Kerry Beal

Cocoa butter has very low aW so it's fine held long term.

Uses regular cocoa butter (it's got to be real though - in my trials I discovered that I'd fallen victim to the purchase of a 50 lb pail of something labelled cocoa butter that wasn't!). No software to updates. It will run on 220 - either need to change the plug into the power supply or use a wall adapter.

Yup - that's about it.

Fooling around with coloured cocoa butter - I set one unit at 35 and held some bottles in it overnight. They worked perfectly for splattering and spraying with my Fuji. Tempered the dark chocolate using the silk, added some silk to the filling and was able to back them off in less than 30 minutes. Trying to get some video footage with a borrowed GoPro - not going well!

1.4 cm generator, 2.5 cm generator

Kind of looks like you could buy the rotostator and put on Bamix.

Wonder if the drill has the oomph to go for the kind of time needed for panning?

This one tamped into mini muffin pans with a tart tamper.

What are they using for a motor on that thing?

Mark - welcome! So glad you have decided to join us. Going to link you here to the planning thread for next years workshop as I know you want to come - here.

$234.99 at Beyond the Rack.

Here are the tests from last night's batch seeded with chocolate in place of cocoa butter - it's much clearer this am that the before seeding test is no good. I took the 'chocolate seed' and put it to 34.5 in order to see if I could make it a bit softer and easier to mix in. Here are the tests - Clearly closer to tempered - but not close enough. Next experiment - chocolate chopped to hopefully give a softer mass.

Colour me green with envy. I picked up a tiny little homogenizer very inexpensively on E-bay a few years back - but the sucker is basically non functional. I think it might still be in the closet up north. And it would handle about 100 ml instead of 2 litres.

Experiments continue tonight - 2% not very silky chocolate that had been in the unit for 24 hours. Very thick - even thicker than when I stirred it up this morning. A little challenging to stir in this rather stiff seed. But it appears to have done the trick. Before seed on the left - after on the right - the left marked badly with a finger - the right didn't. Plan to leave these overnight and see how they look tomorrow. Needed to dip another bag of cookies. With tempered dark - dipped some Trader Joe's ginger and made some ginger marshmallow clusters. Pop rock bark with some milk and dark. Remaining milk as bars with crystallized rose petal bits.

Yes it is! I had the hubby of a coworker making me the fork part - I was going to figure out the wooden handle part - he came up with these - perfectly ergonomic, fully stainless so dishwasher washable - I really love them. Brought some to the workshop - PM me if you are interested in one. Adding the seed actually thickens the chocolate as it pre-crystallizes. However when I kept remelting and seeding the same bunny eye chocolate at Easter the dark chocolate did end up pretty thin - I suspect I'd added about 25% by the time I was done! I think starting with fresh chocolate or adding a percentage of fresh chocolate is probably sensible. I tend to only temper close to the amount I need for any given project - and I've always tended to make bark with the leftovers. It was an interesting experience getting this to market (and something I'm not anxious to repeat any time soon)!

Shop.ca has it for a bit over $250.

Had a few minutes before I had to leave for work this morning so after I got the rug rat on the bus I decided to get some cookies dipped for an upcoming charity event. Melted Seed adding Less than 1 minute later Dipping dipped So in under 40 minutes I was out the door with 3 bags of Wegman's oreo type cookies dipped. Experiment underway to see if seed can be generated from chocolate - of interest to the bean to bar people who don't want to add anything more to their chocolate. Of course I'm starting with tempered chocolate which won't be where they are starting.

Just cool it without seeding - you can add the seed at 33.5 degrees (or even a bit higher for dark chocolate) so you are actually above the typical working temp for milk and white. Interesting thing I've noticed - when you add the seed - the temperature drops about 1º C - I assume latent heat being released.

Looking back at the past year since I made the first prototype - I realize just how much my habits have changed. Like Chocolot I've gotten in the habit of backing off molds shortly after I pipe in the filling, cutting ganache slabs within a few hours of making them, tempering 100 grams of chocolate in seconds to paint the eyes on bunnies - the only time I've 'properly' tempered chocolate is when I'm teaching. I snuck the prototype into the luxury chocolate show so we could temper the chocolate in the mol d'art melters (hid it in a cupboard so no one would see it). When I helped the St Luke's church folks with their easter egg production this year I took the prototype over to temper in the mol d'arts - saved a huge amount of time over last year's production. The cleanup! These were the frozen tea spheres dipped in caramelized white chocolate - also pre-crystallized with the seed. Remaining melted cocoa butter the spheres where dipped in - tempered in seconds and able to be removed from molds in less than half an hour. The coloured cocoa butter - put in at a second EZtemper at a higher temperature works perfectly for spraying. It's probably fair to say that any pictures of chocolate I've posted in the past year (with the exception of the panned stuff) has been tempered with the seed. The gianduja around the panned hazelnuts ...

Next year we shall be back in Niagara on the Lake - not much more in the way of details than that so far! I'm hoping for the end of May - after Mother's day but not on the Victoria day weekend. I think that leaves us two weekends - May 14,15 or 28, 29. It will depend on the school's schedule. I have feelers out to the woman who schedules the kitchens and I'll get down to the college in the next couple of weeks and talk with Chef Storm. I'll try to get dates pinned down as early as possible so that folks can make plans well ahead. Love to start a list of potential subjects for our didactic half day. The opinion seems to be that on the Friday folks would like to go to Tomric again - so closer to the time I'll contact them and see what they can put in place for us. I know that RobertM arranged a tour of a candy factory in Buffalo last time we were there - perhaps something like that might be fun to do again next year. Hopefully Chef Dave will be able to make our Saturday meal again. The mushroom soup, the prime rib, the yorkies...

Wybauw's recipe for scrap is called Black Devils if I recall correctly. Think it's in the first book. I often keep my leftover ganache in the piping bag in the fridge - I might reheat for about 1 minute at power 1 on the microwave before piping into molds. I sometimes do half leftover ganache and half flowing caramel. And other times - I go in and bin half a dozen bags when I realize I'm never going to use them! Or if they are firm enough I might scoop them out of the bag and use them as truffles.

One of my early experiments - on the left an offset dipped just before adding seed - the one on the right dipped less than an minute later.

They are used for immediate pre-crystallization for one shot depositors and various other functions.

Jim - I can probably answer that one - it does indeed hold pretty much forever. Having had some cocoa butter in the prototypes for several months the process seems to go forward and I think form VI crystals form because I have noticed some change from the silk like consistency to a firmer but still very usable consistency. One simply takes out the amount needed and puts the container back in the generator. You would leave the generator on all the time and add new containers of cocoa butter when needed. You can also work with chocolate at higher temperatures so the seed mixes in readily. It also mixes in easily to lower temperature ganaches, giandujas and meltaways. This technology is used currently in industry - the idea was to make a much less expensive version than the industrial for smaller shops. Suspect Callebaut would want to produce something a little more 'shelf stable' though.

Can't wait to see the report Rob!