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You can use a high ester (high methoxyl) pectin just as well, but will have to make a one simple adjustment. Noting that the final Brix (solids content) must be higher than 67% for a HE pectin, you will need less water. No need to adjust pH as wine is acidic. Adjustedment for HE pectin Instead of mixing the invert sugar with 600g water and heating to 80 degrees Celsius, heat the 800g of red wine mixed with the invert sugar to 80 degrees Celsius (and water a plant with the 600g of water, you no longer need this). Add the pectin/sucrose mixture as before. Evaporate similarly to about 75 Brix. Pour into frame ... Disadvantage of this process is that you heat the wine, and it is somewhat sweeter.

Hi Vanessa I know both these pralines well, indeed I have some of L'artisan's sea salt caramels to hand, so I thought I would eat one whilst replying to your post. Mmmm ... I agree Gerald Coleman's red wine jelly is rather good. The jelly is between 60 and 70 Brix, ie 30-40 parts water to 60-70 parts solids (sugars and jelling agent). The jelly's harmony comes partly from the balanced sweetness: it just does not taste as sweet as a 70% brix pate de fruit! I guess that he may use a significant proportion of maltodextrin and glucose (eg a low DE glucose syrup). Usually, a pate de fruit uses a high ester pectin which requires solids above 67% (and a low pH) to set. Alternatively a low ester pectin sets below 67% solids (and likes calcium to set firmly). Does Gereld use HE pectin at its lowest limit or LE pectin at its highest? I don't know ... I use LE pectin, and give directions for this: Ingredients 800g red wine 200g invert sugar (mix together) 600g water (of which 250g will be lost to evaporation) 100g sucrose 30g pectin (mix together) 1000g sucrose 200g glucose (mix together) Directions Heat water and sucrose/glucose to 80 degrees Celsius in a bowl over rapidly boiling water. Slowly add sucrose/pectin, stirring hard to avoid lumps. Keep heating (evaporation) until syprup reaches 80 Brix. Take off heat. Let syrup cool to about 40 degrees Celsius (it will not set as the Brix is too high). Meanwhile warm red wine/invert sugar to 40 degrees Celsius. Combine red wine/invert sugar and syrup. Pour into frame onto greaseproof paper. Leave for 24 hours. Cut with guitar. Heating the final ingredients to 40 degrees Celsius allows them to be combined and poured before they set up, which they will do quite quickly. The final brix of these pates de fruit will be 57%. If these are enrobed in chocolate, as L'artisan's are, then they will be shelf-safe for 2 to 3 weeks at 17 degrees Celsius, or 4 to 5 weeks at 12 degress.

For a caramel ganache, try making a (burnt) caramel syrup. That is melt, then caramelize some sugar (sucrose). When it gets to the right colour, flavour, add some cool water. Let cool. Later, when the syrup is cold (indeed anytime later as the syrup will last years if in an airtight jar), put 2 parts syrup into a pan and heat to 117 degrees celsius, add 7 parts cream (it will boil almost immediately). Pour over 9 parts chocolate chards. Emulsify.

Really interesting stuff, thanks for the notes. I am aware of the two schools of thought on whether to add invert sugar to cream before boiling (eg Fredrick Bau, Valrhona) or cool to the ganache (Wybauw, Callebaut). I've tried both and noticed no difference empirically, nor can I think of a good (or bad) theoretical reason why heating invert sugar should chemically change either the fructose or the glucose. Did Wybauw explain this further?

I love El Rey's Apamate and use it for enrobing. However El Rey's Gran Saman, on which Apamate is based, is even better. Though not suitable for enrobing, it would certainly be my first choice for truffle interiors. I've been meaning to make a ganache with these chocolates for some time. Really interested to hear your thoughts.

A good rule of thumb is to add 8% invert sugar to your recipe. This will help bind the free water and reduce the Aw of your ganache. As to whether you reduce cream or not, the answer is more difficult. It is likely that you may wish to reduce the amount of cream, but a good place to start is with the same amount. If you do reduce cream it is likely to be by just a couple of percent.

Have you notice if the shelf life for those chocolates was lower?Just cause the aw in the chocolate? ← Good point. In actual fact I find when cutting cream with water that the amount of water/cream that I use to make a ganache is less than it would be with just cream alone. Not quite, but almost ... the water content remains the same and the dairy fat is reduced. Ie replace 100 parts cream (35% fat, 60% water) with 60 parts water. As I understand it fat also helps to reduce Aw (though to a much lesser extent than sugar or salt) so just reducing fat will increase Aw, though not necessarily dramatically.

Another take on water ganache, which I have always found lacking, is to cut cream (35% fat) with water. For example I have found that when making a ganache with Amedei's chocolates, 75% cream (35% fat) cut with 25% water makes a better, more intense ganache.

I've tried Herve This' Chantilly Chocolate. His reasoning is simple: whipped cream is 35% fat, 60% water; chantilly is whipped sweetened cream. Can you whip chocolate? So Chantilly Chocolate: create a water ganache that is 35 parts fat (cocoa butter) to 60 parts water, plus the sugar within your chocolate (hence chocolate chantilly). Once you have created the emulsion, ie ganache, whip as if cream. It works! Is it the best invention ever? No, but its fun. PS. Try eating a scoop of Chantilly Chocolate with a little extra virgin olive oil. ... Go on you might be surprised.

940g Valrhona Guanaja (70%) 860g Cream (35% fat) 40g Fresh Rosemary Infuse Rosemary in boiled cream for five minutes, bring back to boil and strain over chocolate. NB. Guanaja is an intensely strong chocolate that I find suits rosemary, and other strong flavours well. It's all subjective, but a more subtle chocolate might require less rosemary.

Personally I do add my sugar (when I do add sugar) to the cream before boiling, though I know of chocolatiers with recommend adding sugars cold (though in syrup/solution). For me these new pate de cacao present the opportunity to create extra bitter bonbons with respectable shelf-life by using monosaccharides. Your point does lead to another use of these pate de cacao. The mixing of Valrhona's new single origin pates de cacao with their associate couvertures (rather than with sucrose) and perhaps extra cocoa butter to create single origin chocolates to the sweetness and texture of your choice.

Yes, they arrived in 1kg blocks, just like their existing pate de cacao and their couvertures, ie they have been conched. I have made just the one ganache so far. I left this to crystalize on a sheet, and I too noticed that the fat had separated out ever so slightly. Perhaps because of the nature of the product, ie needs extra care; and perhaps because I made such a small sample amount, always tricky. Excellent idea. My first attempt added 20g fructose (sweetness equivalent to 28g sucrose) to 72g araguani pate de fruit, (ie to replicate the sweetness level of Valrhona's Araguani couverture - 72%, though not the same cocoa butter:cocoa solids ratio). Fructose has greater humectant properties than sucrose, and a much lower glycemic index than glucose, sucrose and invert sugar. My first ganache does not feel grainy, though the taste and texture are still some way off a simple araguani couverture and cream ganache. Perhaps it is the altered proportion of cocoa butter? More experiments to follow, thank you for your comments.

Valrhona have just introduced four new single origin pate de cacao (aka cocoa paste, unsweetened chocolate, ...): Araguani (Venezuela); Manjari (Madagascar); Tainori (Dominican Republic) NEW; Alpaco (Ecuador) NEW. So naturally I have got hold of some samples and am experimenting. Ganache Until recently, I had never attempted to make a ganache starting with pate de cacao, but this is where my experimenting has begun. Not wanting to reinvent the wheel entirely I did some extensive searches on google and egullet and was surprised by the lack of comment on this subject. My fellow chocolate enthusiasts, any and all thoughts and experiences welcome ...

As mentioned, Manjari and citrus fruits and berries works very well. Similarly cardamom, with its orange tones, lemon verbena, and, although I've yet to tried it, lemon thyme.

The Urbanpath link above has all but one (and a few more) of my recommendations. The missing shop, that of Paul Young is in Islington, North London. Enjoy your trip.

... and what if someone within the production and distribution chain wears leather shoes?

A thought occurs with respect to the initial question of sweetness: should a ganache made from 72% e. guittard (with no added sucrose, glucose, etc.) be too sweet as a bonbon, then the final sweetness of the confection can be adjusted by the choice of couverture for enrobing. From comments later in the thread I understand that just the one bittersweet chocolate is used; for ganaches and enrobing? If so then this thought may not be of immediate help. When faced with a new chocolate, with which I wish to formulate a ganache, I try to balance the elements in four steps: 1) What is the ratio of total dairy fat (within the butter and cream) to cocoa fat (cocoa butter) that suits this chocolate? eg 4 parts cocoa fat to 3 parts dairy fat 2) What is the ratio of butter fat to cream fat? eg 1 part butter fat to 1 part cream fat 3) Does the moisture level need enhancing by adding water? eg 2 parts cream to 1 part water 4) Choose a couverture for enrobing, using the same chocolate as used for the ganache as a standard against which to judge others. This process allows me to experiment along two dimensions at a time, and usually gets me quite close to the final formulation that I seek. How do others break down this process? Asides: two traditional recipes would meet the above example criteria, namely i) one part chocolate to one part cream, and ii) four parts chocolate, two parts cream, one part butter, one part water (alcohol). Also, I don't add sugars, but occasionally add invertase to invert some of the constituent sugar within the chocolate to glucose and fructose to assist with shelf life.

One thought, given your high temperature and new location. When making ganache by pouring boiled cream over chocolate chards, start emulsifying once the temperature of the mixture has dropped to about 50 degrees Celsius / 122 degrees Fahrenheit. Stirring before may cause a ganache to separate. Stirring too late may lead to grainyness. The time taken for a chocolate mixture to drop to the correct temperature before one starts to emulsifying depends on: the ratio of chocolate to cream; the total volume of chocolate and cream; and the ambient temperature (Note: new location and high temperatures).

I once had masses of excess whipping cream so froze it. As so many have said above it thawed into fatty, watery mess that could not be retrieved. However I did make a mustard sauce for some pasta - it was ok, but we are talking slightly better than a shop-bought bottled sauce, and certainly not fit for sharing with friends let alone selling.

When I started out making chocolates, one of my first purchases, long before I sold my first chocolate, was a portable dehumidifier. It was about 18" x 18" x 30" high and collected the water within an internal resevoir which I emptied every day. Cheap too at £70 ($110). It broke after one year's continous use. With no humidity control then a chief concern is that chocolate absorbs moisture from the atmosphere when humidity exceeds (from memory) about 70-75%. Molten chocolate will absorb moiture and thicken quite quickly whilst dipping/enrobing/moulding. In such conditions work with small amounts of tempered chocolate. If you use a melting tank to hold chocolate at 45 degrees Celsius for twelve hours, either have this tank in a humidity controlled room elsewhere, or place in a cupboard with lots of silica gel? Without air conditioning, a wine fridge (from $150 for 70 litre capacity), with more of those silica gel packets, is an excellent place to keep your chocolates once made. Even with a/c thats how I keep mine. As to a strong fan, this will help cool your chocolates faster after enrobing so will help two fold. Less time for you to wait before packaging, and less time for moisture to be absorbed. Just as importantly, how to you cope with temperature?

Googled Blue Ridge Mountains indigenous fruit and got this interesting page: Clammy Groundcherry: Physalis heterophylla. Grows in Southwest Virginia/ Blueridge mountains. If it's anything like the physalis with which I am familiar, and it looks it, then its sharpness should complement well the honey.

David, I make a basil ganache with Common/Sweet Basil and Valrhona's Caraibe (a blend of Trinitario cocoas from the Caribbean Isles). Caraibe is 66% cocoa, but is quite sweet/approachable for a bittersweet chocolate. The sweetness of Caraibe complements the taste of Sweet/Common Basil.

I mentioned in my earlier post that I chopped my basil, but would experiment. Well, ... the flavour is vastly improved by NOT cutting but using whole leaves, no bitterness.

Hi Lorna In my earlier brevity I was being a little unfair to Pierre Marcolini. Yes his style, like his history, spans Europe, lying in my opinion between Belgium and France. Sweeter than the French, less sweet than the Belgians. Smaller in size like the French, but with moist almost liquid centres like the Belgians. I highly respect his uniqueness. It's just the more I sample different chocolatiers (and work with chocolate myself) the more I find sugars interfere with the cocoa tastes.

Lorna As I have yet to try Christopher Norman, Vosges, and Recchiutti and you have yet to try La Maison du Chocolat a comparator may be difficult. However I do have Recchiutti book and I agree his chocolates (according to the recipes) are much sweeter than Marcolini. As a rule I find there is a corrolation between country and sweetness for artisan chocolates. American chocolates are the sweetest and most intensely flavoured, French chocolates (eg LMduC) have very little or no added sugars and subtle flavours, with Belgian chocolates (eg Marcolini) somewhere in between. I have tried Marrie Belle's chocolates (actually, Torres I believe). These are beautifully decorated and formulated for a longer shelf-life. Perhaps it is unfair to compartable these to fresh artisan chocolates, however in these I again noted a much sweeter formulation than to the European taste.