends on what type of project you're doing. Chocolate paints very well. Guys, I'm sorry, my back is good. Oh, you. Oh, lovely. Okay, but you can see how nice this paint. This will dry very quickly. Yeah. So now, after I painted the whole thing, if I wanted to touch it up with gold or a lustre color or mother of pearl then I could just lightly type of brush that you would use for makeup then you would just lightly dust the whole entire thing. I'm not going to paint this whole entire bear you can see what they look like. That was a dark chocolate bear this was a milk chocolate bear Okay? I want to show you a bunch of different things. So I'm not going to paint this whole entire bear. That's how easy it is. Okay. Earlier question and answer, there was a question about rolled fondant. A lot of people don't like the taste of it. Well, it depends on what you're doing. As a cake decorator, if you want a beautiful cake, you're going to use a rolled fondant. Because there's more that you can do with rolled fondant, you can contain it, you can crimp it, you can bend it, you can shape it, you can cut out pieces and glue it back on with water or royal icing. There's a variety of things to do. The rolled fondant that we use that we like to bath is called chocokin, because there's chocolate in the rolled fondant, so it gives it a very nice pace. But on an episode that Zane just did. Oh, I'm sorry. My mother's stalking. I cleaned stalking and this is powdered sugar. Okay? Never put cornstarch in it. There is a chemical reaction between cornstarch... You can do at the beginning we were told to do porn starts in powdered sugar. Well, I would be able to smell this and smell something was wrong with it. But it turned out that there was a chemical reaction on the porn storage. So only use powdered sugar. The first time I bought a stocking and I'm hitting the table and nothing's coming out nothing's coming out And I'm like well don't buy extra support and blah blah blah. I'm mother told me that I'm like mom I've never bought stockings before. Yeah, so I didn't know what I was doing. So Okay, now you do have to warn this up with your hands or a microwave. Microwaves always, I always tap into microwave for a couple minutes, but be very careful. Don't let it in there too long because the center will be hot as hot can be and then you have to wait a while. Ruled fondant, ShakaPin comes in many colors, almost every company now is coming out with a line of different colors. Now if you're a lucky cake decorator, you have a cheater and you'll roll this out and you'll put it through the cheater and go again and go again. I just bought one. I happen to use it, yeah I think I'm afraid of it. Okay guys, I usually use a bigger rolling pin at home. But one of these days I'm going to start using my new cheater. The thing about chocolate pan keep a lot of dust. Most of the time you don't want to use a lot of dust because it's drying out the product. But when you're using chocolate pan you can use a lot of dust, a lot of powder sugar. And you keep it moving. I wish I had some white icing with me but that's okay, this is going to work. I just need To make this a little wet. I could use water Like I said covering a star foam dummy is actually harder than Covering a real cake, so I'm just gonna smear some Hicing on here Wouldn't it be nice to actually be able to pick up your cakes like this? Not very much. Just like coating, just enough to make it sticky for that when that goes on and it will stick. Okay, so if this was a real cake, I would have crumb coated it, Okay, so if this was a real cake, I would have crumb coated it so I would have baked it on Wednesday, or excuse me on Thursday. Let it come to room temperature. Then I used sweetthroat and refrigerated for a couple of hours just to hold it down. And then I would crumb coating it. Crumb coating is the first coat of icing that you're going to put on the cake. The stew and two things. It's filling in those crumbs so that when you're actually going to decorate it, the crumbs are not all over the place. The other thing that it's doing is that it is keeping the cake warm. Okay? Crumb coating is very thin. Very thin. Then when it would be time to Crumco is very thin, very thin. Then when it would be time to actually put the fondant, you're going to need another coat of icing on it. Now a lot of times, I say that we use. Waring is buttercream all the way. I use a whipping frosting, which is real light, not real sweet. Okay? Waring is 100% of buttercream, bakery. I like the whipping frosting and I'll decorate it with it or I'll use it as a glue to glue my font onto the cake itself. Okay, normally what I would do is I have a PVC pipe at home and I just roll this up on a PVC pipe and then drape it over to K. While the PVC pipes is big and I probably would have hit thing this morning if I had brought it. Okay. So, this is called a smoother. So what we're doing is smoothing the top first. Now, on a real cake, you won't have a very sharp edge. But on a dummy, there could be a chance that I might tear this. Yeah, Trevor, you're saying tear it, tear it, tear it. So I'm pushing in to relieve some pressure off that very top area. Now you see how this has a nice drape to it? If it ends up that it's a little bit too cold, I will use a brand new hair dryer. It has a key and a cold setting and I can hit this with a little bit of heat to give it nice to heat it up a little bit that I can stretch it the way that I want to stretch it. This is pretty firm I can tell now if I just pulled my hand here for a while the heat from my hand is going to warm that up enough that I should be able to stretch it out because this product has a nice stretch to it. Okay guys, that's, that's, I'm not gonna do the whole thing. Once again, hey, hey, hey. The cake decorators, you're enjoying this, the other people are like, okay, move on to something. So, then you use a smoother to smooth it out. If you get an air bubble in it, then you just use a little safety pin or a pin and pop the air in squeeze the out and then use this to smooth it back over again. Okay, so there's cutters like this, so you have your... Depending on what you do, let me explain the difference between gum paste and rolled fondant. Roll fondant is to stay soft. Gum paste is to dry. The crown is gum paste because see how the points are standing up. We want that to dry. This scarf is fond on because we wanted to stay soft. But if I was making any flowers, oh I was thinking God I didn't bring any flowers. These are out of gum paste because they have to hold it's shape. So I feel that when you make it you shape out your flower. Sometimes you can put a little bit of cotton in between the cracks just to I feel the stat when you make it you shape out your flower. Sometimes you can put a little bit of cotton in between the cratch just to hold the shape a little bit until it dries. The worst enemy on gum paste is moisture, okay? So a little bit of dust, a cutter, you wiggle it around. So it's right in there and it's kind of, well, flop out on my hand. And then you put it on a soft pad. And this is a tool that you can then give it shape. And you notice how the leaves, or the petals, are curling up. And then you can place a couple on top of each other, place a couple dots in the center just to complete it. And that's it. Guys, thank you very much for putting up with me. When it comes to chocolate, there's no better place than the taste of chocolate at Old Town Hall. I am dipping bananas into Connie's chocolate bud sauce, which is so good. It actually was my grandmother's recipe and I've been making it for 25 years. tonight I made 1500 truffles. I haven't slept. Yeah I have all three of them. Right now the white chocolate is running pretty well. I'm probably going to run out of that pretty soon. But plenty of milk chocolate, plenty of dark chocolate and some interesting flavors. Rose cardamom. I'm the only person that I know of in the world that makes that lavender. I also have a wasabi that's been quite a mover today. Wonderful, it's great for warm weather, it's got everybody out and there's just tons of chocolate lovers here again. Right. Have you had a lot of chocolate today? Yes. What was your favorite thing? I don't know. of chocolate today? Yes. What was your favorite thing? I don't know. All of it? Yes. We love it. We come here. This is probably the fourth year I think that we've come and it's wonderful. She loves it. My husband has come with us this year and he loves it. He'll be back in the future. It's wonderful. It's nothing to work. Nothing bad about chocolate. We bring about 600 pounds and we probably have four flavors at this point that we've sold out of it. Our Fudge Puppies, which we introduced at this show about three years ago, if we're not out, we're out. Still looking for more chocolate, the Kauana's Club of Fairfax hosted a chocolate chip pancake breakfast at Fire Station 3. Also at Fire Station 3, the auxiliary to the Fairfax Volunteer Fire Department hosted a craft show and bake sale. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to do it. Chocolate is made from a plant that comes from tropical rainforests. As do these amazing creatures. So of course today we are going to the rainforests. So these are not going to be animals that are in our backyard. We're going to travel a bit. Nice part is that we can travel with that ever leaving our seats. So this program's called Last Paradise Underneath. It's one of my favorites because tropical rainforests are very, very important, but very magical to very amazing places. So we will meet a variety of animals that call this wonderful habitat their home. This is Oliver. Can everybody say hi to Oliver? Oliver is a parrot. I heard a couple people say that. That is right, but he's a macaw. Macaws are the biggest members of the parent family. They're also, as you can see, the most colorful. So, and very loud, very, very loud. Thank you. That's just a nice example of his voice. This one that I have here is called a Green Wing Macaque and the Green Wing Macaques, actually the second biggest of all the parents in the entire world. Now the parent family is huge, there's about 350 different kinds of parrots in the parent family and so this guy is the second largest. So these guys live at very very high altitudes, they are very good at two things and one of those is climbing and the other one is flying. So if you're an animal that lives with and can't be of the rainforest, you need to have some pretty good skills. And these guys certainly do their feet and their beaks are very, very useful in allowing them to climb, but they're also very powerful flyers. A macaque of Oliver's size has the strength in his beak to actually crack a broomstick right in half if he wanted to. So it's pretty, pretty amazing, very, very strong animals. Now this does not mean that he's aggressive or mean. Sometimes when people hear how strong an animal's pressure is or their bite pressure is, we equate that because they might bite. Actually, it has nothing to do with that, does it? It has to do with what this guy needs to do to live in the wild. So he needs to have that strong beak to get his favorite food open. The other one of course is fruit. They eat a lot of fruit and I will set him down so that you all can see. I brought a banana for him. Uh-oh. And bananas are not only one of his favorites but certainly something that would be very common for them to be able to find in the South American rainforest. So what do you see him doing? What's he using? But what is he using? His feet, exactly. This is one of the coolest things about parrots. Is that parrot feet work like you're what? Your hands, exactly. This guy has no hands. So for climbing, he uses his feet for eating. He uses his feet. So this is how he can hold onto something as large as a banana or as strong as a nut, as he holds it with that foot and then uses his beak to open it. Now, I've even broken that in half in the wild, of course. He's going to have it just like this and he can still peel that and get everything out. You can see if you're watching him here. He's really, really enjoying it, taking his time, using his beak, but also using his tongue. Trance, let's get a really bad rep. A lot of spiders do, but Trance was especially, and I can tell you why. Obviously, she's really big, and that could freak anybody out, especially if you don't like spiders. If they're bigger, let me hold her, sweetie, and you just look, okay? If you're scared of spiders and if they're bigger sometimes that's worse. They're also very hairy so that spooks people but here's the deal and I'm gonna come up and around okay so that everybody can see her. Tarantulas are not dangerous animals. The reason that Tarantulas get this reputation is very simple and it's one word and it's Hollywood. She doesn't fight as a defense folks so that's a really good thing's Hollywood. She doesn't bite as a defense folks, so that's a really good thing to know. She's not going to run out of her burl and come bite somebody, as a matter of fact, she's going to hide, and if she isn't trouble and an animal gets too close, and it tries to eat her transola, and there are many in the rainforest that would love to eat this transola because she's big, so she so it should be a really nice snack, except for all of those hairs. And so that's where these hairs come in on the transelo. If the transelo is under attack, she does something that is way cooler than biting the animal. Instead she's going to back up. She takes her back legs here, brushes her belly, and actually throws the hairs off of her belly. Now that may not sound like a really big deal, except that her hairs are like splinters. So she's throwing hundreds of hairs up into the air. They're flying at the animal and usually an animal is going to have its face down because it's sniffing her or it's trying to eat her. They're going to get up here into the eyes and nose. I will tell you something. They itch, they burn and they sting and I can tell you that from first hand experience. So it is unpleasant, lucky for me it's only been in my hands from handling them. But for an animal, imagine if they got it up in their face for your sense that their nose is worse than that. If the tranchially kicks it into their eyes, she could actually blind that animal just with her hairs. So that's actually the serious part of the tranch transplant, not the fangs, not the venom. If she did not have her fangs or venom because I do get asked this a lot, did you defang her? Does she not have her venom? She couldn't survive because spiders actually have to not only blight their food but then they have to make it into a milkshake because they don't have teeth like you do. So their venom helps liquefy everything they're going to eat and then they suck it up with this really cool thing called a sucking stomach. What else would it be called? And that is actually how a trancella and all spiders work. So every single spider folks does have venom, doesn't make them dangerous. Anybody know what these guys are? Centipedes are good guests. It's a millipede, exactly. Yes, centipedes are good guests. It's a Millipede. Exactly. Yeah. Centipedes are really good guests because it's the same family. And it's actually pretty easy to tell on part. The Millipedes vary round. It has twice as many legs as his cousin is centipedes. Centipedes are flat. They, of course, have half as many legs. Centipedes are also fast. If you guys ever go outside and you're looking for buzz or maybe you're not even looking and you pick up a rock. If you find the two under there, the millipedes always rolled in a little ball, it's kind of laid back, you just kind of chillin under there. Centipedes moves like this and gets out of the way really quick. He's really super fast, he doesn't want to be picked up and you don't want to pick him up. Centipedes can actually bite whereas millipedes are pretty docile. Now, our synopedes in this area, you don't need to worry about. It's hard to pick them up anyway. They're super, super fast. We obviously have milipedes too. But do we have any this big? These are huge. We don't have any that get this big. We do have some that could be the thickness of a pencil. And those are pretty amazing. If you ever come upon them, they're pretty cool. I've seen them when I've been hiking, but they're not as common as the little guys that you might get in your basement or you're again, you might find under a rock. These come from Africa. So far, we've just talked about South America, but these animals actually live in Africa. Their name is the giant African-millipede. They're thought to be the biggest in the world. Every rainforest has these millipedes but these get to be about 11 inches long. This one is actually the bigger one but she shies so she stays her hold up. So they are about the length of a piece of paper. So that's pretty amazing. Now as nice as these millipedes are, if you ever found yourself in a rainforest and you needed to eat some bugs, You do not want to eat a millipede. Does anybody know why? This is definitely one to steer clear of. It's not going to bite you and it's pretty laid back, but you wouldn't want to eat one for survival. Any guesses? You would get sick. Absolutely. You get very sick. She is poisonous. These guys are the clean up crew in the rainforest. So they live on the rainforest floor as we talked about, but they live below animals like this guy. You see this mess that he's created underneath him with his banana. Banana peel everywhere, pieces of banana. That's what parrots do and that's what monkeys do. Monkeys certainly make a large mess too. That's where our millipedes come in because what they do is they hang out there on the ground floor. They're going to not only eat up all that stuff but they actually help because they break it down into smaller pieces and it goes back into the soil and if you have a garden at home, have you ever heard the word composting? Does anybody perhaps do that? Or you put scraps and things like that? Good, nice. In your garden, what does it do to your soil? Makes it very rich. So does your garden grow a lot better? You probably get some really great plants from doing this. These guys basically do the same thing. They make that soil so rich. And because they make that soil so rich, they allow all those plants and those trees to grow. So here's where we get to why this is so important to you and I and also why this has to do with the chocolate festival. How many of you and I'm sure I probably don't have to ask this question considering where we are today. How many of you love chocolate? And I always put both hands up for that one. That's very, very important. So chocolate of course comes from where? Tropical rainforests, absolutely the cocoa tree. And although these are African millipedes, there are millipedes in every rainforest, Central and South America, Australia, Asia, thus doing the same thing and allowing these plants and trees to grow. But chocolate's not the only thing folks, although like I said, very, very important. We also get vanilla, cinnamon, coconut, coffee, rubber from the rubber tree, oxygen, medicines, lots of amazing things. So rainfars are extremely important to people even though we don't live there. This is a toad. I heard frog, which is a very good guess. There are certainly cousins. We're going to talk about how they're different. This toad is called a rococo toad. So not to be confused with cocoa which we just talked about. Do we want to eat this toad? Most definitely not kids. This one is also poisonous. Yes, we do not want to eat a toad. Actually all toads have poison glands. Her poison glands you can see on the side. Actually, all toads have poison glands. Her poison glands you can see on the side. I probably don't even have to point them out because you can see they're pretty long. They're raised. And the Rokoko Toad is thought to be the largest of the toads, but also a very, very toxic toad. So if an animal were to lick or try to eat our toad, they are most certainly going to get extremely sick to eat our toad. They are most certainly going to get extremely sick and drop this toad. And again, this is the type of poison that if the animal is about the size of a house cat or a small dog, I'm afraid this could be the last thing they would do because that's how toxic she is. This is a giant toad with a giant appetite. She does not like just flies or gnats or that kind of thing like our toads might. This is actually a toad that is a carnivore. So she's going to hunt down some mice, maybe even a small bird, and if she can shove it in her mouth, she will eat it. Here's a really cool toad fact. Kind of gross, but definitely cool. When they eat, they shut their eyes, they clench them shut like that really really tight anybody know what they're doing do you know what she's doing with those go ahead of the blue that's a good guess that's a really good guess do you know it yeah eyeballs are helping push that food down her throat so that is half-supice she does it yeah ew but kind of cool so the toad is difference in her frog cousin. As you can see, I don't have her in water. She's perfectly dry. Her skin is bumpy and dry. She does have a little pool in her trarium that she actually likes to soak in. She's not a swimmer. So unlike the frog who actually really likes to swim, be submerged in the water, the frog has very smooth, wet, climbing skin. It has to be kept moist. Those are two big differences. She has shorter back legs than the frog, so she's not the better jumper, she's not the better swimmer, not the better athlete, but we just learned. She certainly has plenty to go on to keep herself safe. Hi, this is Mowgli. Can everybody say hi to Mowgli? Hi, Mowgli? I'm sure you can guess how Mogli got his name. Mogli, do you want to do your chicken? Can you guys hear that? That's the only thing that he likes to do. So I'm sorry if you were looking for anything else he doesn't like to. He has a vocabulary that's extremely, I know. I know. You're getting jealous because he's completely upstaging you. He has a vocabulary that is really impressive. It's probably over 70 words. His sounds and noises are incredible. The chickens are just one of them, but it's his favorite. He does everything from water. If I'm drinking water, he makes that sound of water. He will make the sound of a cell phone. He used to make the sound of the internet hooking up, but as most of us know, it's kind of archaic now. But he would do that, which was kind of funny. Fire sirens, the referees whistle during a football game. These are a lot of things that a mogli definitely can do. You can't tell it's the bird. That's how talented they are. This is a highly intelligent animal. So if you've ever heard the phrase bird brain, mogli actually gives that a whole new meaning, and it could now be a compliment, because he is that intelligent. If we look at that as far as people go, that means that this bird is about as smart as a gifted first grader which is very, very intelligent. Problem solving ability, reasoning ability, really, really smart animals. So that's certainly a survival skill in the rainforest as is mimicking. The reason that parrots can do that is because it does actually help them. In the wild, they can actually mimic a predator. They can get animals to leave them alone that way because the animal may be confused about what it actually thought it saw or heard. He does have the bright red tail for the same reasons as Oliver. It does help him find other grays or it does help him camouflage a bit. So they're obviously not as colorful, but it's because they are from a different type of rainforest. So that has a lot to do with it too. You know, there's a lot of different kinds of rainforests, and the only ones that I was really talking about today are called tropical. And that's where they're hot and they're steamy and they're around the equator. So those are in places like Africa, Central and South America, Asia and Australia. And those are the ones that are tropical. But we have a rainforest in Washington state in America, but it's not tropical. So they are really neat. There's different types of rainforest as well. So what a great question. All right, well, I want to thank you all. I really hope you enjoyed the program. I will be up here putting these guys away if you have any other questions. Or if you'd like to take a card if you're interested in having the animals come out to one of your events even if it's a birthday party we do this as well please feel free. Thank you so much folks. Well that wraps it up for this edition. I hope you've got your fill of chocolate. For the Fairfax scene I'm Rachel Roth and we'll see you next time.