gfron1

My agent checks in with me every other week or so and asked for an update. She then followed up with the editor just to maintain communications. Here is her response (edited to protect the innocent):

and I'm not sure if I missed it but, no, do not just add cocoa butter to cut the sweetness. Won't work and will really screw with the texture. There are plenty if people who like white chocolate and so no need to bash it. Plenty of flavor pairings listed above - I like tart citrus like passionfruit with mine. Another brand option is El Rey, who's white continues to win top awards. I also have played more with the Caramelia and Valhrona Dulce (mentioned above). The Dulce is very chemical tasting to me, but the idea of a caramelized white offers new avenues to go down.

There's a cool event coming up in Phoenix on February 20th. I'm just a small part of it, but its focused on a wide display of indigenous foods from the Phoenix area. There's going to be food artisans, performance art, markets, and a dinner by me. More details HERE.

I put the price in context of other items. Guitar $1500+, Melter $600~, Tempering machine $3500+ I charge $2.50 per pc for my chocolates, and my markup on chocolates averages just about $2.15 of food cost, so nearly $2 per pc covers my overhead, equipment and profit. A couple of good weekends and it pays for itself once you adapt its use ot your situation. We're all doing different things here, so it all varies. I know that the batch I made today will be gone by the end of Saturday and I'll repeat the batch next Tuesday for Valentine's. If you know about how many you can sell IF YOU CAN KEEP UP WITH DEMAND, the its easy to calculate how fast it can be paid for. On a side note, I don't count previous equipment in my costs anymore because those expenses have long since been recouped. That makes the math easy - chocolate plus cream plus other ingredients, plus new toy=cost. ETA - I wish I had spent some time with another chocolatier before I bought mine, who had a similar setup. That would have really sped things up for me. And I still want to do that, and hope to once I'm back in civilization. Its like buying a car, take it for a test drive first.

for me, time is money and that's where its proving its worth.

Step by step I'm learning how to use the EZt. So I did the same process I mentioned above, except this time I added the silk to my ganache. I sprayed and shelled at 11am. Finished my five ganaches by 1pm and backed off at 2:30. That's damn fast. 3.5 hours to knock out 400 bonbon start to finish. I do have a question and I don't remember seeing it above, but surely its been answered - on formulas that call for mycryo, can I simply sub with silk in the same proportion, or if not, why can't I?

I'd probably try and crisp it up in some oil and make tacos.

Here's my thought - you do great work. There's plenty of customers to go around. Hone your marketing to highlight your local-ness. On a related note, when I move to St. Louis later this year, while my focus is the restaurant, I will continue doing my chocolates. That puts me in Rick Jordan territory. His chocolates are superior, but our style is similar (airbrushed, interesting flavor combos). I know where his shop is, and mine is a different part of town, so I know there are people in my area that wouldn't bother driving all the way out into the county, and likewise with his customers not wanting to drive into the city. So define yourself and keep looking for new opportunities.

Just thoughts - my favorite recipe just has you melt the butter, not boil it. Also, I could imagine that if the mixture wasn't mixed well, you could have pockets of butter that could erupt. To elaborate on my recipe - in double boiler melt chocolate and sugar, add butter, mix; add eggs and flavor, mix. Pour and bake. A much more gentle process than yours.

Slow day so I made Girl Scout cookies - thin mints and samoas. (for perspective, these are 4" across)

I never soak my beans, ever, no variety, nope. Not gonna do it.

I had those same beans a week or so ago, and because of my work schedule we just do them in the crock all day (boil then drop to a simmer, covered) started at 8am. Perfect. In a separate pot I cooked my house cured bacon with a chopped onion, and threw the whole thing in the beans, grease an all. Delish with a splash of hot sauce.

I said lowly in the context of my spouse having been one, and he said in the office they were the low-man. I've had so many proofreaders find so many errors over the course of this project and every single one of them is praised in the thank you section It was just tongue and cheek.

My spouse tried to explain the various levels of editor to me once ranging from content development editor down to the lowly proofreader. All are necessary and all have their lens focused on different things. I was tempted to not say anything to my editor about Shalmanese's comments just to see what her focus would be on...but I chickened out.

Seconding Kerry's comment about frames and enough polycarbs. We've had this discussion here before - I, like others, used to buy every cool mold, but ultimately we realized that we need lots of a few instead of a few of lots. I basically have three: Chocoworld 1433 dome (24 cavity), Chocoworld 1526 hearts (28 cavity) and a square magnet mold. In each shape I have 10 of each giving me the ability to do 240, 280, 240 of each if I need to. I don't get slowed down now. Other thoughts: a second melter (dark and white at the same time), airbrush/compressor with extra cups - I have to guns that I keep in my warmer in case one gets too cool. I do all of my cocoa butter warming in my dehydrator - precise and big enough to handle what you might do in the future. Be sure that your frames and trays are corresponding in size. Think about packaging and what you might need - shrinkwrapper? I print my own inserts on a color laser which I prefer to paying a printer. My stickers are printed.

I've been sharing mucho mucho information on eG because I have history on this board. I don't post anything more than announcements on my Facebook page, but here I think as a community we value the learning opportunity. I say all that because I'm comfortable sharing weaknesses and flaws. Today I sent the manuscript to my editor. That means I can't touch it until I get her feedback. I scrambled to make updates the past few days based on Shalmanese's feedback. There were two concerns that I wanted to address in this revision. The first has to do with the recipes themselves. Shalmanese found some glaring concerns which will need to be fixed. I've been somewhat passive on my recipes because I know that the editor is going to prescribe a format which I'll have to re-work all of the recipe anyway. That was less of a concern to me, but I know that it will be a big task when I get the editor's revisions. The second issue (and I'm curious what previous readers think about this) is that the introductory paragraphs seemed intimidating, especially in contrast to the very doable recipes. In fact, Shalmanese said something to the effect of - I wouldn't even get to the recipes because of how daunting the essays made foraging seem. I knew immediately that this was my shift from targeting advanced cooks and chefs to a broader cooking audience. Its that balance between sales and the purity of art. And in this case, I don't want to encourage unsafe and unethical foragers, but I do want people to get out there and try gathering. The learning I want to share is about whether to send a problematic manuscript to the editor (her first exposure to it) or to delay submission and keep reworking the document in light of the new feedback (potentially delaying publication). Shalmanese recommended waiting until it was in better shape. My spouse, who worked for Wiley Publishing for many years, but many years ago in a different era of publishing, said to just send it. His thought is that this is the editor's job - fix broken manuscripts. Not knowing what the best solution was, I sent it with a note explaining that I didn't know what she would prefer, and the lingering concerns, and she should just let me know what is best for her schedule. And that's where it sits. She acknowledged receipt, and that she would read it with those concerns in mind. I'll let you all know how it goes.

Since we're playing the "this one?" game, I use a Chiba Peel S Slicer, but I'm linking the PAGE with all sorts of options.

I think Blanca is a good one, not 2 Michelin stars good, but 1 for sure.

Very true. I just spent a week de-salting my life to attempt to recalibrate. After just one week I'm toning down everything in the kitchen.

As of 8:35 this morning I understand the difference between a proof reader and an editor. I will never look back. Thank you Shalmanese.

I keep forgetting to use it in my ganache.

I keep trying different strategies to see which is the best use of the EZ in my set up. Today, I turned on my Bakon temperer and warmed 4kg chocolate to 34º. It didn't quite melt so I upped it to 36º. That did the trick. I turned the wheel on to get some last chunks (I also did strain a few at the end). Then I added the silk and poured my molds. Worked perfectly. So that was success #1. Then I wondered if I could just leave the wheel running, but take off the pour spout. So I made my fillings and set them up in my wine cooler. 8 hours later they were set enough that I could cap my molds. 15 in the freezer and had 100% pop-out! Success #2! In the past I've heeded Ruth's advice to just eyeball the silk, but today I measured. Well sort of. I use the extra silk holder to zero out my scale, the I weigh the original to get my cocoa butter weight, the I do an educated eyeball of the amount. Just a small report.

I gotta say the person who is reading it for me right now is kicking my ass in a great way. Its interesting how different people find different things. Each read has made it better, and that's all that matters in the end. I will give it one final ready on Sunday morning - with nearly a year behind me and very fresh eyes. Some essays were written nearly two years ago, and others just weeks ago. So much has happened in that year and I'm ready to hand it over and get to the next phase.

I rcvd a PM and sent the manuscript off already, so thank you for all those offers. This should be the last time I need a set of eyes other than the editors..let's hope anyway.

My editor is finally requesting the manuscript. Does anyone want to read it before I send it off? I'd love to have a fresh set of eyes - not a editor's eyes, but a consumer's eyes. ETA: I'm leaving my type-o in this post because I think its funny in the context of the post.