pastrygirl

That's what I meant. That the fluffy damp thicker pith of lemons and oranges is a better media on which grow mold etc.

Thinner skin/less pith? Limes will turn brown, but the skin just dries out. 'Baby' lemons tend to have thinner skin too. Thicker pith may retain moisture & sustain life better?

People who think there's no such thing as bad pizza haven't been to Asia 🙃

Yes, increasing or decreasing the proportion of nut paste will make your gianduja softer or firmer. Back to the original question, have you tried a lower fat cream or water? There is so much fat in both nuts and chocolate already. I also struggle with hazelnut ganaches. I make one that is firm enough to cut on a guitar that has dark chocolate, sweetened hazelnut paste, water, and hazelnut liqueur but to be honest it sometimes fails and re-emulsifying the scraps never seems to work. Are you using 100% hazelnut paste? Any sweeteners or stabilizers? If it is un-stabilized and has any separation, you could pour the excess oil off (save it for staff meal salad dressing). A couple of ideas to boost the hazelnut flavor - steep toasted nuts in your cream/milk to flavor the liquid, add salt, add a drop of almond extract, use Valrhona Amande as part of the chocolate.

transfer molds https://viacheff.com/products/easter-egg-50-gr-pattern-1-chocolate-transfer-mold-10-cavities

Yeah, sorry, Washington cherries are the best 😋 (I might be biased) But seriously, I think the earliest harvests of stone fruit tend to be lacking. Maybe they've had cooler spring weather and not developed enough sugars? Or are being picked on the un-ripe side in a rush to get to market? Doubly disappointing when you pay those premium early season prices - I saw cherries for $12.99/lb the other day, probably from CA. I'll wait for a price drop and more local fruit, I'd say peak WA cherry season is July.

Not necessarily. Chocolate mousse, chocolate souffle, and other fluffy chocolate things exist. The temperature of the chocolate is important, it needs to be warm enough to not immediately set up when added to the cooler batter.

Was just cleaning some molds & thought of this - for the outside edges you can stack 2-4 molds together (whatever is comfortable to hold onto) and scrape more edges per movement. That might help a little 🤷🏻‍♀️

Are you using the coconut DDL straight or mixing with chocolate to make a ganache? I don't think I'd trust it on its own for 2 weeks. To keep it vegan, Valrhona Amande could be good with that. If you send me samples I can test them, PM me or search for Dolcetta Artisan Sweets for my biz address.

In Wybauw's Fine Chocolates 2, he writes about increasing shelf life by adding ingredients that bind water, especially sorbitol and corn syrup/glucose. He mentions "adding 50% corn syrup to the moisture quantity in ganaches". Do you agree that the 'moisture quantity' is whatever amount of water is in the cream or purees, so 100 g of 40% fat cream adds 60 g 'moisture' that would be bound by 30 g glucose?

thank you. I added a bunch more honey and tiny bit more cream to a dark chocolate earl grey ganache that’s been frustrating me, looks promising!

Have we talked about fluidity anywhere? Now that I have an aW meter I've been working on my bonbon centers and trying to get them within a certain range. I'm finding that my white and milk chocolate ganaches are more fluid at a given aW than my darks. I'm guessing this is a function of higher sugar and milk fat? If I get the dark ganaches down to a low enough aW, they are very thick and don't flow easily or level off in the mold at appropriate working temp. So, any insight on increasing fluidity in dark chocolate ganache without also increasing aW? Is my dark chocolate too high fat?

What's your current method? I bang my molds on the table a few times, it's not perfect, chocolate shards fly everywhere, and maybe that's why there are so many little scratches on my marble 😆 Then I line them all up on edge in the sink and spray the rest off with hot water. I do have a grease trap but still try to minimize the fat that goes down the sink, because guess whose job it is to clean it out later? 🤢

“Inspired by Häagen-Dazs” so, no.

Not that exact recipe, but a couple of tips if you decide to try this style - whisking the sugar with the egg yolks instead of adding the sugar to the liquids will make the yolks less likely to scramble when the hot liquid is added. Also have an ice bath ready for that hot custard to stop the cooking.