David J.

Did he give any clues as to what changes he is making?

When I took a class with Norman Love he told us to beat all the air out of the joconde batter so it would be very dense. As I recall his joconde baked to about 1/3 to 1/4 of the height I see in your picture. The combination of thinner and denser should help prevent the tearing you are getting.

I store mine on end in cardboard boxes that originally held reams of paper. They fit snugly, stack well, and don't rattle around.

I've got the book too, and completely missed this. I guess I was concentrating on truffles back then and with no picture to catch my eye I scanned right over it. What sort of apple would go best with this, Granny Smith?

Amazon.ca says that "Stephane Leroux Matiere Chocolat" has not yet been released, and Amazon.com says it is out of print. What gives? Would you buy this over "Chocolate Designs" or are both a must have? Darn, now I wish that I did buy it when we were in Buffalo...

I love my version 1.0 Kindle for normal reading but I don't think it is quite big enough to work from easily. Now with the Kindle DX they are solving that issue, but I still want to see color pictures in a cookbook. Think about the ability to add more color photographs to a book without putting the cost through the roof! I want to know what a dish or item is supposed to look like, and having a few technique shots would really add value too. Remove the cost of full color printing on paper and you open up a lot of possibilities. A lot of cookbooks are already digital in the MasterCook software, though probably not the ones you would be looking for. I believe that once large format color readers become popular most cookbooks will go digital.

I've got a bag of pastry rocks and used them once in a ganache. They have to be protected from moisture or they will disolve since they are basically sugar.

I have an ice cream theme going for my latest truffle collection. I have sea salt caramel cups. The "Cookies N Cream" truffle is a hit thanks to Lior who tipped me to infusing the butter with vanilla. I have a Banana Caramel Sundae truffle planned with a base banana ganache topped with a dollop of flowing caramel, dark chocolate ganache, and pecan bits. The standard Chocolate Chip Mint is also planned. That leaves me with one more flavor to make five (three each of five flavors per box), and I'm thinking of a "Fried Ice Cream" truffle. Picture cinnamon ganache rolled in flavored crushed corn flakes and dipped in dark chocolate. My inclination is to caramelize some sugar and honey to mix the flakes in before turning them out and crushing them, but I’m not sure of the best ratio of sugar and honey and how far to caramelize the sugar. I’m willing experiment with various combinations, and I figured folks here would have some good guesses about what would best evoke the flavor of true fried ice cream.

Yes, there is one with a sort of dimple that you push though once you demold it. I was looking for that originally but ended up with this mold instead. It's a toss up whether it's better to have a hole (and thus a neck) or not. If you don't have a neck you must be quite precise in the amount of chocolate you put in each cavity to end up with the correct shell thickness. If you have a hole, then you can drain the mold like any other so you can overfill it with no problem. The neck is just the thickness of the mold wall. To eliminate it the mold would have to thin out to a knife edge thickness around the bottom which would probably make it too delicate. I haven't used it in quite some time, but this is what I did last: I cut a piece of stiff cardboard to fit just inside the bottom of the mold and covered it with plastic wrap. I used this to cover the holes in the mold to start. Then I ladled chocolate into solid bottom and used a soft spatula to clean it up a bit before snapping on the top. I rotated the filled mold as you would any fully closed mold, then removed the cardboard and drained the mold. I let it sit to crystalize, then put it in the fridge for a bit as with any normal mold. I set it upside down such that the necks were down and broke the mold open. I found that most if not all of the balls would remain in the bottom because of the necks. I then pushed each ball out by pushing the necks out of the mold. It worked best if the necks were a bit thick so I had something to push against. Then I removed the necks with a tiny hobby saw or knife. I suppose you could use a heated butter knife as well. I probably haven't played with it due to the extra effort required over standard molds. It doesn't speed normal production of hand dipped pieces because of that , and because you still have to dip you don't get the shine of a normal mold. The one thing I would use it for would be liquid filled pieces because it's easy to close without a sugar shell. On the other hand I might try it again. I could just cast a tray or two each time I temper a batch of chocolate, and over time I'd have enough shells to do something with.

Don't be intimidated by a standard propane torch. Get one with a self-igniting trigger and you won't even have to use a flint. I've used mine to caramelize sugar on creme brulee with no problems.

I started with a Rev2 and still use it when I only need a small amount. Its strengths are speed and automation, but the downside is that it just doesn't hold enough for serious production. After using it to make several hundred pieces for wedding favors I decided I needed something bigger. I bought two 6kg Mol D'Art melters and that's when I learned how to temper. There is nothing like getting your hands dirty to really learn what a process is all about. The melters allow me to continualy cast molds without having to stop and run through another tempering cycle. They are also open enough to allow easy dumping of chocolate from molds which keeps the work area clean. The downsides are that I have to remember to turn them on the night before I want to use them to melt the chocolate, and that they require more attention to temper. Now if someone wanted to gift me with a large automatic temperer like the Selmi unit we saw at Tomric (or possibly two...) for the best of both worlds I wouldn't turn it down.

OK, so as I understand it your process never gets your butter warm enough to break. That allows you to infuse and then re-chill it. I was thinking you were fixing broken butter. I suppose for my purposes I could just let it cool to 85F and mix it with the tempered chocolate since the chocolate is going to melt it anyway.

I know the seperated mess that you get when you chill melted butter. How cold is the added butter, and can/do you return it to the fridge after it is mixed in? Is that just a little hand whisking?

I had no idea one could retemper butter once it was melted. It sounds like more work than other methods, but now I need to know. How exactly is this done?

So you just add the seeds straight to a white chocolate/butter ganache? Is the the Galiano liqueur just for the touch of anise?

I've got a lot of beans so I'd like to use them if possible. I hadn't thought of infusing directly into the chocolate, but that should work. I can split the pods, scrape the beans and dump everything into the chocolate and keep it at temperature for a day or so in a melter. Then all I have to do is pull out the pods, temper, and make my ganache. That will give me the both the best flavor and least water. Thanks.

I'm making a vanilla butter ganache for a "Cookies N Cream" bon-bon so I can use real cookie inclusions without having them disolve into mush on me. The issue is how to get the vanilla flavor into the ganache. Since vanilla is the major flavor I would prefer to use real beans, but unlike a cream ganache I don't have anything to boil it with. Other options include vanilla extract and a vanilla liqour "Navan" that I bought some time ago to experiment with.

Yes I would very much like to attend another gathering. The demonstrations were great and getting the chance to do a little teaching was fun, but what I really enjoyed was meeting people. Unfortunately due to time constraints I was unable to spend enough time with everyone so I'm going to need another opportunity. Being able to drive is nice, but I'll fly if I have to.

I don't have any desire go commercial, but I would love to learn to produce the quality of Koo-Ki's Sushi. I found a few web pages on the topic, but only one looks that good Brownie Points Blog. Do you have techniques to replicate more pieces?

I would "drill" a small hole in the bottom with a warm rod and stand them upside down in a bowl of rice. Then fill it with a squeeze bottle, slap a little chocolate on a piece of parchement and place over the hole. ← Don't you have to put the syrup into mold at a fairly high temp to avoid crystallization, this would melt chocolate. I think this is why it is done in starch molds. I have looked quite a bit for bottle type objects to stamp into starch. I have not had much luck. The closest I have come to something that looks like bottles, is a tiny bowling set that was used for kids party favors. I keep on looking in miniature doll house shops hoping to find something. ← No, the syrup/liquor mix must be fairly cool before you cast it in starch or pour it into prepared chocolate shells. I've done both. The nice thing about prepared shells with small holes is that you don't have to mix with syrup and depend upon the sugar crust for bottoming. Instead you can just cap mechanically. I used a small chocolate disk with chocolate dabbed on to seal standard hollow truffle shells before hand dipping. A co-worker wanted liqour truffles with no sugar shell and it worked out fine. A supposed problem is that unprotected chocolate shells will eventually leak without the sugar barrier, but I didn't notice that happening before they were all gone. I wouldn't try to keep them for months, but a few weeks shouldn't be a problem.

I have filled chocolates with liquor in all these ways and I have even made silicone molds for plaster, chocolate, and breakaway "glass" bottles as a play prop. Pouring liquor into already cast chocolate bottles would be the best looking and easiest method by far. Starch molding can be done, but it's involved, messy, and you would need a really deep box as the only flat surface on your bottle is the bottom. That means the starch box has to be about 3" deep to have the top end down for a 2" bottle. Making all the plaster bottle forms to push into the starch would take time and be an added expense. You would need silicone to cast around your bottle form (which you would have to find first), then mix and cast lots of plaster copies, throwing out those that have bubbles on the surface. You then have to heat the starch each time, mix the syrup, pour, sift starch on top, then turn the box after a couple hours and hope that none of the bottles break and pour liquid all over. Then you dig through the starch for the finished sugar bottles and brush them off, getting starch everywhere. I just did that for small cones and it took me a week to get everything set to start. Then of course you have to dip every bottle that you make. I'm not sure if pouring syrup directly into a silicone mold would work, but if it did it would require quite a few molds to get anywhere near the number of bottles you want. Each mold would only produce one bottle a day and that is either a large expense in molds, or a huge investment in time mixing a new batch of syrup every day. You would likely also want to embed your silicone mold in a plaster mold to prevent leakage and provide extra support for the mold and that's extra work. If you want to use the sugar method you can just cast it in the chocolate bottle and it will form a crust all around allowing you to easily cap it. The nice thing about the chocolate bottle is that you don't have to mix the liquor with a sugar syrup. Just make a small hole in the bottom of the bottle with a warm metal rod, fill it from a squeeze bottle, then dab a bit of chocolate on a bit of parchment or acetate and slap it over the hole. It's fast and the chocolate bottle will be well shaped and glosssy. Far less effort and a much nicer looking product. You can cast all the bottles you want well ahead of time too. You could even play with painting lables on the mold in color cocoa butter to denote the flavor inside, though I would probably work them up on a computer and print them on paper to wrap around the bottles. With this method you could crank out several hundred in a few days.

I would "drill" a small hole in the bottom with a warm rod and stand them upside down in a bowl of rice. Then fill it with a squeeze bottle, slap a little chocolate on a piece of parchement and place over the hole.

Thanks for the reply. I managed to get through to someone at DemarleUSA via the web-chat utility and they set me up. I might try cutting the full sheet large cone mold as I have to fold it over to fit it in the freezer otherwise.

yes, with a paper cornet ← And was that white chocolate mixed with colored cocoa butter, or straight colored cocoa butter?

Notice that they are not hand dipping...