David J.

I did this once with a softer ganache and didn't notice any problems. I would think you could make one batch per day and turn the molds a few times without a problem. That way you could keep it at working temperature for a while. It would probably even hold overnight in the fridge, though as John says it might not pay time wise. Rather it might be better to premeasure ingredients for each batch so you can put it together in just a couple minutes as the shells are setting up.

I ordered the boxes from ULINE. They have every sort of shipping box you might want. This one is 9"x6"x2".

Thanks Lior. The rose Geranium caramel is made like any soft caramel except that you include a single drop of Rose Geranium essence when it cools below 95F.

That's quite a bit of work Tammy! It took me a couple weeks to put my boxes together, but then again I was doing it in short spurts interrupted by many other activities so it wasn't very efficient. How many pieces can you create in a day? I cut the larger texture sheet into 1 1/2" in strips with a metal rule, cutting board, and hobby knife, then cut those into squares with a sharp pair of scissors. Then I dip about four pieces and then place the squares on each piece individually. With that size I can cover a 1" square piece or get fancy and just cover half as with the Jasmine Tea pieces above. If you do that it helps to lay out the pieces so one can support the hanging corner of the next, but it's not absolutely required if you keep your squares at 1 1/2". I cut others larger at first and they need support if I let them dangle that far.

Thanks Kerry! That's Andrew Shott's Jasmine Tea recipie. It's a basic bittersweet ganache with a Jasmine tea infusion. I slabbed it and cut it into 1" squares with my home made guitar cutter, then enrobed it in milk chocolate. To decorate I pressed a texture sheet diagonally on half and placed a piece of tea on the other. Andrew does the same except he uses a non textured sheet, probably the left over from a transfer sheet. It gives a rather nice effect.

I produced my first sample box for general distribution as Christmas gifts this year: I decided to use it as a learning experience and cast my own shells for the Rose Geranium Carmel using a two piece mold and spent time perfecting my chocolate curls for Grewelings dual layer "Hot Chocolate". For the crunchy hazelnut praline I used a burr grinder to create uniform sugar bits and it worked beautifully. Previously I had been using a whirly grinder and ended up with a good deal of sugar powder and too large chunks that had to be fished out by hand. The burr grinder makes it far easier. Other pieces include Kaluha pyramids, Passion fruit domes, Jasmine Tea, "Caribbean Cocktail" Geodesic domes, and a dual layer raspberry ganache and raspberry pate de fruit. I make them all over the course of two weeks and used the new vacuum freezer bags to keep them fresh as I worked. And here are the fifty boxes, about thirty in shipping boxes ready to go out:

If you are in a hurry you can melt some in the microwave, then seed as you suggested. I did that once, though it takes a few trips to the microwave to melt enough. 1.5lbs is on the low side for dipping if you have the 6kg model as it wouldn't be deep enough to allow you to work effectively. If I have a small amount to work with I'll use my Rev2 instead. The melter is designed to hold a narrow temperature range rather than to pump a huge amount of heat so it takes a few hours to melt chocolate from scratch.

It sounds like your ganache just set stiffer than you are used to, perhaps due to a little less liquid. I've also noticed that a ganache sets quicker when you temper the chocolate. You might try to add just a bit more creme next time. What technique did you use to put the ganache together?

Hello, We did it a week ago with a couple hundred PBJ's, all we did was put them on a full sheet pan, wrap them in cling film tightly and straight into the freezer...no special bags, vacuum, etc. Took them out and put them in the low boy over night and took them out the next morning...taste like heaven...so...go figure.... ← Great! That's just what I was hoping to hear.

1. Put tempered milk chocolate into melter, set the thermostat at 30 C and wait over night. Once you figure out what the dial setting is when you are really at 30 C this might work, though this is a really slow method and would require stirring several times as the chocolate wouldn't be evenly heated. An additonal problem is that you would have far more crystals than you want and it would be very viscous. That would necessitate bumping up the heat either through the melter or via an external source such as a heat gun for a time to melt out some of the exess crystals. Remember, it's time, temperature, and movement. You would hold the temperature up above the melting point for the crystals long enought to melt out the excess without melting all of them. That's a matter of feel. 2. Put tempered milk chocolate into melter, set at 45 C to melt, then set to 30+ and leave a few hours to form a "crust" Not sure exactly what happened here, but you may have formed too many crystals again, possibly undesirable types as well depending on the true temperature. I've never tried this deliberately but had it happen when I left a melter on overnight and the crystalization ran away. I just melted out the excess and it worked fine. 3. Put tempered milk chocolate into melter, set at 45 C to melt, then set to 30 C, add seed, mix etc until tempered That's the typical way I run my melters. Set it to melt everything completely overnight and stir it the next day to be sure everything is melted out before adding seed. I set it to what I guess is the correct temp and let it cool a bit before seeding so I don't have to add as much. Don't worry too much about the reading on your thermometer as long as it's close (calibrating your thermometer is a good idea too) and the viscosity feels/looks right. As always check the temper with on a piece of baking paper before using. I adjust the dial to maintain the correct temperature, but even then if it sits too long the crystalization will start to run away and I will have to melt some of them out with the heat gun to keep it flowing well. If I think I may have taken it too far I'll recheck the temper before using.

I just found an article where the author reports that Kee stipulates it not sit any longer than 48 hours and much less than that for best freshness. That would pretty much make it a specialty item that has to be planned for.

I love the idea of a creme brulee bon-bon Wouldn't the water content in the creme disolve the bruleed sugar? You have to make the sugar top on a standard creme brulee within half an hour of serving so it doesn't disolve. Of course you could always enrobe it in a thin coating of chocolate first and use that to close off the bottom of the cavity before bottoming... I just wonder about the shelf life of such a bon-bon. Would it need to remain refrigerated? Would it last long enough to ship to someone or is this a make it and consume it in a day thing?

I picked up a cheap food vacuum system that I spotted in the local grocery store last week. Today I tripped over a thread on it in the Kitchen Consumer area: Hand-held vacuum food saver, Can it be as good as it sounds?. The gist is that people really like it so I ran out and bought one today. It uses ZipLock style bags with a one-way valve. Here is the one gallon bag before evacuating: The directions said to be sure part of the food projected into the special ribbed area to ensure the vacuum sealed the food well. I was worried that this would mean that the truffles in the bottom wouldn't be sealed well, but that proved to be unfounded. After: The final result uses up a little more space in your freezer than other methods of packing, but it really did a nice job of removing all the air from the package. Even though the instructions tell you not to reuse the bags, I think I can get away with it for truffles. The main reason against it seems to be the idea of juices getting stuck in the ribbed area and chocolates won't have that problem. A skeptical person might suspect the real reason is to sell more bags a-la the razor blade or printer cartridge model, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. This looks to be an easy and effective method for freezing truffles. Since the vacuum is manually controled you can even stop it before it gets total in order not to crush delicate items.

I was afraid that might be the case. I'm making several different pieces to go in a variety box and I guess that I'll just have to leave the questionable items until last so I don't have to freeze them. That way I can freeze a handfull to check it out without risking whole batches. So, does honey freeze well? I want to add the Buckwheat Beehives to the mix and they have a center of pure honey. Or maybe if it's a butter ganache it will have a low water activity and long enough shelf life.

Can I safely freeze dual layer truffles with a layer of ganache and a layer of pate de fruit or marshmallow on top?

Have you tried adding cocoa butter to thin out your dipping chocolate?

Your butter should be room temperature (not melted) before mixing for two reasons: 1) It will incorporate much better. All ingredients should be of the same consistency for best mixing. 2) It won't cause the chocolate to cool and form chunks. Let your butter sit out next time and you should see a marked improvement.

JPW meant not to take the markings on the dial literaly as they will not be accurate. He said that each melter is different and you will get to know how high or low yours reads. As you say, he finds the temperature he wants, then turns the dial up so the thermostat triggers on, then backs it off until it just goes out. That ensures the chocolate won't go over the currrent temperature. Of course you need to stir it a little once in a while to ensure it's uniform througout. The temperature will dip a little below, then the thermostat will trigger and it will stay on until it reaches the current level once more. I'm not sure how narrow that temperature swing is, but I believe it is rather small with these melters. The reason you can push the temperature to the maximum (or even over) with thick chocolate is that crystalization is a matter of time/temperature/motion. You can raise the temperature, but it will take time for the crystals to melt out. Think of a water bath with lots of ice cubes at 2C. It would take some time to melt out the ice. As each bit melts it absorbs a good deal of heat that has to be resupplied by the melter. That's the same reason it thickens slowly over time but doesn't harden up all at once. It takes time. Of course if you add motion and stir it up you get your ice melted faster. The reason JPW prefers the term "Precrystalization" over tempering is that the latter puts all the emphasis on temperature and ignores the other two factors which encourges a lot of missunderstandings. The reason I like the term is that it reminds me that I have to watch the crystalization phase too. If the newly dipped/cast piece cools too fast you mess up the crystalization by allowing unwanted types to form, and if you let it take too long the crystals grow too large. I personally use a heat gun on low most of the time it thickens, but I also adjust the thermostat a little if I find it is thickening a bit fast.

Tammy, I'd suggest cooking your sugar seperately before adding anything else. I've had the best luck lately using the dry method. Yesterday I ruined a batch of sugar using the wet method as it goes from dark to burnt so quickly hidden under all the bubbles. Norman Love made a wonderfull carmel using the dry method in my class so I decided to try it out and it worked great. You just start off with a small portion of your sugar. When it melts you add more and wait for it to melt. This prevents having chunks of unmelted sugar while the rest of it burns. It turned a wonderfull dark shade without that burned taste. You just stop when you've melted all the sugar, then continue on with your recipie as normal.

You don't need much in the way of equipment, just some marble, accetate and an offset spatula. The plaques are made by spreading a thin layer of chocolate on an accetate sheet and cutting the chocolate (not the plastic) with a dull knife just before the chocolate sets. You can also use square cutters if you want. Use colored cocoa butter on the sheet first if you want to make patterns. Check out my trip report with Norman Love at the FPS for a great demo of making three color cigarettes.

Qzina has a variety of covetures and good prices.

You can get Callebaut dark chocolate for $4/lb from other sources, but you can't use the L60-40 for dipping in any event. The "L" prefix denotes 12% less cocoa butter than the standard formula which makes it extremly thick when melted. I used Gourmail for my very first order but found that it has a very small selection of Callebaut. I'm using my L60-40 up in ganache.

I use Callebaut 811NV for my dark, but I may give the 815NV or even 835NV a try. Most of these basic formulas are available in varying viscosities. The basic taste is the same, but the workability for different techiques varies. If you find a letter in the prefix it means a thicker than normal batch: A-1%, B-2%, C-3% less cocoa butter, and so on. If you get a number in the prefix that means that percentage more: 1-1%, 2-2%, etc. If you like a particular brand but find it too thick you can always add cocoa butter to decrease the viscosity. I also use Callebaut for Milk and White, but that has been through inertia and I'll probably try other brands when what I have on hand runs out.

I can't find fat% so that trick is out. Without a reply from someone in the know I'll just have to guess.

I have burned out two KA stick blenders and now I'm looking for one that can run for more than one minute out of five without going belly up. The instruction book doesn't say a thing about giving it an extended rest every minute as some others do, but after the second died the first time I used it I have to assume that it is just under engineered. Has anyone had experiece with the "Dynamic" brand of burr mixers? They are commercial with a price to match, but I'll gladly pay it if I can use it as I want without having to keep a timer at hand. I don't need anything huge so I was specifically looking at the "Dynamic Mini Blender". The job that defeated the KA's was blending in callets of chocolate into melted chocolate in my Mol D'Art melters. Other uses would be making ganache and mousse. Those jobs don't require great power, just longer running times.