Saltychoc

@Rajala Yikes! Any idea how steep?

@Jim D. Sure thing! The mold is chocolate world 1252 but I imagine any mold with a good amount of surface area would work. I laid tape on sticker backing paper and cut out the shapes, then stuck the shapes inside the molds to form the resulting "cracks"/lines. I only pressed it down along the line portion. Speckled some white, placed some dots of gold leaf mixed with cocoa butter, very lightly sprayed some brown so it covered about 1/2-1/3 of the blank space, sprayed white + pearl white over the rest of the area, then drew a line with a skewer and sprayed the back with gold, then removed the tape, polished the unpainted areas and sprayed the blue. Blue is a mix of chef rubber med blue artisan, jewel white, plus a light blue and light green that I made. It is time consuming to place the tape shapes in the mold but once you do that the spraying is very quick. Like anything you get better with practice so taping the last few molds didn't take nearly as much time. I'd like to figure out some other molds to use for this sort of thing, I don't think cw2295 would work. I have seen people on social media do something similar and achieve a sort of geode look by using a mold with a shorter cavity and simply breaking the tape and pressing it down. The eggs are quite tall so that wouldn't have worked here.

This one has 12g fat per 28g mascarpone. It's a local(ish) creamery so was significantly more expensive than most other brands. They also make a 5lb food service tub which they claim is 50% butterfat. My supplier could only get the smaller containers though.

Valentine's, St. Patricks, big eggs for Easter, Spring bonbons. Valentines - blackberry/lychee, caramel/caramel ganache, passion fruit, black forest (kirsh buttercream, morello cherry pate, dark choc). St. P's - Honey mead milk choc, whiskey caramel. Big eggs - berry tart (triple berry pate, strawberry buttercream, raspberry dark choc, lemon almond shortbread), caramel hazelnut (caramel, hazelnuts, hazelnut gianduja). Spring - cherry/pistachio, caramel/malt milk choc, matcha/raspberry, carrot cake (spiced caramel, mascarpone ganache, almond carrot shortbread). Thanks to @Rajala for the oven dried carrot idea, I blitzed them and added to the shortbread layer). No aw for the mascarpone ganache - I used VT creamery mascarpone (43% fat), iviore, glucose, honey, salt, vanilla and the water content was only 14% so I felt pretty good about it, 39% sugar, 33% fat. In retrospect I could have added some cocoa butter.

Thanks! I'll have to ask my local supplier then. I pay 80-90/3kg bag for most Valrhona and they carry most of the boiron line. So maybe I'm getting the best deal around. Chef's warehouse recently bought another local supplier and prices were and continue to be absolutely ridiculous and they charge a broken case fee. No international gourmet foods up here. A lot going on with new owners and mergers these days.

@Jim D. Where did you buy the Opalys? My main supplier has pretty good prices but not always the best dates I want to look around some more before I stock up. I've emailed my Valrhona rep so will update with more info when he replies. The response was not positive. A summary: - price increases happening for all products at Valrhona and competitors - narrowest increases for grand cru line - cost of raw cacao at 40yr high "where it stops nobody knows" (47 years) - has heard layoffs for some companies with large US presence - they claim it is because of inflation Another note - I've heard from someone in the agriculture non-profit sphere that frosty pod rot is increasingly worse and has reached the Caribbean and is a big threat to DR cacao production. Unpredictable supply from South/Central America and Caribbean plus wetter than normal weather in West Africa is fueling much of this. 11% reduced yield for 2023 vs 2022. And of course - the futures market is running wild.

Did they mention price jumps for any other Valrhona items? Was it the whole professional range? I've seen the rumblings online about chocolate pricing. I'll also be asking one of my suppliers. Wondering if stocking up now is a good idea - although that doesn't really help us for Halloween - Christmas.

Thank you! At first I thought they were open bottom then I looked at the photos on JBP and the Martellato website and since I do not use these types of molds I thought they must be like the old metal molds with the hinge. This will be a lot easier then.

Has anyone tried either of these molds or a similar martellato one? https://www.bakedeco.com/detail.asp?id=46998 https://www.bakedeco.com/detail.asp?id=48716&categoryid=347 They are adorable and are exactly the type of thing my customer base/wholesalers would love. I never use martellato molds. These don't seem that hard to use but I am a bit worried about the size. The bunny is 152mm/6". I am going to order one of each before seriously committing. I also can't quite tell from the photos - it seems like the only way to get a filling (various little items) in there would be to melt off the bottom, fill and then add a new bottom which adds a ton of additional work. Not sure what I'm asking.. any insight would be appreciated!

@Elle Bee For sure! I don't make wheat products and gluten free products on the same day but I do share space with someone who uses a lot of wheat flour. People with severe allergies or autoimmune conditions will likely avoid anything they don't have exact info on but good to be precise. It's just this cheap warming tray (eG-friendly Amazon.com link). The temp control isn't very precise but it's great to have, it keeps the cocoa butter warm while it is out of the dehydrator. I use a lot of those little stainless cups to keep small amounts of cocoa butter warm. They are the kind that sauces come in at many restaurants, I get them from a restaurant supply store. I also use it to keep a 1/4 or 1/2 size hotel pan of chocolate warm (around 38/100) to add to the melter when I am shelling a lot of molds. I use an excalibur dehydrator (older version) to melt and keep things warm otherwise. It has the removable front which makes it much more durable.

My main concern with using it for both purposes would be cross contact. I'm not sure if you are planning to sell the chocolate? My #2 most asked question (after "do you make these?" ha) is "are any of these gluten free?". You couldn't realistically call any of them gluten free if the chocolate was sharing a space with flour. But then again you can always add a "may contain gluten" disclaimer. I find the dehydrator is best for melting large quantities of cocoa butter, especially when using many colors. I set it up the night before and put it on a timer. I monitor the temp with a bluetooth/wifi thermometer. The best part is that it's very light, durable plastic, only 2 parts, cools down quickly, and is easy to store. To quickly melt a decent amount of chocolate I'll use an appropriately sized hotel pan on a countertop warming tray. The kind with the glass top. I also use this to keep cocoa butter at temp while spraying and to have a source of warmer (out of temper) chocolate to thin out the tempered chocolate in the melter if I am shelling a lot. I initially got the warming tray to clean molds and it's turned out to be very helpful.

Thank you! I've been fortunate to be exposed to some interesting ingredients. We have a great spice company in Cambridge, MA - Curio Spice. For the Earl Grey I cold steep the tea in cream overnight 1 night for the white chocolate layer, and 2 nights for the dark chocolate layer. The tea I use is also quite good - Harney and Sons Earl Grey Supreme. When I do events I am always surprised by what kids select. The molds are all CW2295. I think it's the angle and the light. The bottom box was almost flat and the top was at a pretty good angle.

My last two collections. Each batch of the dots I did fewer and fewer per bonbon. Still think I did something like 20K+ dots. I learned my lesson! Green - pear pate and "eggnog" Ivoire and a little caramelia w/amazing fresh nutmeg. Redish - chocolate orange. Blue - lemon buttercream & dark choc. Gold - caramel & gingerbread milk choc, finally got my caramel filling almost perfect with this batch - not a single leak in the batch of straight caramels. And I was so happy with the spice blend I made for the gingerbread. A little Cambodian black peppercorn really made it. Without the dots - red - apple cider pate and miso caramel ganache - turned out really well. I did end up getting Wood's cider jelly (Thanks Jim!) to mix with apple butter I made with local apples and the miso ganache is caramelized local miso infused into this great local grass fed cream and a blend of a few chocolates, honey as the sweetener. Black - hazelnut gianduja, chopped hazelnuts, blackberry ganache. Blue - double Earl Grey (interestingly this has been the MOST popular flavor with mid-aged kids). Orange - cinnamon buttercream & Basque chili dark choc.

It must have been! I wish I had taken a picture, I've never seen anything like it. I scooped the layer into a bowl and I haven't done anything with it yet, still sitting there covered in plastic with plenty of fat bloom, I don't see any sugar bloom in there. I'll have to try tempering it and let it sit for a week or so and see what it does.

Here's a question - I haven't had this happen before so I'm not sure what the issue is. The other day I set up two melters. Melter 1 had the leftover chocolate from the last batch broken into pieces and melted to about 110 (43). Melter 2 had chocolate straight from the bag melted to 110 (43) and then kept around 100 (37/38) the rest of the day. I set these up around 8a and didn't end up having time to get to them until about 1p. I took the pan out of Melter 1 and left it on the counter for a couple of hours stirring occasionally. Then, I come back to melter pan1 and it looks like there is sugar bloom all over it. No idea how water would have gotten into the pan. So I call it for the day, skim off the top layer of chocolate into a bowl, and then pour the rest (maybe 3.5kg) onto a full size sheet pan. I left the tray on a rolling rack to cool at room temp. Today I take a look at the chocolate on the sheet tray - there is no evidence of bloom. I break the chocolate - no evidence of bloom. I guess I am going to use the chocolate? Melter 2 was fine and I left it overnight to use today. I know the chocolate from melter 1 sat way too long at an unstable temperature but beyond that I'm not sure... What happened here? Other factors - Humidity was maybe 55%. Room temp was 60-64 (15.5-18). Chocolate was 1/2 and 1/2 Cacoa Barry Fleur de Cao and Callebaut 811 3 drops. No excessive moisture added to the air during the day.