David J.

I took the weekend "Ice Cream 101" at Penn State just this year. It was geared towards the mom and pop ice cream shop rather than the huge manufactures churing out thousands of gallons. The "Ice Cream Short Course" is a full week and caters to the professional in a large manufacturing plant with continuous freezers and the like. With a batch freezer of 20L you are in the small shop category (and I too envy your machine!). The most unexpected thing I found was that they very strongly suggested that you use a commercial mix in your machine. As a hobbiest I was hopping for more recipies, but in a commercial business it made a lot of sense. If you try to create your own mixes you will end up becoming a dairy operation with all the attendant investment and trouble. It would be easy to loose sight of making ice cream entirely if you go down that road. The course touched on the different types of mixes and why you might want to go with a "Premium" or other type, and it discussed the role of each of the ingredients so you could have an intelligent conversation with your mix supplier. Basically every type of mix is available already (quality and style), so you can use them as a base and add your own flavorings or inclusions. I saw quite a bit of that in the demonstration day with many manufacturers showing off their machines.

I too suffer from the "molto pieno" (very full) problem. I usually end up with ganache poking up in one or two cavities and many of my closing attempts have been pretty messy. Thanks for the tips on how to push them back down. I've tried the vibrator table on high, but the stiffer fillings don't respond to that. I found that for sealing the thinner the chocolate the better. I have much better luck with white chocolate, and I'm thinking I might benifit from adding cocoa butter to my bittersweet to thin it out for closing. Waiting for a crust is also key. I have lost a couple trays to impatience. I have learned to stop at one scrape, then if it requires it I use a top quality 12" drywall knife I have to scrap off any extra after setting and prior to demolding. If you look, you can tell the bottoms were scraped because they don't have the shine, but its not a big deal. At least not as bad as messing up and loosing a whole tray. Vanessa, you mentioned a chocolate class in November. Are you signed up for the advanced chocolate class Nov 7-9th at the French Pastry School in Chicago? If so, I'll see you there. I'm trying to get all the basics down before then so I can get the most out of the class. I just started the begining of this year and I figure that I've got quite a few "learning experiences" ahead of me.

Here is my first successful attempt at colored chocolates: I used the Chef Rubber Artisan colors, finger smearing red, setting it in the fridge, then smearing orange. After a second setting I sprayed yellow as an undercoat. I think that the white chocolate I used for the shell really punched up the colors beautifully. I tried the same with bittersweet first, but the chocolate was so thick that I couldn't make a shell. I'll probably have to thin it with cocoa butter. The colors were much more subdued over the dark chocolate. I want to thank everyone who has contributed to this thread and the demos. You made this possible on my second try!

What I am wondering is what I can do to substitute for the fruit compound. I like the idea of the reduced puree if that would work. I am not making enough of any flavor right now to work in large batches. Does anyone know if a thickend puree would work, and if so, how thick and what the weight for weight exchange would be? I don't think the exact amount would be all that critical as it appears to be more of a flavor inclusion than a structural ingredient.

I have been reading through Roger Geerts "Belgian Cocholates", and many times I run across one or another fruit compound. The problem for me is that I cannot find a small batch online. It comes in 1kg containers which I will never finish before the end of its three month shelf life. What exactly is fruit compound, and is it practical to whip up a small batch on my own?

Ok, I've got my basic set of Chef Rubber Artisan Colllection colors and a Badger external mix airbrush on the way and I am excited about achieving some of the great effects I've seen in this thread. I have a couple questions: 1) Are there any specific techniques to this beyond smearing and/or then spraying colors, working from the highlights down to the background? Wendy mentioned an article in "Pastry Art and Design". Does it have any specifics or does it just give the idea of using an airbrush with cocao butter? 2) I read that the external mix brush has too wide a stroke to do anything resembling detail work. Has anyone experimented with stencils? I'm thinking in particular about food grade silicon mold rubber being used to coat the inside of a cavity, then taken out and a pattern cut or stamped out of it. I'm wondering just how fine a line one could achive with that approach.

I have a "My-Weigh 7001DX" which I purchased for a small fraction of $130 and it is an excellet scale. Max capacity is 7000g (15.4 lbs) with accuracy to 1g (0.1 oz), so you can tare up an entire recipie if you want (though the 1 gram accuracy degrades at the higher weights). Also nice is that the weighing modes include pounds, pound:ounces, grams, and kilograms, and it remembers which you used last. That makes using metric or US measures easy. Probably the best thing is that it uses simple AA batteries so you won't have to pay an arm and a leg for replacements. It has a nice flat slimline profile so it isn't likely to get broken as many of the more exotic looking models. You don't have to choose between a stand mixer and a scale. Get both! I did a fair amount of research on the web before deciding to purchase this, and I've been very happy with its performance.

I'm only a moderately experienced baker, but I am a pretty experienced learner. What I try do when delving into some new area is to find someone who has already figured out the basic techniques and knows how to explain them well. Baking is mostly about technique. Many years ago I tried making a cake with melted butter and discovered that even with good ingredients it was one approach that wasn't going to work . A cake recipe might simply say "Cream butter and sugar", and assume that you know how to do it. Two people can start with the same ingredients and end up with very different results if they have different ideas of what that means. I think this is what makes baking seem so mysterious and frought with peril. I just borrowed Alton Brown's "I'm Just Here for More Food" from the library and I have to say that he has the best explanation of mixing techniques I have read to date. When I learn something I want to know the how and why, and Alton does a pretty good job of explaining just what is going on and what you are trying to achieve. For example he explains that the purpose of creaming is not to soften the butter, but rather to use the sugar to rip into the butter and create billions and billions of micro air bubbles. The sugar cuts holes into the butter which then seal over creating the tiny bubbles. That means you have to have the butter at the correct temperature and gradually feed in the sugar for best results. The idea is to rub the sugar into the butter which is best done with a flat blade beater that can push the butter into the side of the bowl and scrape the sugar across it. Hand mixers with thin beaters throw stuff around, but don't do a very good job of scraping the sugar into the butter. He states that you should be able to get the butter to expand about a third if you do it right, and he explains when to stop. Leaveners then inflate those tiny bubbles, but they don't create them. So if you don't the creaming right you won't get the results you want. I'm going to pay attention to his instructions for my next cake and see if that improves my results. I've been using butter right out of the fridge and that probably hurts. He also adds something interesting. Instead of adding one whole egg at a time he suggests beating them to mix the yolk and white prior to adding it to the fat. The reasoning is that the water in the whites won't mix with the fat until it is mixed with the yolk and that will help the batter come together much quicker. If you are just starting to bake I'd suggest picking one technique at a time to study, and then practice it until you feel confident. There are hundreds of products you can make but there are only a few techniques you need to do so.

I just made my first batch of molded chocolates a couple days ago and I'm hooked. I have read Trishad's great demo thread on colored molding and I'm interested in giving it a try. However when I went to look at ordering some I found too many choices! Chef Rubber offers four collections (Artisan, Jewel, Perl, and Decor) with dozens of colors and Pastry Chef offers the PCB set of eight colors. What is the difference between these sets? Is one better for molded chocolate than another? I don't plan on air brushing anytime soon if that makes a difference. On the same note, does anyone have advice about which luster dusts are best?

Thanks for the tips. I decided to take your advice and use the soft ganache for a topping and make a new bactch using 12oz of chocolate to 1/2 cup of cream and it worked out beautifully. My centers were not perfectly round and on the large size (I got 19 when the recipie suggested I would get 30-35), but the folks who ate them thought they were store bought until I told them. The centers were wonderfully soft and the coating was pretty even. I had just a touch of blooming on a couple of the truffles, probably because I put them in the freezer to set instead of the refrigerator. I'll have to make room in the fridge next time.

I'm new here and new to chocolate work, but my question seems to be an old one. I am attempting the milk chocolate version of the "Classic Chocolate Truffle" recipie from "Truffles, Candies & Confections Techniques and Recipes". Carole Bloom specifies 1lb of milk chocolate and one cup of heavy cream for the centers. I followed the directions and ended up with goo even after a couple days in the freezer. I tried rolling one semi-stiff lump into a ball but it just melted back down. I know letting these return to room temperature would result in a puddle. Could this be a missprint? I just looked at the same recipe in "The Art of Chocolate" and Elaine Gonzalez suggests 12 oz of chocolate to a half cup of cream which would be a good bit stiffer. What's more she includes a note that various brands of chocolate require differing amounts of cream. I'm using "Peter's Heritage Alpine Milk". So next time I know to use less cream. The question: Can I remelt this stuff and add more chocolate, or should I attempt my first molded chocolates and use it for filling? I have a couple hobby molds I could use, and I do have the advantage of a birthday gift of a Revolation2 to help with the tempering.