gfron1

Welcome Prasham! Really looking forward to seeing your work and also more about your life in India. I'll be very curious to see what its like making chocolates in the heat of India. If you haven't already, be sure to check out the Pastry and Baking forum INDEX which gives a good overview of some of the topics, but then just explore because our pastry forum is very active.

Another way of tackling this is to do just one cavity. You'd be done in 30 minutes tops.

She said they tried it and you can't get the same precision. But we all know how OCD she is

Here's the tutorial and I'll add my running active time (hands on time) so you know not to ever attempt these if you want to make money on them. Start by polishing the mold. Then firmly press the tape into the cavity. She used her bare hands and we all questioned her on it, and her response was - if your hands are clean it will be fine. But more on that later. You'll have to develop your own technique. I have big fingers so I settled into a 3-phase pressing process for each strip. Then press down with a q-tip to make sure there are no loose spots or air gaps. Add your perpendicular strip and repeat the whole process. This is what you end up with. This process too about 35 minutes to set the tape evenly and remove air bubbles. Cost if I had my lowest paid laborer: $8. Then you look more closely and find all the mistakes that you didn't see the first time. I used my rubber nubbin' to get rid of those air bubbles. You'll note that I used painters tape bought on Amazon at 1/4". Melissa used Martha Stewart Craft tape that she bought at Michaels. It felt identical to what I used except hers was a pretty pink color. I then re-polished carefully to address the potential finger prints. Spray with tempered cocoa butter. This was a Blue Saphire that I laid on fairly heavy. Now the grueling work. With a q-tip rub away oppositional triangles. The goal is to push excess into the tape creating a subtle line that will be trapped by the tape. The first cavity or two are easy as the cocoa butter is still soft, but very quickly it sets and you're cursing your choice to do this project. Start looking closely now at my lines because I've seen many people do this technique poorly and it screams at you when its bad. If you're going to do this micro thin line it has to be perfect to look good. I averaged 3 q-tips per 2 cavities. And did I mention how hard it was to get the point!? Then allowing your finger to caress the tape as its being removed from the surface to add just a touch of body heat, pull the tape away. If you don't do the step the way I'm describing you'll get flaking and tears. You laziness very quickly begins to show... I went back then and carefully polished with an alcohol dipped q-tip each cavity that I had just cleaned. Because at this point you might as well finish the job right. I sprayed with a thinned tinted white chocolate. Running time: 90 minutes. Cost for lowest paid employee on my staff to do the work: $22.50. Shelled as per usual. (I'm using a slightly new technique that I learned from Melissa - to learn it for yourself take one of her classes or join us at the eG Chocolate and Confection Workshop next May in St Louis.) And here's the result. I left one uncleaned so you can see the short version of this. I also colored it slightly different. These are pretty good but you can see all of the flaws - some more noticeable than others. But of course if you were the one doing the work you would see every single flaw. We'll call my employee rate to finish (active time only) $27.50 divided by 28 cavities...labor alone for a mediocre job: $1 per cavity plus ingredients, overhead and attrition of staff who say they'll never do that again...you can see where this is going. For passion not profit. So there you go. That's how Melissa got this...except much better:

More often than not I can get my supplies via Amazon at a better price than my distributors...often times because the suppliers of my distributors are on Amazon. When you search, if you want lower prices aka larger volume, search for "bulk."

If we don't count the precision as a step, then the brushing technique was not complicated. Two or three colors painted along the rim. Then...just don't screw up the temper. But yes, I was referring to the aesthetic simplicity which I found appealing.

Having just taken Melissa Coppel's ganache formulation class I'm looking forward to sharing that info. If you're like me you usually start with someone else's formula and substitute ingredients not knowing the impact on shelf life or consistency. Now I have all the formulas. I'll be making my own from scratch recipe next week.

They did call it arroz con gandules, and it tasted correct (I've had many Puerto Rican friends in the past). And I debated if I wanted maduros or tostones, but my sweet tooth won out like always.

I'm off into the woods for the weekend, but when I get back I want to put the time into doing this correctly. There is absolutely no way of doing this in a profitable situation, but for show I'll put a couple of hours into a single mold. I'll demo it when I get back for folks.

The only time I think to look at the package is if I run into troubles. Otherwise I just follow the rules.

Everything that we did in Melissa Coppel's workshop this week belongs in this thread, but here's one that I felt was particularly stunning in its simplicity:

My on-the-cheap trip is over. First night was Chengdu Taste - absolutely fantastic. I met a Chinese friend the next night and he was impressed that I ate there, said, very authentic and mostly Chinese people eat there. I saw so many things on the menu that I haven't seen before. I ordered the Beef with Crispy Rice: The next morning I was craving a burrito so bad and ended up at Tacos el Compita: Dinner that night was Puerto Rico Express: and my last night was Dakao for Bahn mi: Capped off with a cucumber mango drink from Zero Degrees: Dakao certainly was the cheapest meal at $3.75 ($5 with drink and tax). Chengdu was the best thing I ate and the most expensive at $20 including a pot of tea.

It is a crazy amount of work and only for show, not production. Her assistant told me that they made 200 for an event and it took the two of them hours to do the work. I spent 30 minutes on just 10 cavities and they turned out mediocre at best.

I'm at a Coppel workshop right now and I asked her to show me her pinstripe technique. Here's hers: I was limited by colors and time but I know what needs to be done now. Here's mine: Just the left row. I didn't have time to do the rest.

That's what I did, but there still seemed to be some give due to the elasticity.

Was this inspired by the Durrells of Corfu? The episode that featured the kumquat liquor sure peeked my interest.

That's what I did and it worked, but for my dome molds (not half spheres) the suction was so great i was afraid that they were going to pull out. They didn't but there was some give.

I had Raku when it first opened but couldn't get to the sweets, so I'll try this time. Also, Suzuya was my favorite of the non-chocolate pastry shops on my last visit, so I completely agree.

I run my drywall blade over the top of my mold folded into the top (v. cutting into) and that levels them down for me. Where I run into issues if I try to rap out airbubbles in the filling.

Passion fruit bonbons for a private event coming up. I love and hate this mold. Pops out so easily...but pops out too easily when I go to back the bonbon.

Here are the recommendations from my Facebook friends:

No, its on my current menu with an Indian spiced dish featuring dokhla...playing off of a few thoughts starting with the fact that dokhla is often breakfast...hence espresso....then I fill skin with housemade sheeps yogurt...but its a lunch dish.

He would certainly be easy to work with. We've chatted many times. As long as wedding season doesn't tie him down. The question would be how best to use his knowledge.

The right has no wash at all. The left is the thinned wash. The regular wash (recipe above) was even worse. I'm playing with fillings so I made a lotus paste from scratch as the base of all of them. Some are plain. Some have an espresso candied kumquat in the center. Some are match green tea. One is a white chocolate ganache inside of the lotus. None have the salty yolk because no one in my circles seems to like it.

Here are my final cakes and they show the difference between un egg washed and a thinned eggwash.