pastrygirl

260F does seem rather high, unless you want your caramels very firm. During the summer when the kitchen was very warm, I was cooking mine to 254F. Now that room temp is much cooler, I aim for 250F, even 248 might be better, because I do want them soft and luscious. I'm sure the ingredient ratios also play a part. Butterfat is soft at room temp, so I think more butter should make a softer caramel if cooked to the same temp as one with less butter - someone please correct me if I'm wrong! The salted butter caramels from Alice Medrich's Pure Dessert are great, I once made a batch with Lyle's Golden Syrup and could not stop eating them. How would you describe the Steen's syrup? Is it dark and molassesy, or light and golden? I actually have a big, unopened can at work that I should use up sometime, but i guess I don't want to deal with a big can of stickiness if I'm not sure what to do with it!

I've never used agar in a foam, but I do use it in fluid gels. As far as I know, it needs to be heated beyond the melting point of around 170F.

Lacking a heat gun, I scrape the build-up off my scraper between every few molds. If you try to keep the blade vertical (or perpendicular to the mold) that helps too, because then you are only scraping the edge against the mold, and not dragging all the excess built-up chocolate through your bottoms.

Large batches should not be a problem, there must have been a measuring error in there somewhere. My standard batch of gougeres is about quadruple that, with 1# butter, 2 c milk, 1-3/4 c water, 19 oz flour, salt, pepper, 6 oz cheese, 12 whole eggs plus a white or two. I transfer the dough to the kitchenaid bowl and add the eggs with the paddle on speed 3 or so. Makes around 100, depending on size.

Holiday 2012 assortment. From top left clockwise, 70% vanilla, passion fruit, salted caramel, coconut, black currant-chambord, rosemary caramel, armagnac-orange. I also made two varieties of bars: milk chocolate with a filling of pretzels, brown butter, and milk chocolate, and dark with a filling of toasted coconut, coconut milk powder, coconut oil, and white chocolate. I think they are going to be good.

Minas, those are so pretty!

Jim, Cacao pods: http://www.dr.ca/?subcats=Y&status=A&pshort=Y&pfull=Y&pname=Y&pkeywords=Y&search_performed=Y&q=bc93&x=11&y=9&dispatch=search.results Pyramids: http://www.jbprince.com/chocolate-and-sugarwork/pyramid-design-32-cavities.asp The red flowers are a mold from a company in India, but I don't see them on the site: http://www.ipfco.com/

Those are very sexy indeed, Pastrygirl! :-) What is their filling? And did you use a pastry brush to splatter? Yes, I used a trimmed-down pastry brush scraped against an icing spat to splatter. There is a smear of dark on one end before they were molded in milk. The filling is milk chocolate, Armagnac, and orange. Unfortunately the texture is a little grainy. But hey, this thread is all about looks, not what's inside, right?

Out of all the chocolates I made last weekend, i thought these were the sexiest.

That was just a guess, they are probably more like 10-13 grams. The last time I shopped for molds I decided 13g was my ideal size. It can be hard to visualize dimensions, I usually have to look at a ruler or even draw the shape to help decide.

Cadbury non-melting chocolate: http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-cadbury-chocolate-melt-candy-20121127,0,7886136.story?track=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+MoneyCompany+%28Money+%26+Company%29

Chocolate World (another site to peruse) does give the weight of the pieces - I think if molded with solid chocolate? (results may vary depending on fillings). I consider 10 g or less pretty small, prefer closer to 15 g. Yes, shopping for chocolate molds can be dizzying. Trying to find matching boxes is even worse! My favorite molds tend to be the rounder, easier to polish shapes with no sharp corners for bubbles to stick in, like domes, geodesic domes, and cacao pods. Also those with more cavities per mold. I recently picked up some used magnetic molds, which offer the vesatility of transfer sheets, but with only 15 cavities per mold they are not very efficient in either transfer sheets or labor.

JB Prince gives the dimensions as well, you just have to click on the item. I try to avoid anything shallower than about 18mm. You gotta have room for filling!

But you don't want chocolate at 100, you want at at 86-90. The problem with a lot of devices is that the temperature setting does not go low enough. If this thing is accurate at the right temperatures, it could work.

Thanks! I just finished and cut a batch today, I'll try to remember to take a pic tomorrow.

I've been making a variation of Greweling's peanut butter cups, that all my co-workers have been swooning over. I didn't want to fuss around with individual cups so I worked it into a bar confection. Bottom layer, a graham cracker crust made with GC crumbs, a little brown sugar, and a fair amount of brown butter. Mix in the robot coupe until liquified, then pour into the frame to set. Filling is the PB cup filling, with the optional candied peanuts, extra salt, and some crushed up potato chips for extra salty crunchiness. Top layer is 60% ganache, which I'm debating about making lighter or darker (but it is really hard to get constructive feedback when everyone's mouth is full). The whole thing is soft enough at room temp to cut on the guitar (once bottomed with more chocolate), which is a bonus. Served with torched soft marshmallow.

Coconut is one of my favorite flavors with dark chocolate. I've been working on a coconut truffle filling for molded pieces that is coming along, but I'd also like to create a more shelf-stable filling for a chocolate bar, like a coconut gianduja or a coconut version of a peanut butter cup. I've been making Greweling's PB cup recipe, and I'm thinking something like toasted shredded coconut and possibly powdered coconut milk with coconut oil in place of the PB, plus the cocoa butter to firm it up. Anyone tried anything like this? I would do the bars in 60% or 70%, should I be concerned about fat migration with the coconut oil and dark chocolate? I would want these to have a shelf life of 2-3 months. Thanks for any ideas! Andrea

I keep a few quarts of pasteurized liquid yolks around (Papetti's, no sugar added as far as I know), which I mostly use for ice cream and creme brulee bases. When I used whole eggs for ice cream, I had far more whites left over than I could ever use in macaron, meringue, etc. Now if I need extra whites I can always separate some. The liquid yolks are a nice convenience and time-saver.

Because it is always the same? Haven't they featured those glasses a few times already?

Several times. It will take on flavors of what you cook in it, but that is not necessarily bad. If you keep it in the freezer between uses, it should last a very long time.

Do you know the percentage? I get what my supplier re-packs as "Callebaut semi-sweet pistoles" which I think are 54%. They look like and work great as chocolate chips for cookies, but I don't think I have ever used them for molding. If you get them in their original packaging, it should show the range of fluidity in droplets, I believe 3 or 4 is best for molding and dipping.

Its gorgeous. Yes, a full page color photo of each dessert, total food porn. Who needs recipes?

sturgeon

Has it been that way for the entire three years, or has something changed so that now you are frustrated? Let's look at alternatives. You consider soup that is made and re-warmed "leftovers" It sounds like there could be better portion control, so that only the amount that is needed is warmed to order, but how else would you serve hot soup? You're not going to make each bowl from scratch. The microwave does ruin some things (bread/pastry), but for a lot of things it is pretty effective. You could heat the soup in a little pot on the stove, but that requires a more watchful eye, and stirring. You could keep the soup in a warmer all day, but by the end of the day the vegetables are mush and quality is compromised even more. With the meat, isn't barbeque a very lengthy cooking process? You can't cook that to order, and again, keeping it warm all day may be more of a compromise in quality than chilling it when it is done and re-heating to order. I think re-heating once is fine, that is how most restaurants do it (well not with meat unless they do sous vide). Many ingredients are prepped and fully or partially cooked, then heated and finished when ordered. It allows the cooks to get a dish to a table within 10-15 minutes, saving space, time, and labor. Re-heating multiple times should not be necessary. You don't have to make smaller batches to avoid that, just re-heat less at a time. You're young, and you've been there a while. Nothing wrong with moving on and seeing how other restaurants do it if you're not happy where you are.

Francisco Migoya can: http://www.thequenelle.com/ I guess much depends on the stability of the foam. I use the torch to pop bubble on my creme brulee base before I bake it, but that is not very stable. I feel like I have bruleed zabaglione in the past, but it's hazy.