Kerry Beal

Apples, bit of sugar, squeeze of lemon, few bits of butter, couple of tsp tapioca starch. Might have been a sprinkle of cinnamon.

I've found that it isn't really necessary to heat as high as 45C - just above 35C or so to melt out any crystals - then it's the time to cool to 33.5C before seeding. Tests I did with a temper meter in Utah showed the same result when I heated badly out of temper chocolate to 45 and cooled and just to 35.

Here are the notes I have after I talked to Matt at HR. Vacuum for freeze dryer Below 200 mTorr (0.2 Torr) (.3millibar or .000266 bar)adapt to 1/2 inch hose at least 6 cfm Edwards xds would work - dry scrollVacuubrand mv 2 or 10 nt vario only

I third the Greweling recommendation - he clearly describes the 'rules' for ganache - what temperatures you can and can't mix at in order to prevent breaking etc. When we did the Premium Chocolate Centers course with him a few years back he talked about it at length - imagine my surprise when I went back and read the book - and there it all was!

On Sunday I did demos at the Luxury Chocolate Show again. Last year I had a prototype EZtemper tucked in the closet where no one could see it - so I tempered all the chocolate before I started when no one was looking. This year I had all the chocolate in my melters untempered - and I quickly tempered it a la minute as I went along. It was a real treat to do it this way as I didn't have the melters full of thickening chocolate to continually fuss over. I didn't even bother to weigh the chocolate or the seed, just dumped some into a bowl and added a little glob of the silk - and it worked perfectly.

I think the oil has been removed by pressing first - then the remaining mass is ground into the powder.

I would say the experiment will need to be done to see if it works. My sneaking suspicion is it might not work - but you'll never know until you try.

Working well - when I was down visiting Harvest Right last week, Matt said they are hoping in the future to offer a scroll pump for around $500 more. They had at least 3 scroll pumps they were playing with.

Loblaws in Canada now owns T&T - a very large asian market. I'm seeing a lot of the T&T products in the Loblaws stores. Perhaps Nova Scotia will reflect this soon for Deryn's benefit.

Brendan - you could order from Qzina in Toronto or McCall's Baker's Warehouse. Lentia in Brampton has Valrhona and Callebaut. Not sure if they deliver as far up as Kingston but it's worth asking.

I've used Becolade sugar free - quite tolerable.

Breakfast on the plane.

Started out the morning at Beehive Cheese visiting with Pat and Tim. Curd making area. Prepping the cheeses for vacuum sealing. Cutting the cheese. Vacuum sealed and ready to go on to aging. First aging done in the 50's. Second part of the aging done at much cooler temperatures. A little cheese cave with some of the penicillium inoculated cheeses molding away. Next stop was Sweet Candies - so that we could play with their tempermeter and see what sort of tempering curves we could get with our EZtempered chocolate. I still need to crunch the data a bit - looks like we might be able to cut back on the amount of silk we add. Sure wish I had one of these at home for the ongoing experiments. Hoping Ruth can add some pictures of us dressed to kill with our hair nets etc! In our travels today we stopped in to see Dana and her hubby at Millcreek Cacao Roasters. Lunch was a BBQ beef brisket sandwich at Costco. We also hit Trader Joe's. Then off to the AACT (I believe it stands for the American Association of Candy Technologists - Ruth is vice chair I believe. We set up a little table with the EZtemper and chatted about it to interested parties. The dinner meeting was held at the Joseph Smith Memorial building that used to be a hotel. From the window you get a nice view of temple and tabernacle. Keep expecting to see fireworks behind this one when it's dusk. Dinner was not memorable enough for pictures to be taken.

Lots of interest for sure! It's great to be able to actually show it to people - leaves them thinking about it.

We stopped into Harvest Right - my freeze dryer manufacturer yesterday. Met Matt finally with whom I have had a lot of correspondence. What a delightful fellow. They are going full tilt in there right now - they were just finishing up making a commercial which I suspect is going to make them even busier. Since I first sent Ruth in there to check the place out - they have expanded from one unit to the full building - and next week they are moving to an even bigger building. This fellow can perfectly coil 50 feet of copper tubing on the outside of the condenser - completely evenly spaced freehand! I didn't get great pictures of the whole process unfortunately - but this is the station where they add the first of the circuit boards. I had told Matt about my scroll pump - they now have a couple they are playing with and are in talks with a company that makes them. Not going to be a cheap option - but should be an available and very quiet option for the future. With the scroll pump they've upped the tubing on this one to 1 inch with a resultant increase in speed of freeze drying. Got a number of pictures of this for hubbies information when I get home so he can make the adaptations on mine

For breakfast this morning we all met up at Romina's patisserie - Les Madelines. A quick glance in the pastry cases. Her star piece - Kouign aman. So I have had this pastry a number of times now and wondered what all the fuss was about - I had been told that Romina's was the best and I knew if I didn't like hers then it just wasn't a pastry I liked. Well - now I get it! It was crunchy, buttery, and sweet (but not too sweet) with caramelized sugar. Next problem - others will now fail to measure up! Ruth's breakfast sandwich. Willow's breakfast sandwich Cappuccino My 'everything' croissant with chive and cream cheese with an egg. Gaylene's Cassidy's Romina's. After our gig at Gygi's we went on the advice of the restaurant critic/blogger who had attended our demo - to Oh Mai - a vietnamese banh mi joint. Short rib banh mi for me. Bun for Ruth. Lemongrass tofu banh mi for Gaylene.

Indeed - there will be one or more there. There should be a couple that permanently live in the facility where we will be holding the workshop.

Mary from Kitchen Crafts trying her hand at dipping. In and Out Burger - cheeseburger animal style, fries and rootbeer float Sorting table at Coleman and Davis. Lab sized roaster Industrial sized roaster. Winnower Nib grinder Five roll refiner Conche Tempering machine still has bugs to be worked out - this is a vibrating belt. Chocolate we had tempered heading in to the cooling tunnel Fabulous old winnower at Amano Chocolate (Art Pollard) Roaster with the cooling table in front. The ball inside Art's roaster Art's chandelier. Dinner was at Pei Wei (opened apparently by PF Chang's ex wife) - Ruth opted for some fresh rolls Dan dan noodles for me Willow's Sesame Chicken

Breakfast in bed! Beer bread, Beehive Promontory Cheese and a nice milky tea. We are within a few miles of the Beehive Cheese factory. We will be fitting in a visit at some point. They make some of my very favourite cheeses and Ruth has the fridge full of them. We will be on our way for another busy day very soon.

So off to the other High West location in Park City. They have a pot still with two columns and that can be used to get a spirit up to 190 proof. They also have this little pilot sized still in the area where they mash that will handle about 25 litres of the approximately 7% ABV wort that they produce and with it's single column can get it up to about 65% ABV with a single run. I spent a few minutes trying to stay out of the way on the line while the executive chef melted a little chocolate using the heat from the stove and the TurboChef induction microwave - 13 seconds in there had the chocolate pretty well melted. Exec chef pouring us out a bit of an up and coming product that was pretty fabulous - a double rye aged in syrah and port barrels. Bark made with peated barley malt - very tasty with the above mentioned blend. Then it was time for dinner at High West - bread basket to start. A Little Italy for me - asked them to replace the rye with their American Prairie Bourbon. Then asked for ice because they brought it up in a highball glass. Saw them cooking schnitzel when I was in the kitchen - decided that would work just fine for me. Gaylene and Willow shared a burger and salad. S'more - also done in the TurboChef I was told - a few seconds to roast the marshmallow - 3 seconds to make the chocolate bar flop.

I'm counting on Chocolot to add some pictures of other things we did today - or you will think we are simply lushes. We visited two distilleries - both High West - the new facility very recently opened up at the Blue Sky Ranch and the original distillery in Park City. One of the distillers makes various pieces of furniture out of old barrels. I would have loved to check out this little room in more detail with one of the distillers - unfortunately being Sunday none were there. After our tour we did some tasting - the little item that the whiskey is poured through allows to government to keep an eye on quantities dispensed to discourage any unreported sales. They provided us with this very nice charcuterie board - we made a bark with some of the spicy lavash after we enjoyed our repast.

Yeah - apple pieish sort of thing. Not too exciting.

Then we headed home - got a tour of Chocolot's chocolate room(s) - and sampled some experiments that Ruth, Willow, Gaylene and Romina had been playing with yesterday.

After my pickup at the airport we went to Shanghai Cafe (pretty sure that was the name) - one guy doing all the cooking - Coconut shrimp - amazingly tender. Scallion pancake. Pot stickers. Mapo dofu Pork belly. Fat noodles. Stir fried green beans with pork. The other dumplings the name of which escape me. Salt cooked pork chops - the name intrigued me - and they were excellent.

First leg of my flight was to Detroit. I enjoyed a couple of glasses of tomato juice and a bag of chips. Second leg was from Detroit to Salt Lake City - 3 and a half hours - so there was time to feed us. Decided to have a G&T with lime. Asian beef salad - other choice was chicken enchilada. Interestingly on the side was a little pile of hummus - not particularly asian flavoured either.