pastrygirl

hummingbirdkiss, I don't know how long the Malay Satay Hut in the ID has been closed, but now it is O'Yeah Asian.

If cooking destroys it, then guava jam should not be a problem

In my experience, the only reason to cream the butter first would be if the butter was quite cold and you needed to beat it smooth. Cold butter can be quite persistent in staying lumpy despite a good beating with sugar. But if your butter is soft/pliable, I don't think it matters.

So, Jeanne, just to enlighten you if you ever want to get into chocolate (and want to know what kind of molds are the most aggravating), the first pic is a normal one piece mold, the top is completely flush so you can scrape all the excess chocolate off and get nice smooth, flat bottoms and edges. You fill the mold, dump it out, scrape it clean, let the shell set, fill with ganache or whatever, let that set, add chocolate to seal the bottoms and scrape the bottoms level. But with these you will always have a flat bottom. This is the two-piece egg mold, held together with rubber bands. You can see there is a gap due to the raised rim around each cavity. Here you see the raised lip and the alignment pins. I think the lip would be hard to trim off, but the pins could be done away with. With these, you have to pipe chocolate into the cavities (can't ladle in and scrape off the excess because the lips and pins get in the way), sandwich the molds together and shake them around to distribute the chocolate. There is no scraping, maybe some trimming of the seams. These molds look like they have open bottoms so they can be filled and dumped out. With these pieces the artistry is in the decorating. http://www.ebay.com/itm/Professional-Polycarbonate-3D-Chocolate-Mold-SANTA-Mould-LARGE-3sizes-MadeInUSA-/301047853282

It will also be less shiny after refrigeration. You could wave a hair dryer over it to restore the shine and soften the blaze before serving if that is important to you.

Yes. You can make ganache with water. The texture will be more chewy and less melty without the extra fat. Also, use a little less milk than you would cream. Or if you are simply out of cream and need to substitute, you could use milk and butter.

Of course, who doesn't love getting new molds to play with? But new molds are not in the budget right now and since I dropped the ball on returning these, I have a stubborn sense that I should get some use out of them. Hollow figures are fine for bigger or more interesting shapes, but these are the size of a small chicken egg. Decorating with color or even wrapping in pretty foils would help. EdwardJ, I don't have a bandsaw handy, but I'm happy to hear polycarbonate can be trimmed and sanded without ill effect. thanks!

Hmm. Yeah, Kerry the lip around each cavity would leave a lot of excess chocolate on the top of the mold. I guess I should at least give filling the whole eggs a shot. I'd like to make something akin to a Cadbury cream egg, but not disgusting. Just plain hollow eggs seem not very special. The alignment nubs are about 3/8" tall and would need a chisel or hacksaw or something. I don't know if polycarbonate would shatter or break cleanly. I could have returned them last year but never got around to it, so I'll have to play around with them and find a way to put them to use.

I have two pairs of clear polycarbonate 3-d egg molds that I bought last year. These: http://www.jbprince.com/chocolate-and-sugarwork/egg-12-cavitiesities-1-piece.asp I tried them once as whole eggs, and they worked fine but it seems like a pain to have to puncture then reseal them in order to fill them (which I have not actually tried, it just seems like it would be awkward and ugly). I am considering trying to hack off the nubs that align the halves so I can use them as half egg molds and be able to scrape across the top of the mold, filling and closing as usual. There is also a lip around each egg, but I think if I removed the two pins I could manage the lip. Thoughts or experience? Thanks!

Buy a bag of Valrhona crispy pearls I have kept agar caviar up to a week. It does weep a little bit and is solid throughout unlike those made with calcium chloride and sodium alginate. Here is a ratio I've used before: Cocoa Caviar cocoa 25 g sugar 65 g agar agar 1 tsp water 200 g canola oil as needed Chill 1" canola oil in a shallow pan at least 30 minutes before beginning. Combine cocoa, sugar, and agar agar powder in a small saucepan. Whisk in water. Bring to a simmer, whisking. Simmer briefly and remove from heat. Let cool slightly, then drip through a squeeze bottle into the chilled oil. Strain the caviar and rinse under cool water. Keep chilled.

What keychris said. It would only be wrong if you claimed to have made it from the bean. Even though there are alot of small bean-to-bar makers these days, I'd guess that most chocolatiers use someone else's chocolate. I use Felchlin and Valrhona, and I tell people when they ask. I do, however, feel a compulsion to change it somehow aside from simply re-molding it. All of my solid bars have a filling or inclusion, either a gianduja type filling that I make, or candied fresh orange zest, or roasted almonds and salt. I also make truffles and bonbons, but even with the simpler bars I feel like I have to put my mark on it somehow. I plan to experiment with making at least a little bit of my own chocolate and do one bar that is plain bean-to-bar. Noka stirred up some controversy a few years ago when they refused to say whose chocolate they used. They were simply re-molding couverture and selling it at insane prices. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N%C5%8DKA_Chocolate http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/352789?commentId=2113097#2113097

It does not look too dark to me, looks GBD* *golden brown and delicious

Most of the books I am going to list are not particularly new, so may be hard to find, but may also be available used at a good price. Looking through my bookshelf, these are the books that have been most useful and inspiring to me in my restaurant pastry chef career of the past 15 years: Los Postres de El Bulli, Adria - in Spanish and impossible to find, but gorgeous photos and interesting ideas if you do find it. His newer one, Natura, is also beautiful and even more modernist. Grand Finales: The Art of the plated Dessert, Boyle & Moriarty The Notebooks of Michel Bras: Desserts, Bras - more for inspiration than recipes The Last Course, Fleming - this one can be very hard to find Desserts by Pierre Herme, Herme and Greenspan Chocolate Desserts by Pierre Herme, Greenspan Dessert Fourplay, Iuzzini - actually not a favorite but more recent and some interesting ideas Sweet Seasons, Leach - plated restaurant desserts organized by season Elements of Dessert, Migoya - another new one, modernist and gorgeous New Classic Desserts, MacLauchlan - I don't have this anymore, managed to lose two copies, and its 1994 so it may seem dated, but at the time it was one of my first introductions to plated desserts and I loved it. And you can get it for five bucks on Amazon! The Sweet Spot, Ong - some interesting Asian twists Book of Tarts, Rubin Charlie Trotters Desserts, Trotter - a little older - 1998 - but gorgeous and very inspiring to me when i was just getting started in restaurants. David Lebovitz and Emily Luchetti are also pretty reliable dessert authors, but tend to be more fancified homestyle than multi-component plated desserts. Bachour Simply Beautiful by Antonio Bachour might be a good one as well. I have not seen the book, but I follow him on Instagram and he does indeed make beautiful things.

Jim, whatever works! Do you always work with it that warm, or was it so over-crystallized that it needed to be warmer to be fluid?

Yes, Jim, too much stirring can lead to over-crystallization, you have to find the happy medium. When it gets too thick, just melt it out a little with a hair dryer/heat gun or add some melted and cooled but not tempered chocolate to dilute the crystallization. Today I worked intermittently (remind me to get more than one heart shaped mold before next Valentine's day ) with the same batch of 60% over the course of several hours. In between batches, I put the cover on the melter (I have a 6kg mol d'art) and turn it up a degree or two. When it sits for a while it does get a thick sludgy layer on top, but a minute with a hair dryer takes care of that. As long as the whole amount doesn't go above 95F and you still have SOME beta crystals left, you're usually OK, but I still test a dab to make sure the temper is good. I think a big part of the learning curve with chocolate is getting over all of the wishful thinking. Thinking that because its 89F, it is in temper, or because you're in a hurry to get things done the temper is good enough, or that you are in control. Silly chef, the chocolate is in control! You have to understand how it works so you can guide it back into temper when it goes awry, but sometimes it just has a mind of its own, and as different chocolate have different personalities. Valrhona Dulcey is nicer to work with at 90F and more difficult at 86 even though it is white chocolate. Warm it here, cool it there, put a fan or chill on it sometimes, stir a lot, try to multi-task while you're waiting for the seed to melt... It's the same as cooking sugar - the more you stir, the more crystallization you get. If you're making a wet caramel, don't stir at all. Fudge and fondant are crystalline and are stirred intentionally. Chocolate is crystalline too. Stir, stir, stir. But not too much.

I think you need to let it crystallize more. Stir stir stir, let it cool a bit, warm it back up if necessary. You really want enough stable beta crystals so that it does set up in 3 minutes at room temp. Anything will set up in the freezer, that is not a good indication!

These are looking great! So bumpy/pebbled = too cold? How warm is your chocolate and how much cool air do they need? Also, where did you find the coconut cubes? I love coconut and wold love to cover something like that in chocolate.

If your shells are too thin, let the filled mold sit a few minutes before dumping the excess so the chocolate starts to set a little. Or wait until the chocolate itself is more crystallized. It might be in temper, but if you let it cool a degree or two and agitate further to get more crystallization, it will be thicker when you are working with it. Of course this can go too far and result in super thick over-crystallized chocolate, but then you adjust by warming a few degrees to melt out some crystals or adding melted and cool but untempered chocolate to dilute the crystals.

Shhhh! You're right, bread is different, it's a living thing and not as reliant on exactness or technique. With pastry, for any recipe there is some amount of leeway, but you do how to know what purpose each ingredient plays and how adjusting it will affect the end result. In restaurants, you make adjustments for that particular kitchen and those particular ingredients. One restaurant may use a different AP flour or have a stronger convection fan than another, or use different brands of cream, butter, or chocolate, and old recipes might need tweaking. One reason pastry chefs often work early is to avoid the hotter and steamier time in the kitchen. My last restaurant had a tiny kitchen, so I would do all my chocolate and buttery dough work first thing, before the cooks came in and turned on the flattops.

Nice job!

First, one quibble: he talks about doing absolutely everything by hand, but those are clearly purchased truffle shells! The melter on ebay is clearly designed for chocolate and should work, and I often use a wet bain i.e. a bowl over a pot of simmering water. I also have a 6kg mol d'art melter. The disadvantage of the melter is it is pretty slow. I try to set it up to melt the night before, or sometimes will melt chocolate over a bain then transfer it to the melter if I need a lot of chocolate melted quickly (did this today). No matter what I'm using, I keep a thermometer taped to the side to monitor temperature. A hair dryer works when you need to heat a bowl of chocolate up just a few degrees. You should also consider what type of chocolate work you do. I like the size of the 6kg melter because the half hotel pan size gives me plenty of room to dump molds. The one you linked to looks more like a quarter or third pan size, i think I would find that a bit narrow to work with when doing a lot of molds. If you are doing more hand dipping, the size might be fine, though too deep a pan could be awkward as well if it was not fairly full of chocolate.

I generally do wet caramel because it takes less active involvement. If you've never made flan before, it may help to know that it does take some time for the custard to dissolve the hardened caramel and turn it into sauce. If you un-mold the flan after only a few hours, you may find a disc of caramelized sugar and little sauce. If you let the flan chill overnight, the sugar should be fully dissolved.

Sounds interesting. I'm sure they do degrade eventually, looks like they hope to offer about a year lifespan. It does seem like they would crack when cold, I guess it depends on how heavy the wax is.

Something with black sesame - lychee would be a lovely flavor combo for the white, if you can get it.

Not paper thin, but somewhere in the 1mm to 1/16th inch range