Kerry Beal

Couple of defective low carb waffles with cheddar and raspberry fruit spread. Reheated in the CSO they were reasonably crispy with the Trisol in them.

Still under construction - I am making a batch of the low carb waffles mentioned upthread. In place of the 1/2 cup vital wheat gluten - I added 75 grams gluten and 25 grams of trisol in hopes of getting crispier waffles.

Here are a few pages of opinions on that!

True - that much flour along with cocoa powder makes for a lot of dry ingredient.

Way, way, way over baked if you follow their directions. Anna's idea of making something akin to trifle with them looks like the best solution to rescue the existing brownies.

Well done!

Your next challenge is going to be folding the glassine and then getting a sticker to actually stick to it to hold it closed!

I'd say yes - if you reconstitute - but I think making the bonbon with a recipe that you know the shelf life of - then adding the dried/powdered cheese for flavour.

Pastry Star apple pectin - "Acts as a thickener for glazes and fruit sauces. Essential for making soft, spreadable jams."

I'm with Ani - if she goes for the cello inside then maybe just a really classy black paper outside - other than that - http://www.floristsupplies.com.au/showProduct/Wrappings/Paper/PAGLASG

Good to know before putting in an order!

Welcome @a_pinch_of. Glad you have moved from stalking to posting! I think I would initially still wrap my bars in the food grade cello, then wrap that in the greaseproof paper. That way the shelf life would not change from what you get now. I'd explain to her that because you are using freeze dried fruits that you need to successfully exclude as much air as possible and the cello will help with that. In the US - what is known as greaseproof paper in the UK is usually called glassine paper. Here is one vendor online who has black sheets of glassine. Where are you located? Are you aware there is one spot left in the eG Chocolate and Confection Workshop in May in Vegas?

I can't comment on the pectin E440 - the NH pectin that I have is for making glaze - but I did have a batch of apple pectin that was actually made for jam and was useless for PDF. The apple pectin that I have from Louis Francois works well in PDF.

Had a request for some dipped Oreos for my clinic at the Men's Mission next Friday - asked hubby to pick up a package at the grocery store - notice he brought home two packages. He has the cutest grin when he get's caught! He does love the dipped Oreos. Time to get started on Easter! Had a request for some dipped Oreo's for my clinic at the Men's Mission next Friday - asked hubby to pick up a package at the grocery store - notice he brought home two packages. He has the cutest grin when he get's caught!

Here's how they look 24 hours later. You can now more clearly see how poor the temper is with the 'plain' cocoa butter - particularly with the cocoa butter that was refrigerated from melted.

Was telling someone about that just the other day! I think it came up because while I was explaining something someone suggested there seemed to be a lot of science around chocolate. I find it hard to avoid talking about the science - particularly when trouble shooting.

Ok - experiments done - my whole chocolate room is now covered in little electrostatically charged cocoa butter shavings! I found a bunch on my elbows when I got back upstairs. Melted 1 kg of chocolate - had it at 33.5 C. Dipped the first offset for untempered - it finally dried in about 45 minutes. Earlier in the day I had melted some cocoa butter, put a sample in the fridge, some at room temperature. I also took some EZtemper silk - molded it. Each of these 3 solid cocoa butters were then microplaned (hence the cocoa butter covered room) and 2.5 grams of each were put aside. To 250 grams of 33.5 degree chocolate I added one of the shaved cocoa butters or the soft EZtemper silk. The shaved cocoa butter certainly mixed in better than mycryo - not sure if that would be true if it weren't freshly shaved. From the left - untempered, cocoa butter placed in fridge from melted, cocoa butter room temperature until solid, grated silk, soft silk and finally all the samples mixed back together and another few grams of soft silk added. Untempered - clearly not good, fridge cocoa butter - not good, room temperature cocoa butter - better but marked with finger and somewhat streaky and gritty to the touch - indicating poor temper, grated silk - certainly better than the previous 3 but not quite as good as the soft silk as indicated by a slight graininess felt when I ran my finger along it. The two on the right were smooth and velvety to the touch. So in a pinch - if you have made silk that has returned to room temperature and have it available to grate - you can probably get reasonable results. Hell of a lot easier to incorporate than Mycyro for sure. But beware the flying cocoa butter flakes!

Oh yeah - and I take along boxes of nitrile gloves - rather than dipping the truffles I have them roll them in gloved hands twice.

Let me experiment with this when I get a few minutes.

Solidified is really no different from using grated cocoa butter I don't think - though I haven't tried it - the soft silk is definitely the easiest to incorporate.

Probably not in the budget! Anyone else out there with a penchant for drawing?

I have a battery for my EZtemper - so I can take it with me. Still not pocket sized! In previous to EZtemper days I would often do the half melting temper technique - microwave until chocolate is partially melted, stir and put back in the nuke 8 secs or so at a time until the seed is just melting out and you are hovering around the working temperature. I do truffles in the microwave too - chocolate to 30º C, cream to 40º C - stir to emulsify. I take along already scooped truffles that have had a chance to dry to make them easy to coat, a batch made the day before that I get the participants to scoop and roll, then I make a batch there - that one I usually use for the demo of molded chocolates (I rarely let the participants mold if the group is large - it just doesn't seem to work well).

Yeah - what do you think?

I'd need a rather small screen to bring along. Can you get your son to make us a single colour logo design?

Got half a dozen new screens stretched last week - had them made in 230 mesh (previous mesh was 83 so much coarser). I had always thought that because coloured cocoa butter is viscous that coarse mesh would be better. I think I was wrong. Tonight I printed with rather warm cocoa butter (rather than the texture of sour cream as I've had to do in the past), loaded the screen as you would with ink, then a second pass with pressure to print. I think the image on this one needs reworking - each little house needs it's lines intensified so they mask the light sufficiently so they make a complete image on the screen after the unexposed emulsion is washed away. The key's could probably use a little work as well. They kinda look like cupcakes.