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David J.

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Everything posted by David J.

  1. Ok, this time I got the special spatter tip for the airbrush and this is the effect: I had to experiment for a while to find the best way to use the brush. I found that the air source is far enough behind the paint tube that it was best to hold it almost vertical to get the cocoa butter to flow. I also had more luck pulling the needle back and letting it slam back to push more color out of the tube and get a good splat. All that added up to more work than I was hoping for and it took me a couple hours to paint three molds. Still, I had a LOT LESS mess than when I used a brush to flick the color.
  2. Good idea, but these must be eaten immediatley? or within a day or two at most. I am quite intrigued by the idea of a creme brulee truffle but it is it possible to get a decent shelf life ( 1-2 weeks) on a similar recipe? ← Sorry for the delayed reply, but I've been away from the board for a while. Yes, these are special in that they do need to be eaten within a couple days since the degree of water activity is extremly high. I imagine that you could make a version with ganache that would last much longer, but the texture would also be different.
  3. The 250 sprays a pretty broad cone of color making it only good (at least for me) for area coloring. The 100LG's spray is much narrower which allows one to actually draw lines, perhaps about 1/4" in width if you get the tip close enough. The complication is the mold cavity is concave which disturbs the airflow and slick which will cause the color to spread if blasted by too high a pressure. Perhaps I'll do some experiments to determine just what it is capable of and post pictures. I want to test the spatter tip anyway.
  4. The custard was thick enough that the bruleed sugar stayed right where I put it. I piped more custard on top of some of the pieces to even out the levels after I had placed all the sugar, thus some of them are partially or fully burried in the photo.
  5. I had read about Kee's creme brulee truffle, speculated about how it was done, and finally decided to try it myself. I didn't want to settle for a "creme" truffle but wanted to try for the sugar crust as well. There are several ways to get a thin chunk of carmalized sugar. For this attempt I carmalized in a pot, poured it between to silpats and spread it thin with a scraper. When cooled I broke the sheet up into smaller pieces. In the future I might try using a stencil to lay out piles of sugar to carmalize with a torch so I can get more consistent sizing with less waste. Since the sugar would be sealed in the creme for several hours before it was eaten I decided to coat them in cocoa butter for protection. I melted a bit of butter in a small cup and dipped the pieces in and laid them out on a silpat to set. The cocoa butter protected the sugar, but I didn't particularly like the way it interfered with the flavor. The next time I might try spraying it with an airbrush or dip in chocolate instead. I made the creme anglese and cooled it in the fridge until it wouldn't melt the dark chocolate shells. It proved to still be pipeable, though it was a touch on the thick side. I placed the brulee on the bottom of half the pieces before placing them back in the fridge to set further. I had been worried about backing off the bare creme pieces, but they proved to set thick enough that it wasn't a problem. Then I took several dozen pieces to work and conducted a survey. Everyone who wanted to sample had to try one of each and vote for "Sugar crunch" or "No sugar crunch". I didn't get any complaints about the requirement to have two pieces. I was concerned about the cocoa butter being too thick on the sugar, but to my suprise the vote came out 3 to 1 in favor of the sugar crunch. So the result was people prefer the full "creme brulee" experience even when encased in a chocolate shell.
  6. My compressor will run at 100psi, but the whole point of what I am after is to run at the lowest pressure I can and still sustain a good flow of color. That way I get the least blowback and waste and greatest control. The gravity feed in this brush lets me run as low as 15-20psi, however the drawback of the internal mix is that the air passes over the tube around the needle which cools the color causing it to thicken and the flow diminishes. I could temporarily increase the pressure, but eventually it would sieze up entirely and in the meantime I get more waste as the pressure blows the color out of the mold. Did you mean to place the painters tape across the top of the mold cavities? That's in interesting idea. I have used the piped/smeared colored white chocolate technique on several pieces when I wanted high contrast and it works really well. Exactly what size/type of art brush do you use for your larger splatters?
  7. I recently bought a Badger 100LG gravity fed brush and this is one of the pieces I've made with it: The brush lets you focus the color much better than the Badger 250, though it won't let you draw a pencil thin line. I painted the cap yellow and then the sides green to evoke a mostly ripe bananna, but I ended up with more green than I was aiming for. Then here is a multi-colored spatter effect: I used a toothbrush to spatter the molds. It took a quite a bit of time and produced quite a mess so I ordered a spatter tip for the airbrush in the hope it will let me replicate this with half the effort.
  8. I bought it along with the cup cap from Coast Airbrush (http://www.coastairbrush.com/) and it is Item code: Badger 50-0374. The tip is just a small collar that replaces the very tip of the airbrush. It apparently works by leaving the needle exposed such that the airflow is turbulent around it. The Spatter tip is the short one on the left next to the normal tip. The normal tip completely encloses the needle. The spatter tip leaves the needle exposed so you need to be carefull handling it.
  9. I used the badger 250 for a bit, but recently purchased the 100LG with a medium tip. If you do, note that the cap for the cup must be ordered separately. I spilled a bit until mine came in the mail. I'm currently using a cheap Black&Decker compressor meant for inflating car tires and basket balls. It's terribly noisy, but it works so I haven't bought another one yet. What I did do was purchase a third party regulator and I highly recommend doing so. It really helps to be able to adjust the strength of the flow. My observations so far: The 100LG with gravity feed does draw a finer line than the 250, but it's still not pencil thin. Painting the inside of a mold cavity significantly degrades the ability to draw a fine line as the blowback messes up the stream. However you can still paint just part of the cavity which allows for more effects. I'll post a couple examples when I get home. You will need the assistance of a heat gun to keep cocoa butter flowing through the brush. I found that the tip cools enough after a minute or so of spraying that the stream diminishes significantly. I'm contemplating some sort of electric heating element for it so I don't have to stop so frequently. Bench mounting a heat gun so you only have to hold the brush over it is a second best technique. I haven't experienced a total lockup of the brush and even if I did, I believe a heat gun would clear it up enough that it could be dismantled and cleaned. A paint brush is still faster if you want to lay down a heavy coat. The strong flow of air will prevent you from laying down a thck coat in one step as it will push it away from the point of application. I ordered a "splatter tip" for the brush but haven't had an opportunity to try it yet. I'm hoping that it will duplicate the effect I got with soaking and flicking toothbrush without the huge mess that entailed.
  10. I've got a recipie for a white butter cake that calls for a 9" wide 2" deep pan and a temperature of 350 for 23-25 minutes. I would like to make mini cakes in a 4" wide pan. What adjustments should I make in time and temperature?
  11. Is this the book? "Chocolate" by Ramon Morató I prefer to understand any formula I use, does he explain any of the theory behind it in his book?
  12. So what do you think would be the most efficient way to do that? Carmalizing sugar, rolling it thin between two silpats, and breaking it up? Perhaps sandwitching a silicon circle stencil (of the type for making chocolate bases) so you get perfect disks? Or perhaps using a stencil to make small piles of sugar and using a torch to burlee them? It might be quite handy if they were sized to perfectly close off the cavity to allow easier bottoming. Since you've had one, can you speak to how fluid the custard is?
  13. Great stuff! How does the bonbon mold work? Where can I learn more about the "pro gianduja" (in English)?
  14. What I meant was that technically the recipie is "Chocolate Creme Anglese" rather than "Chocolate Creme Brulee" as the word brulee refers to dishes finished with a sugar glaze. The translation of the French "Creme Brulee" is "Burnt Cream". The original I was thinking of is made at Kee's chocolates in NYC. It's filling is described as "liqidy, creamy vanilla" which leads me to believe it's straight creme anglese rather than a ganache. The trick would be bottoming it and for that I think spraying with cocoa butter would do it. Making it into a ganache adds shelf life and ease in closing, even if it does alter the flavor.
  15. Hi! I found this if you haven't yet seen it: ← That's a good way of doing it. I believe the original I had read about didn't mix the creme mixture with chocolate and therefore had a shelf life of a day or so. Technically though, I don't think you could add the Brulee since it doesn't contain any carmalized sugar. I'm thinking of adding that but would probably have to coat it in cocoa butter not to melt. I like their two color molding, though I don't have one of the "upside down" molds to work it with.
  16. That's a wonderful display! I'm curious about your recipie for the Creme Brulee truffles. Are you using it in a ganache or pouring it in the shell as is? If so, how do you back it off?
  17. One tip I read is to use two forks held in a V shape in one hand. That should work for anything four plus inches in length.
  18. Color is actually pretty easy to deal with if you use the premixed cocoa butters available at Chef Rubber. Check out the "Chocolates with that showroom finish" thread or Trisiad's demo. I'm not sure just what and how much to mix to get Tiffany blue, but once you figure that out it's not all the difficult to color your molds before casting your bon-bons.
  19. Could you post your ganache recipie? Also along these lines, has anyone made a Banana Daiquriri ganache?
  20. JPW has a few recipies in his first book "Fine Chocolates Great Experience". Yes, growing the crust in a shell works fine. I have done it and it's much easier than dealing with the starch. If you start with the sphere shells you can even dispense with the sugar crust. You can seal it with a small disc of chocolate before dipping (which I did), or try the spray of cocoa butter to seal it off and then dip. I used this method to make less sweet truffles for somone who didn't like the crunch of the sugar crust.
  21. In "Fine Chocolates 2" Wybauw uses Sorbitol to lower water actvity in some of his ganaches.
  22. Hi Alex, welcome aboard! First, if you substitute milk chocolate for dark in a recipie you need to use more chocolate per amount of liquid. That increases for white. Second, I suggest buying a copy of "Chocolates & Confections" by Peter Grreweling. It's the absolute best book on the theory of ganache. For instance, he instructs that you have a better chance to break a ganache if you mix it too hot or too cold (below 85F). Third, buy an immersion blender if you don't already have one. It's the secret to smooth ganache as it homogonizes as it mixes.
  23. The only time I was carefull not to pull as much vacuum as the device would draw was when I had some delicate chocolate curls decorating the tops and I didn't want to crush them. Standard truffles will hold up fine to the small amount of pressure that comes from the vacuum.
  24. The trick to keep from cracking your truffles is to pass through the refrigerator on the way to and from the freezer. Place them in the fridge for a day before moving them to the freezer, then back in the refrigerator for a day before taking them out to come to room temperature. The slow temperature change prevents differential shrinking and resultant cracking. Even so, they aren't all the delicate. I chucked a number directy into the freezer before I read the instructions carefully and they didn't crack.
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