pastrygirl

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

While you Easterners are battening down the hatches for the hurricane, we're seeing our first snow flurries here in the West. Chocolate peppermint snowflake flurries, that is! 60% dark chocolate with a bit of pure peppermint oil and silver decor powder. I can't believe I've actually started making holiday product in October - I'm really pretty Scrooge-y when it comes to Christmas - but I have a client doing a holiday pop-up shop who wants to pick up product next week. I think I got smart this year and applied the silver dust to the whole batch after un-molding instead of brushing each mold cavity individually. #efficiency!

@Jim D. I only did two molds, I was just making sure things worked together. The little ink cups are metal, so I'm sure as the kitchen gets colder it'll become a challenge. Re-warming every few cavities would be totally maddening! I did hit it with the hair dryer a few times just to make sure, but the real test will be trying to do actual production.

Yeah, the Valrhona bags say to melt it for at least 12 hours or something totally impractical. As for the melting temp, by all means be careful and don't leave your bain marie on a gas burner with flames shooting up the sides or put a bowl of chocolate in the microwave for 5 minutes on high. But going a little bit above 120F isn't going to damage the cocoa butter or make it not temper, it just means you'll have to add more seed or wait longer for it to cool down. I've had dark chocolate accidentally get up to 140 or 150 while melting and it still tempered fine once it cooled down. (I have a 6kg melter but more often than not I use a bowl over simmering water because it's faster and more convenient for small batches.) Chocolate can be super frustrating, and will frequently remind you that you're not in charge, the chocolate is tempered when it's tempered, and you can't really fake it. But it does get easier with practice, and when it turns out nicely it's so satisfying!

LOL! Um, I might have to invoke my 5th amendment rights Would it help if I tell you I used purple, orange, and dark chocolate and the test shells came out shiny but super ugly? I definitely need to play with pressure and possibly tip sizes, I think the spray was a bit too fine, the color was not very saturated. And I'm not sure how to get splatter, is it lower pressure, thinner CB, larger tip, or some combo?

I tried out the new Grex airbrush and Point Zero compressor today, worked fine with no need for an adaptor (got a Grex hose at Chef Rubber when I bought the airbrush). Reasonably quiet, like a refrigerator running. MUCH quieter than the Wagner airless paint sprayer! Or even my KitchenAid mixer. Now to practice ...

You're welcome! Practice, practice - the first hundred times are the hardest

Trying to get psyched up for Christmas. I do really want to sell lots of chocolate, despite not a lot of events booked and being the sort of person who normally starts her holiday shopping/planning around December 20. Anyway, picked up some 4" eggs at Chef Rubber so made attempts at reindeer and penguins. They need red noses and smaller antlers but could work. My brother described the penguins as having "The thousand yard stare of a penguin with nothing left to lose..." They need to get happier before Christmas!

Party in Kerry's room!

Or you can get it pretty smooth in a food processor then push it through a fine mesh strainer. If you're obsessive about it, that is

You know, Danny, chocolate is tricky stuff. And it simply doesn't do well in warm temperatures. At 76 F, chocolate should still be solid but may start to get a little soft or glossy. It would be better to work with and store your chocolate someplace cooler if there is any way possible. Can I ask where you are located? If you are in the tropics and it's never going to cool off, you might be better off making really great brownies or chocolate cake instead of chocolate bars or decorations that will melt. By all means, keep practicing and working to understand crystallization. You seem very focused on temperature which is important, but not as important as proper crystallization. I suggest sticking with the seed method and always test your temper.

It is a problem if all your seed is melted when the chocolate is at 95. You still need some unmelted seed at lower temps to provide the most stable forms of cocoa butter crystals, which melt at lower temperatures.

I have to disagree with Lisa. Melting your chocolate to 125f is not the problem, I routinely go over that. Yes, white chocolate can scorch easily, but you also want to melt all forms of cocoa butter before tempering. At what temp is all of your seed melted? I seed but don't go by weight. There should be a few pieces of unmelted seed at 95f - enough to provide those stable crystals that you need but not so many that they won't melt out as the chocolate cools to 90. Also no need to buy acetate just for testing your temper. If it sets up quickly on parchment without any streaks or spots, go with it. (IIRC streaks mean too warm and spots mean too cool). 74f is a bit warm for molding chocolate, I've learned that's about the max room temp I can be successful in. ( working with chocolate that is ). Do you have a fan you can use to improve airflow and cool the chocolate quickly? Maybe Kerry will stop by and explain the latent heat of crystallization. Do you have a real fridge closer to 40f? Your wine fridge doesn't sound ideal.

I ordered this one from Amazon, 1/5 hp, up to about 60 psi, and inexpensive. I hope it works!