Sebastian

there are 4 (well, a little more actually, but for to avoid the chemistry lesson we'll go with 4) things that influence caramalization - strength of a reducing sugar (not all sugars are created equal), type of protein, heat, and time. because heat and time are related (if you use high heat, you're going to reach your desired solids level more quickly, thus exposing your caramel to less time on heat), there's a direct relationship to degree of caramalization. lower heats mean it takes longer to hit your solids level, which means you've got more time exposed to heat which is the catalyst for the sugars/protein (ie caramel) reaction to occur.

if all you're doing is chocolate panning, then all you require is a rotating vessel essentially. i'm sure you could build one for much less. if y ou need it to be stainless, approach your local technical school, offer a project to the professors where you give basic designs and pay for materials, and in turn the class project is to build it for you....add a motor, ribs, variable speed, blower, etc and you've got a great project that hits on a number of disciplines for the students. and to answer your original questoin, yes i do tihnk it would work - you may hvae to add ribs, i've never seen inside a concrete mixer 8-) gas fumes might be an issue?

You either need to balance your marshmallow and cookie so that their water activities are the same (Aw), put a barrier in between them to stop the moisture migration (this is why your cookie get soft, i'ts taking water from your marshmallow), or eat them quickly. We choose the latter option, because things like this don't last long at our house 8-) if we had wanted them to keep longer, i'd definately have put a chocolate barrier in between the cookie and the 'mallow - a very thin layer would do it - in fact, you could probably simply use a brush and brush on cocoa butter - just be sure to 'seal' the top and sides of the cookie thoroughly -the chocolate will take care of the bottom. Of course, chocolate over the whole thing will do the trick too.

some things to consider: 1) was the temperature of both the caramel and the pretzels the same whne you started dipping? Many times i see that folks try to dip caramels while they're still warm, which affects the end result. it can work beautifully or end in disaster depending on the state of your chocolate... 2) remember that as you dip whatever it is you're dipping, unless you've got a heated bowl, the product you are dipping will cool your chocolate. the chocolate you finish with is probably not the same as the chocolate you started with. it may need to be rewarmed slightly to keep it's handling characteristics similiar. 3) was the cooling area sitting in sunlight? next to something warm? was a fan blowing over it, and if so was it blowing hot air? environment is very important. if your chocolate was overtempered and you were dipping slightly warm caramels, that could balance one another and work out great. it's a possible scenario that might explain why the pretzels didn't work.

we made black raspberry mallows this weekend (picked 15 lbs of blackies - oye!), and tried to roast both them and the vanilla ones we did as well.i concur that commercial ones have less sugar ,more gelatin, which provides a much higher level of stability. plus commerical ones are extruded with a very high level of air in them, which means less sugar/corn syrup to melt, and the air expands when heated so you get more browning, more structural rigidity, more puffing, less melting... edited to include photo of mallow

apparently it interacts with the metal in the print heads, corroding it very quickly. I know absolutely nothing about printer head design, that's just what the mfr tells me, so i have to take him at his word. it probably translates to 'we can fix it by altering printer head design/metallurgy, but it's way too expensive'.

Certainly. Only issue i see with that is that any of your transparent areas will now have a white backing vs clear. net affect may be that the transfer would look more like a sticker than a transfer, which may be ok for some transfers, but i don't think it'd work great for all.

On Thurs or Fri of this week i should have some example sheets arriving to my attention so i can evaluate them in person. I'll be leaving for a national conference, so unfort i won't have the opportunity to evaluate them until next week when i return. will let you know what i think of them. they can't print anything in white, as the only FDA approved white colorant is titanium dioxide, and it's reactive enough with the material used in the print head that it destroys the print heads quickly, according to the mfr. it also works best on white chocolate, then milk chocolate, and is least impressive on dark chocolate, again according to the mfr.

I've asked them if they'd be willing to send me an example sheet of the printed transfers, or if i could purchase one, to physically work with it and see the finished product first hand. We'll see what comes of it...stay tuned...if it's able to yield good results, i'd absolutely buy some. I'm a little skeptical however...

Lior - i would'nt expect it to give much of a shine, but you could try...i don't think it'll work. KB - it doesn't 8-) the can needs to be warmed prior to use - i have a hot box i keep at 92F i place it in to melt overnight. Sneich- nice! i like the sprayed on chocolate effect

chefrubber has aerosolized cocoa butter and colored cocoa butter (undre pressure, think spray paint can). good for large area color work, but nothing detailed. uncolored ccb i'd use only for barrier coating application (ie slow down moisture migration between say, a cracker and a marshmallow, or a cookie and a caramel, etc)

Bonus! What are you airbrushing these days? ← my daughter and i play a lot in the kitchen at home (she's 9 and can slab temper, make a stable ganache, etc - i'm training her to work for me when she's older 8-) ). i thought she'd enjoy airbrushing, so we got one. not airbrushing anything special, just moulds. she makes a mean toffee as well, and last night we made black raspberry marshmallows and peppermint marshmallows just to see what it'd be like. Lior - i hadn't thought about the 220 bit for you... i know a lot of them are coming out of china these days - i've no idea what the quality's like, but you might be able to track some down on alibaba.com or something similar. at the end of the day it might simply be worth spending the extra $60 or whatever it is and get an established reputable brand locally (local service, troubleshooting, etc)

actually, i got a badger airbrush with a 1/4 hp compressor, 5 extra brushes, and a whole grab bag full of stuff (cleaning utensils, spare pigment containers, etc) for about 65 bucks on ebay. sure it's used, but it'd been used for food applications and 5 of the 6 airbrushes were brand new. compressor's great. some great deals can be had if you're willing to invest the time and be patient....

relative humidity varies by temperature - there's lot of psychrometric charts available on the web that'll show you what you're RH will be at a given temperature. I like to keep my lab around 60% or so - the issues you'll experience will be condensation as you remove from your cooling tunnel, as well as thickening over time as your chocolate absorbs moisture from the air if you're working with an open air batch tempering process.

historically, during times of economic slowdown - at least in north america, there's been an inverse relationship with the economy and chocolate sales... economy goes down, chocolate sales go up. folks feel they can't afford the lexus anymore, but a nice box of chocolates is viewed as an affordable luxury that in many respects takes the place of the big ticket items. i'm curious as to what those of you with 'boots on the street' so to speak are experiencing in todays economic climate? one of the big differences today vs previous economically difficult times is that raw materials and transportation are simultaneously up - given that sugar and dairy comprise almost everything we make, and they have to be brought in from elsewhere it's a rough combination. not to mention that approx 34% of this years corn crop is going to bio-fuel, and climactic conditions took out a good portion of the crops over the last couple of weeks (that's not going to help anyone). are your sales being adversely affected this year, are you seeing them up vs a few years ago, or are they flat? are you able to pass on higher production costs?

That's a great idea but the whole set up requires a few parts to make it work. From the video on the website it appears to look very easy with good results. Maybe they could send me a pre printed sheet and I could go from there? ← That's what i meant, not have them send you a blank sheet, but a pre-printed one. if you do it, i'd love to see/hear results! Kerry, i have a mac as well - if it's a 'newer' one (last couple of years) you can use boot camp or parallels to emulate a windows environment and run anything that runs on a PC right on your mac

i might ask for a sample sheet to test first prior to buying it - pay for a sheet if you have to, but i'd want to 'kick the tires' so to speak before buying the car 8-)

it's probably going to be difficult to get someone to give you an exact shelf life number - no one's going to want to take the liability. What it should be relatively easy to do is find someone to do water activity (Aw) testing, and then provide general Aw charts and tables that provide general recommendations. Your chocolate supplier should have the eqiupment to do this for you.

gonna have to look into this one a bit more. if there's white edible ink, couldn't you print a 'base layer' of white upon which to print your colors to get them to 'pop'? Has anyone experience with this piece of equipment?

I don't think she was actually spraying anything, i think it was an 'action shot' for the camera crew to allow the viewer to see an airbrush while she was talking about it...

it's a bit of a tough question to answer w/o knowing the specifics. chocolate chips and chocolate couverature can have many variations - for the most part, chocolate chips are simply couverature at a lower fat level. of course there are variations on a theme, for example, many chocolate chips contain 2-4% dextrose to help in shape retention and antibloom in baked goods, where as i've yet to see a couverature that uses dextrose. there can be some technical differences in the hardness of the cocoa butter used between the two product lines (as measured by differiential scanning calorimetry), but now we're getting down to extreme precision and probably isn't really relevant. the biggest thing to keep in mind is that your chips will have less cocoa butter in than your couverature, so at the end of the day, yes they'll work for a ganache, but your fat/water/solids ratio will be different and may need to be adjusted to suit your personal preference.

I've found that in baked applications, 6-8% cocoa with an add'l 50% as much water (3-4%) usually does the trick. of course, eerything's application specific, so you may (and likely will!) have to adjust based on the application (other ingredients in the recipe), and the type of cocoa powder you're using (i'd make sure it was a good dutched cocoa)

Interesting. My wife was an NBC news producer for a long time (she's now a college professor teaching the next round of producers how to do it), but if you understand how news works, what motivates assignment editors, and happen to have good timing (ie don't try to run a story like this on, say, election day), you can get almost anything on the air. News is about what will likely motivate the largest number of people to watch, with the least amount of effort from the stations part, presented in a fashion so as to maintain the largest number of advertisers possible. Newsworthy? bah, doesn't matter anymore 8-)

Must've been dave 8-) this is the first year in a decade i'm not going to PMCA!

Sorry to hear that. You can also try the good folks at Centerchem (www.centerchem.com), ask about products such as capol 150 to start with. They're more geared up for industral supply, but may be able to help you locate smaller distributors who carry their products...good luck!