Sebastian

Congrats mate!

a number of mfrs have chocolate products specifically made for fountains. as you note, you can add oil or cocoa butter to reduce the viscosity yourself, and definitely don't add water. if your adding the fat yourself, add enough to raise the total fat to perhaps 50%, but the more accurate way to measure if it'll work will be to measure it's resulting viscosity - you're going to want something that's a pretty low viscosity, as most auger driven fountains simply aren't that powerful..

Milk fat, in a chocolate, has the effect of making it a bit tougher to temper, but lends a great deal of bloom stability once you've acheived that temper. It doesn't do much for prevention of oil migration (ie from nuts), but does make it thermally a bit more stable (ie can better tolerate conditions that would otherwise result in bloom...up to a point, of course). The important thing to consider is that the more milk fat you add, the softer the product becomes and the harder it is to temper - you can increase it to the point where you simply can't temper it anymore, by which time, of course, the benefits of adding it in the first place are now moot 8-)

Say you've got a port truffle - you can ostensibly legally ship samples, but not commercial quantities. It should bear the following on the front label: Food Samples for Evaluation Not taxable per 27 CFR 24.75 Not perishable – No Commercial Value Conforms to applicable IRS and FDA requirements Doing so, however, substantially increases the odds that your package will not arrive intact 8-) but covers you from the letter of the law.

none of the images want to load for me on your two links dystopiandreamgirl...

It's funny - that's exactly the same recipe I ran across when I did my search 8-) I know i've seen some of the more culturally exotic (from a western perspective) desserts posted here from time to time - I was hoping someone here had some experience with this type of dessert and had actually made it. Always like trying new recipies, but it's always nice to get one that comes with an endorsement too 8-)

My wife was with a Jordanian friend, and they visited a typical Jordanian dessert shop.. She brought back a number of pastry desserts, one of which I thought was perhaps the best thing I've ever eaten..it's called Farareer (or bird's next), and appears to be a pistacio filled filo type dessert... i'd love to make this at home - anyone have a good recipe for it?

I think creating a cream based product that will last past Christmas in a non-refridgerated environment is asking for trouble...if you're not familiar with the basics of shelf stability, i'm going to suggest that a large retail contract is not the time to attempt on the job training...

There are multiple options available, depending on a number of things. I think it's important to know how they'll be transported, stored, and what type of shelf life you're (they're?) expecting. If you're wanting to keep it cream based, you're going to have to focus on keeping your water activity low - you may want to approach this via adding invertase, for example. others approach it by adding antimicrobials (preservatives), but that may not be an option given how it's to be positioned. Another option may be to move to an oil based center (ie, use palm, coconut, soy, canola, etc) a soft, liquid oil that'll cause eutectics between the cocoa butter and itself, such that the center remains soft, and doesn't firm.

hazelnut's are at record highs at the moment - most of what's in the US comes from turkey (just south of the sea), from two main growing areas. they've had issues the last year. While prices are very high now, you can expect to see fairly decent declines in the near future.

Well, it's going to soak up a lot of the fat and moisture, making it dryer - you might want to add a humectant to keep it feeling moist. I've found (in chocolate), that once you go about 12% protein (using a whey protein isolate, 90-95% protein), mouthfeel becomes fairly noticeable. Whey protein concentrates (80% protein) will be more difficult to work with because you'll need so much more to hit your target protein level. It certainly can be done though, just a matter of if it's acceptible to him or not - i tend to think it will be as most of the protein products out there (like bars) are frankly pretty bad, and suffer from significant hardening issues.

W/o looking at the specs for the product, I might be hesitant to add invertase to something that's 158F - that's pretty warm. From a background of lots of other biological enzyme work (used to be a genetic engineer), i'd be afraid you're going to inactivate the enzyme at those temperatures. There are enzymes that are extracted from thermophiles that can handle those types of temperatures, but - and again i'm not positive - but i'd not think this would be one of them...if the enzyme has been inactivated, it's not going to do anything.

http://www.chefrubber.com/Shopping/shopexd.asp?id=1058 has it for $16.

Chocolate inherantly has quite literally thousands and thousands of compounds..i keep a pretty good list of it at work, and there's many things in there where i've said 'who'da thunk it?' myself. Most of them, like the anandamide or phenylethylamine, while present, are there in such small amounts (caffeine is this way too - many folks believe chocolate's loaded with the stuff, when in fact it's just in there at pretty small lvls).

i know, just playing to popular belief. Chocolate's anandamide actually stimulates the same THC receptors, although you'd have to consume roughly 27 lbs of it at one sitting to get the same effect, at which point you've probabaly got larger issues 8-)

i see, then it wouldn't be good for a ganache then. if you use a smaller amount, will it stay solid? ← Sote - i use it in ganache all the time w/out it causing a significant texture change. that could, of course, be due to the fact taht the ganache rarely sits around for more than a week 8-)

It's an enzyme that breaks sugars apart into smaller sugars..

they're medicinal, right? 8-)

invert sugar isn't necessary - it's purpose it to extend shelf life, and it does so by altering the Aw (water activity). water activity is a measure of how much 'free' moisture is present that critters can use to grown on. you need to lower Aw below, oh, about 0.6 or so i guess to prevent most mold growths. invertase does this by breaking down disaccharides into monosaccharides, which taken up more of the water (molar equivalances and all that... basically instead of dissolving 1 sugar in x amount of water now you've got two sugars in that same amount of water, making the water less available for critters). there are many ways of adjusting Aw, but they basically all boil down to increasing the amount of a dissolvable you have in the water. adding more sugar, adding corn syrup, adding invertase all effectively do the same thing. of course, they all have different impacts on flavor and texture too, so keep that in mind. the only other alternative i can think of at this time is to add a chemical preservative, which isn't the way i'd go, but it is an option and many do use it. there are some processing techniques you can use to help minimize the amount of moulds present, but mould is such a ubiquitous beast that it's nigh impossible to ensure you've gotten them all out.

the primary reasons for thickening of chocolate are threefold 1) temperature 2) crystalline formation 3) moisture if you're temperature is too cold, obviously things will begin to firm up. However, most of us can rather quickly rule that out, and for the seasoned worker, that's likely not the issue. The more likely culprit is that since most of these 'temperers' (weather or not they're actual temperers or just controlled melters) have rotating bowls, there's a good bit of shear and agitation at the interface of the chocolate and the bowl - this is one of the drivers to create addtional solid crystals out of the fluid cocoa butter. as you increase the ratio of solid crystals to fluid butter, your surface area increases and you've less cocoa butter to keep things fluid. viola, viscosity increases. many large scale tempering units (talking industrial here) use both temperature control and agitation of one sort or another in their tempering profiles. Moisture usually isn't the biggest driver (moisture as in high RH environments), as most of you are working with small batches. However, if you've got a piece of equipment that has a relative large top surface area exposed to the air (ie, very shallow bowl, but very wide) AND your RH is high (70% +), you likely will see viscosity increases over relatively short periods of time. Of course, if you're getting fluid moisture in there (water leak, spill, etc) you're going to see the chocolate thicken very, very quickly. if you've ruled out temp and moisture, and you're seeing the chocolate thicken over time, simply heat it up a bit. it's a bit of an art to know how much to heat it - you don't want to break your temper compltely, but if you're in what's called an 'overseeded' state (ie too many see crystals present), you do have the ability to heat it higher than what you normally would think appropriate, and still have tempered chocolate. The trick is to know just how far you can push it..

That's actually a pretty neat phenemenon in and of itself, if it's really bloom (fat or sugar?). It would be interesting to let them sit for a week or so and see if the bloom (if it's fat bloom) changes over that time or if it remains constant.. i've never seen that before.. how long did it take for the bloom to show up after removing the transfer sheet from the chocolate?

Other US companies you may wish to consider: Wilbur Chocolate Peter's Chocolate Guittard Blommer ADM Each of them have a web site with contact information. You may be able to contact their sales department and request samples, or you can ask them who your nearest distributor is. If you have trouble finding contact information, I can probably help with that 8-)

I think what you'll find is a situation of ask 100 people, get 100 answers. Ultimately, you're the best measuring stick - no one can tell you what you like (although marketers sure spend a lot of time trying!). My advice is to try a dozen or so manufacturer's, get samples and make up product using each of them, and experiment to find what works for you, your environment, your applications, and ultimately, your customer. Also, you may want to give some thought as to what type of customer/technical support each manufacturerer offers, as believe me, you'll have good days and not so good days. A little tech support can go a long way! I know, I know... testing dozens of chocolates is a horrible job. Someone's got to do it... edit - erm.. that's weird. apologies for the double.

I think what you'll find is a situation of ask 100 people, get 100 answers. Ultimately, you're the best measuring stick - no one can tell you what you like (although marketers sure spend a lot of time trying!). My advice is to try a dozen or so manufacturer's, get samples and make up product using each of them, and experiment to find what works for you, your environment, your applications, and ultimately, your customer. Also, you may want to give some thought as to what type of customer/technical support each manufacturerer offers, as believe me, you'll have good days and not so good days. A little tech support can go a long way! I know, I know... testing dozens of chocolates is a horrible job. Someone's got to do it...

K8 - I'll second Patrick's comments. GRAS is only given to food substances; thalidomide would have been governed under an entirely different statuatory framework. I referenced Ebay material as the original poster noted they were finding it all over ebay, and my caution is such that if you're getting it from ebay, you may have no idea what the purity of the raw material is - it could be a form (or a purity) that isn't appropriate for food use, and may be tainted with other chemicals that are either not food safe, or are sensitizing agents, and could result in either a 'true' allergic reaction, or the sensitizer resonse your friend saw. It's been a while since i've looked at the requirements for GRAS application (not self GRAS) - but believe that you're required to test at 10x,100x, and perhaps a lvl higher than that as well for mutagenics, carcinogenics, teratogenics, and general tox levels. Of course as detection methods become more sophisticated, and analytical equipment becomes more precise, we may well discover those things we once deemed as safe may no longer be so (at a given level). Kerry - actually, only proteins can cause allergies. Most people who believe they are allergic to something, in fact, are not - they are sensitive to it, or they have an intolerance to it. Most physicians refer broadly to the body's immune response to all these types of things as 'allergies' - which, in fact, is a misnomer most of the time. Frankly easier to simply refer to them all as allergies than to re-educate the general population about type III IgE immuno-modulated histamine responses (and frankly the marketers would have a fit - how do you fit THAT on a box of claritin??). Generally speaking, there are 4 types of immuno responses - only one of which is a true allergic reaction. Nickel mediated responses are a variant of a type IV delayed hypersensitivity response mediated largely by T cells. Many believe that vasoactive amines, mast cells, interferons, and Langerhan's cells contribute as well (in a previous life i was a molecular biologist as well as a genetic engineer) - probably too much information, but strictly speaking, you're gonna need a protein for a true allergic reaction. I'd be more than happy to discuss in detail with you if this is something that interests you. I tend to get caught up in details that no one else cares about (ie many people who drink milk and get gas tell me they're allergic to milk - it's hard for me to let that go - if you were allergic to milk you'd need an epi pen, not lactase enzymes..) edit - spelling error