Sebastian

https://www.shopchefrubber.com/home.php?cat=1186 might be a good place to start. i've not spent much time looking for retail sources, but i'm sure there are others. the good folks at chef rubber could walk you through the specific products they have, their uses, and their limitations..

after the nuts have been sugar glazed, apply a sealant to them (say, capol 150). lots of different types of sealants available, from shellac to cellulistic based. as long as it's providing a moisture barrier, you'll be in good shape. if you have a pan, it's easiest to spray it onto the particulates as they're rotating in the pan.

Plus choc chips usually have a much lower fat content than eating chocolate - less fat makes them less likely to flow when that fat melts during baking.

I'm (well, a good friend of mine will do the real work) about to start making two types of cutters, inspired, of course, by your efforts here. one will be a conventional 'hinge' action guitar, the other i think i'm going to take a '4 post' approach, where the corners of the cutting board have vertical guides that allow for a 'screen' to lower on them, effectively cutting both directions at the same time. if the tolerances are tight enough, there shouldn't be any wiggle room and the cuts should be nice. when i get to the point of actually doing it vs drawing it, i'll post pictures 8-)

bumping the thread up in case there's been any developments here that we'd find interesting 8-)

Check with sollich north america and aasted mikroverk. note that lab eqiupment (as i'm sure you're already aware) is not inexpensive.

It's interesting that you mention the impression upon opening the bag. A lot of research has gone into that, and some companies add flavorants to their packing material (embed them with flavor to activate upon opening for exactly what you describe - that first bam! impression - there's one about an hour from here in philly that started that biz), and others add flavorants into the bag along with their product to do the same thing. Most people only ever open the bag once, so that first olfactory impression, many believe, is key to how the product is percieved overall.

Never give up on an idea. The world is full of people who say you can't do it - that is until someone proves them wrong and does it. Then those are the people who say 'i thought of that first!' 8-) I think it's a wonderful idea. An after market 'insert' that fits into a little dipper, or a mol d'art as an add on is a great idea.

Another option that i've done in the past, is to contact your local vo tech or trade school, ask them if they've got a stainless class that might be interested in making a custom piece to your specifications as an individual project if you pay for the raw materials...

Everyonce in a while I'll make chocolate 'cups' that way - allow the chocolate to harden on the baloon, then pop it (i've found that the balloons made in mexico work better than those from china - i'm not sure i want to know why...). Pipe out a 'handle' and use chocolate to 'glue' it to the cup, then fill the cup with a mousse or some such. Functional and edible, guests love it!

That's hilarious. Of all the things I never expected to see in this forum... 8-)

Just curious - why do you recommend adding glucose to isomalt if in a high humidity environment? Glucose is more hygroscopic than isomalt - isomalt has a VERY low tendancy to absorb moisture...it may be that the sorption therm changes at very high temperatures - i've never looked at it, so i don't know - but am curious to learn what your experience/observations have been in comparing the two (w/ and w/o glucose)..

Natural ccb will last longer than deodorized. If properly stored (low temps, not direct light exposure, low moisture, no strong odors), deodorized ccb should provide you with 1 years shelf life. natural ccb's will be longer.

are the blemishes showing up where your chocolate first comes in contact with the mould as you pour the chocolate into the mould? my first guess (i'm late to the game!) when i saw your photos was that it was a cooling spot, often seen where your warm chocolate first comes in contact with a cooler mould. a thin layer of ccb as kb suggests often remedies it (stress thin), or warming the moulds to the temperature of your chocolate can do the trick as well.

I've had the good fortune of tasting Alan's Madagascar bar, and it's on par with the very best I've tasted from this region. Very nicely done! Packaging is great (I shudder to think what the packaging alone must've run you Alan...). Very well done.

It's incorrect. Perhaps valid at one time, but not today.

They are two very differently positioned products. The quality standards on the Cocoa Barry product will be very different than the quality standards on the standard BC product (your supplier can help you with exactly what these difference are). Flavors will be similar between similar product types in the two lines. You won't find a 22/24 product in the BC line, nor will you find thermophile negative product if that's important to you.

While dark chocolate has been grabbing most of the healthful headlines, it's not the sole source of good for you stuff in chocolate. cocoa butter is approximately 1/3 stearic acid, which has been shown to result in a levelling off of cholesterol levels, and in some cases a lowering of cholesterol levels as well. Almost all of the good for you research has focused on the cardiovascular positive properties of chocolate, however, which comes from the antioxidants (or antioxidant mediated biological responses such as the production of NO or platelet aggregation reduction, that sort of stuff), which, of course, is almost always tied into our good friend dark chocolate. I have lots and lots of stuff on this at work. Most of the research is going to be written by, well, researchers who either don't know how to convey their message to non-researchers, don't want to convey it to non-researchers, or want to sound awfully important by m aking it so no one knows what the blazes they're talking about. I just got back from my wife's PhD defense (non related field) today, and she did an amazing job of communicating it on a level that anyone - even i - could understand. We need more of that type of communication in the scientific field!

yes, actually kmart of all places has started carrying some Turin product. The most recent one i saw there was an irish creme truffle (i've had very good Turin product before - this was not one of them in my opinion...). I'm guessing what you had in Mexico had significantly higher levels of actual alcohol than you'll be able to find in the States.

Sugar alcohols (or polyols - polyhydric alcohols) are essentially sugars that have had the ability to caramelize (reduce) taken away from them by replacing their 'reducing' group with an 'alcohol group" (in chemical terms, it's an oxygen and a hydrogen, or an -OH group, which is referred to as an alcohol group - hence the name 'sugar alcohol'). This -OH group makes it impossible for the sugar to participate in browning (mailliard) reactions such as caramalization. This is the reason sugar alcohols don't brown during cooking, or make very good sugar free caramels, toffees, etc. They physically can't do it. Isomalt has EXCELLENT cold flow stability and has a very low hygroscopicity, which is why it's also used quite a bit for hard candy's. Many of these types of candies are fruit flavored, which means they're often combined with weak acids (such as citric to enhance fruitiness). They're very stable. If you're seeing discoloration, my strong suspicion is that you've got something present that you don't know about. Your pan might have been dirty? Perhaps your using well water and you've got higher than 'normal' iron levels? There are some very unusual organic-metal reactions that are possible, but any time i've seen them occur with polyols they've taken on a greyish/green appearance in color and involved an aluminum metal - perhaps you've got a unique metallurgy in your pot that's causing some odd organic/metal complexing occurring... Now, if you have enough acid and enough heat present, you might be able to get some unusual behaviour, but i seriously doubt you've got that strength of acid at home, and if you do and you're using it on your cooktop stove, let me know and i'll promptly come over and take it from you 8-) as what you're doing is very dangerous! Cargill is the other US distributor/producer of Isomalt.

Isomalt has about as low a hygroscopicity as you can get with a crystalline sugar alcohol. I don't recall the exact numbers, but it's very, very resistant to moisture absorption. In all liklihood, the isomalt that she's using has a moisture content of 8-9% to begin with as isomalt is actually a blend of two components, both of which have a water of crystallization bound inside their crystalline structures. I'm not sure why they'd begin to discolor - potentially contaminated with something?

Made my first apple pie ever yesterday - i honey roasted some pecans and incorporated them in along with the apples (cortland and golden delicious) and brushed the crust with a honey/sugar mixture, then sprinkled some small hazelnut pieces that i'd glazed in sugar over the top. Very good!

www.keystonehomebrew.com i was just there two weeks ago to pick up a load of napa cabernet sauv grapes, they'll have everything you need.

food ingredients in the US have to be classified as GRAS (generally recognized as safe) - it's probably that they've always been using whatever colorants they've used, and no one bothered to look to determine if it was GRAS in the US or someone found out and made an issue of it. the fda hasn't, as far as i'mi aware, changed anything with regards to GRAS colorants recently, but there have been lots of activities around requirements of the 2002 bioterrorism law that have been going into effect now for the last couple of years which requires suppliers to have a level of documentation that's much higher than they've historically needed - an outcome of that may have been a heightened awareness of other regulations, such as this pesky GRAS issue...

Actually, bitterness is caused by a very complex set of chemicals that are significnatly (or can be) affected by things such as exposure to oxygen, enzymes, heat, water, etc. Most of the bitterness in your beans comes from two sources - a class of chemicals called xanthines (think caffeine and theobromine), and the flavanols (antioxidants). Antioxidants in raw beans can be very, very high, so one would expect raw beans to be very very bitter (although there's no 'hard and fasts' when it comes to rules and beans - different origins are all unique) - raw beans can be as high as 70% flavanols (on a dry basis), which are very, very bitter. Now, once fermentation starts, cell walls start breaking down and these antioxidants are exposed to oxygen, which breaks them down, and a number of enzymes (mostly polyphenol oxidases) which further degrades them. if they're then alkalized or put through a water treatment, it reduces the content even further. net/net is that the more beans are processed, the less bitter they will always be.