pastrygirl

Sounds too thick, try a little more liquid. Also consider cocoa butter as a way to add fat without coconut flavor.

Thanks for sharing! Those boxes do look handy.

http://blog.ideasinfood.com/ideas_in_food/2016/10/smart-cooling.html @smithy is right, ice and water transfers heat much more rapidly than ice and air. Also best to cool in a vessel that conducts heat well, do not cover, and stir occasionally. Stainless steel in an ice and water bath will cool rapidly. You can also spread it in a thinner layer to cool faster. Though that may not apply to pork shoulder unless it is already falling apart.

I'm skeptical, flour is pretty soft to the touch and doesn't seem like an effective abrasive. Did you actually do this in the course?

I'd eat it, too. I figure some cheeses are aged in caves or the equivalent for 2 years or more, so why not your fridge. Here's an old cheese story for you: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/17/nyregion/after-75-years-the-cheese-stands-alone.html?_r=0

How does grill brush end up in a braised dish?

@Jim D. The magnets don't touch the chocolate so I would not worry about food safe. I'd try a thin super glue, the only problem with something thicker like hot glue is that it could be too thick a layer and leave a gap at the bottom of the mold when the two pieces are together. I do have a mold that's lost a magnet or two, I'm just more careful when tapping the bubbles out so it stays together.

I just came back to mention wafer paper, like you use for nougat. If that was available, it could be printed or painted on.

So cut out the images and use the holes and frame outlines as a stencil? She could make a template of where the images on the film would be, paint onto acetate a little cocoa butter or chocolate for the images, line up the cut-out film negatives and spread with milk or dark to get the background, remove the film and spread with white to fill in the outlines. Trim to size with a hot knife.

One more thought - would just the trays without the boxes fit in gallon ziplocks? Might need cardboard or a candy pad to stiffen, and if the trays are shallow you may be able to fit two.

Fondant painted with food color would definitely be easiest, try to convince them that a little fondant will be great for the look and they don't have to eat it I don't think old film negatives would kill anyone - the chemicals get washed off - but I don't know how much they would help. I guess you use them to get the size and holes. If the cake is square you don't have to worry about wrapping while the chocolate is still flexible, you could make one piece for each side. Or you could pipe on acetate with a guide.

Over in the confections thread, it looks like there is a lot of space around the pieces in the trays. Do they not get scratched and scuffed rattling around? I just bought some 9 piece boxes with trays from Paper Mart to use for the holidays. They're 5-1/2" square, haven't actually filled one with bonbons yet but I though they looked decent for the price. http://www.papermart.com/set-up-view-top-gold-candy-p-e-t-box-with-inserts/id=38551#38551 Of course Chocolat-chocolat and Nashville Wraps have some much swankier paper boxes with inserts but I don't wanna pay $2+ per box. I feel your pain on the custom packaging, I have a couple of things I'd like to do differently but it's hard to swallow the expense of doing it all over again. And mine was designed around stock packaging so I don't think you're crazy But in the big picture, I'll probably be happier if I push forward on it.

Yes, taking the time to do it right has worked for me, rushing results in condensation. It's the sudden, dramatic change in temperature. The air that hits the frozen bonbon is cooled and can't hold as much water, so condensation forms on the surface. When you're moving from 0F to 40F to 65F you don't have the huge temperature difference of going directly from 0 to 65. It sucks though, because we don't always want to wait 2 days to fill orders. I'll admit to having sold some items that weren't appropriately thawed. It's not ideal. Your retail boxes are 10" x 10"? Have you considered a smaller box?

yes and yes

So your vacuum machine can only do 100%? Can you stop it before its finished or adjust the settings? We have a vac machine in the kitchen - savory chefs have done a lot of sous vide - and I was debating trying to pack some chocolates to freeze, guess I'll have to play with pressure. I used to vac dried fruit and frozen things at 50% so they wouldn't stick together, i think that should be safe for chocolate but haven't tried. The machine is totally adjustable, or one can just hit stop somewhere on the way to 100% vacuum and it'll seal and release pressure. For the impulse sealer, I would get the cheapest one that fits your bags, and might as well get a few replacement wires while you're at it, they break. One other option I'd consider is large ziploc-style bags. I use the gallon sized freezer bags to store boxes of truffles and caramels, with a tiny bit of stretching I can fit 16 2-1/8" cubes (so a block of boxes 2-1/8 x 8-1/2 x 8-1/2"). The bags measure about 10-1/2" square, so maybe too small for you but if you can find 2 gallon ziplocs, they would work. The regular weight don't stretch well, they tend to tear I'm never sure about bag materials and which is which. The sous vide bags at the restaurant are very thick and probably not inexpensive. I've sealed a few different types of flimsier bags on my little heat sealer, you just have to adjust the duration or some will melt all the way through. And you can always do it twice if you want a really good seal, it only takes a few seconds. Good luck! And thanks for the reminder that I should be in the kitchen working on Christmas instead of home drinking coffee and acting like its a day off!

For less waste, cut MC Escher shapes!

I wonder if a hot knife or wire cutter for cutting styrofoam would work. I think you'd need one that went up to at least 300F to melt the sugar - or maybe less if it's a delicate foam? I've never tried one, but it seems like it could be useful for chocolate or sugar work at the right temperatures.

Whoa, that just blew my mind a little bit!

Sounds horrible, but I wonder what actually happened. Was the tissue inflamed by the capsaicin then tore from the force of vomiting, or did the peppers actually burn a hole like a chemical burn? Would he have been OK if not for the vomiting? I do love spicy food, but don't need to prove anything by eating ghost peppers.

When I think about the hotels I've worked in, it doesn't surprise me that they don't necessarily need to be money-makers. In a large hotel, banquets are the much larger revenue source. I helped out at a local Four Seasons for a couple of weeks last fall because they were desperate for temporary skilled pastry hands (and also worked briefly at a different Four Seasons circa 2003). The vast majority of what we made went to banquets and private parties, some of them huge. Plated desserts for 400 at lunch? Honestly not my idea of a good time. So I think part of the mediocrity comes from the volume they do and the shortcuts that get taken. I would never dream of using pre-baked, IQF tart shells in my business, but I can see why they did. You also have things like VIP amenities, room service, wedding cakes, and the guy on the 23rd floor who just wants a cookie competing for your attention. I think it's really, really hard to do that kind of volume and maintain quality, and hard to find people who can deal with that kind of repetition and also execute dishes with more detail and finesse. You need the worker bees, but worker bees aren't always artists. (A gastropub I'm friendly with has a similar problem keeping staff - they need people who can churn out 100 burgers on a Saturday night but can also perfectly sear a slab of foie gras.) There can be a different mentality in hotels too. I don't want to offend anyone who works in hotels, but there seem to be more people who are there just for the paycheck and/or the travel benefits. And with mandatory lunch breaks and regular pay increases, one can hardly blame them. Corporate hotels probably don't care as much about the restaurant's profit as an independent restaurant because their goal is to have enough staff on hand to give their guests whatever they need 24/7. Hotels are more about customer service than gastronomy. I also worked at a high-end boutique, all-inclusive hotel (Amankora in Bhutan) as their pastry chef. I don't recall food or labor cost being a particular issue there, again it was about giving the guests everything they could possibly need or want. Cookies in the rooms and snacks in the cars frequently didn't get eaten but were part of the guest experience. Sometimes we'd have days with few or zero guests but would have to find projects to keep the staff busy. I think we did succeed in keeping the food high quality despite the remote location and challenges in sourcing. But in truth, a lot of people just want their eggs for breakfast and steak for dinner. Hotel restaurants have an obligation to please a huge variety of palates, and not everyone is traveling for the food.

The Joy of Cooking rum/bourbon balls made with nilla wafers, and leckerli, a honey cookie with dried fruit. Also, panforte.

I actually just started experimenting with liquor-syrup filled truffles, so I don't have any experience but am interested in what you discover. They do seem like a pain, but one in a collection of several bonbons might be fun, and I have booze to use up! I, too was considering some acid in the mix, but wouldn't acid inhibit the sugar crystalization? Would it be enough to cook the syrup a little thicker if you were going to add acid so it would still be prone to crystallization? Or stir it too much ... ?

Not sure what you mean by that. The beta crystals will not be destroyed by being cooled below 89, the point is that if they are present because you have seeded successfully there is no need to cool the chocolate below working temp. If you have the 1-2% of beta crystals and your test is good, you're good to go. Do you have any books you're working from? I would highly recommend Peter Greweling's Chocolates and Confections, though I have the older edition, not the new one. He explains how things work and offers troubleshooting guides. I think some people here like Andrew Garrison Schott's book but I don't have it. I find the Wybauw books must have lost something in translation, they are not as clear and easy to understand as Greweling, and they are expensive to boot.

If you temper by seeding or incomplete melting, then you need tempered chocolate to provide your seed. Chocolate that has melted and re-solidified without being tempered won't make good seed. But if you're going to melt it and make brownies, then no, it doesn't really matter.

coconut palm sugar