Kerry Beal

These are little squares of dried coconut - engrossed in dark milk chocolate. Tasty!

Did some more raspberries - the dregs of a bag of frozen - there might be a few whole berries in there but the rest will be powdered. Black Cherry yogurt. Spiralized zucchini and swede - gotta say the turnip is darn tasty. There was also a tray with meatloaf and ragu - it would appear I forgot to take a picture.

I don't generally rub with cocoa butter - just polish the mold with a lint free cloth (if I'm going to bother). Shells still look a bit thin. Another thing to suggest - get a taping knife, polish the edge so there are no burrs, and give those molds another scrape. The amount of chocolate I can see on the surface is going to interfere with the unmolding.

I do generally finish things in one day. I use an infrared thermometer - I have quite a few of them. My least expensive ones I've picked up from Canadian Tire - they seem pretty reliable most of the time. I used to have a Sinsation - which was the same as the little Rev - it limited me so much with it's small capacity that I started tempering by hand in a bowl using the microwave. It was an awful lot quieter, allowed me to work with larger quantities and let me fill and dump the molds more easily. I ended up giving it away a few years later when I realized I wasn't ever going to use it again.

Not as smooth a mechanism as the Benriner - and a pain having to attach it to a cutting board for sure. I should try to find a different base to attach it to - or even clamp a board to the counter then clamp the cutter to the board.

All metal - made by Norpro.

So my counter is too thick to attach the curly cutter - and a single cutting board too thin - but two cutting boards ganged together worked. It's not the most stable platform for this thing. But I have 3 big Idaho curly cut potatoes in the oven right now. And I spiralized some green radish, daikon, asian pear and cucumber and dressed with a couple of tablespoons of sugar and a couple of teaspoons of salt.

Picked up what I'm pretty sure is a curly fry cutter today for a couple of bucks. It has a clamp which may not work well with my counters and needs a stainless nut and bolt to make it functional - but I'll get it up and running in a couple of days and put up a picture.

Chocolate on first glance appears to be in temper, but agreeing with those above who suggest too thin and ganache too warm. I make my shells, put them in the fridge for 10 to 15 minutes - I can usually see that they are starting to separate from the molds. Then pipe in the ganache when it gets below about 28 C. After I back off - back into the fridge for another 10 to 15 minutes - before I turn them out I check to see if they have separated from the mold. Stubborn ones get 3 minutes in the freezer. Your question about adding back chocolate to the Rev - I'd heat it up a bit if necessary - just make sure that the chocolate in the Rev doesn't get above the max working temperature when you add the warmer chocolate. After it has been in temper for a while your max temperatures are going to be 32.5 for milk and 34.5 for dark.

I'm getting better at this! These are some cherry jelly bean like things that I purchased at the bulk store - white chocolate coating, red coloured white chocolate to finish. Perhaps not the tastiest thing - but I'm happy with the look. Now off to the chocolate room to coat some little square pieces of coconut. I have a 13 quart bowl full of future panning products. Need to start thinking about Easter bunnies.

My solution to that for hubby - who also doesn't like pink - is to nuke it a few seconds at a time until the pink is gone. Still stays quite moist as long as you don't over nuke it.

Our broiled grapefruit got a splash of grenadine syrup rather than sugar.

Spent a delightful afternoon watching a demo by our very own Alleguede. Rodney is one of the Callebaut ambassadors and was invited to do a demo for young pastry chefs at the Bonnie Gordon Cooking School in Toronto. He worked through a couple of entremets showing some new techniques and showcasing some of Cacoa Barry's new chocolates. One was a flambeed banana and pecan delight - the other a flourless chocolate cake upon which sat some raspberry, white and dark chocolate ganaches and a milk chocolate mousse.

It's the fun spiral shape - imitation low carb noodles actually!

Host's note: this post's first paragraph refers to a series of posts suggesting ways to bring order to the chaos developing in this topic. Those posts have been moved to the Moderation and Policy Discussion Forum, in a new topic. Interested members are invited to read and participate in that conversation. Please focus posts in the present topic on the subject of freeze dryers and freeze dried foods. We'd best get back on track on this thread - management on eG is going to look into something 'pinned' covering what Mike has suggested and others have put input into that will hopefully serve the purpose. So for now - this thread can serve to cover what we are making. I have to confess that I haven't done anything for a while - we are working on some wiring in the house and I keep thinking that it's actually going to get started and interfere with a run - so about 5 runs could have been done while I waited! Meantime in the freezer waiting to go I've got some spiralized veg, some ragu and some more fruit.

I'm using some samples of professional products that I have had around for probably longer than they are supposed to last! I'm currently looking into getting smaller quantities of similar products for when Alleguede and I teach a class - because the average artisan confectioner can only buy barrels full of the stuff. We are hoping to talk someone into selling reasonable sized amounts - or selling us a larger but still reasonable sized amount that we can then pass on in smaller quantities to our students.

Ah yes - and the pharmacy ones would fit into a small bag top as well!

Brilliant - that would be great for filling bags in all sort of applications.

Still had some dry ice around - so this afternoon I took a box of corn pops and coated them in white chocolate with freeze dried mango powder mixed in. Of course a family sized box of corn pops is too much for my little panner so after the initial coating I removed a few of them before they all removed themselves. Part I finished with some coloured white chocolate and the rest with some mango powder.

Here's the spiralized gratin after baking.

I have two bottoms sitting around that I've been thinking I need to find a new home for. I've sent you a PM - if you can forward me a picture we'll see if one might fit.

The raisins polished. The tastiest so far. I really, really like chocolate covered raisins!

Drizzle with, or mix in a bowl with some oil, salt and pepper - spread thinly on parchment - stir frequently.

Ah yes - autocorrect should have caught that!