[How do they do that? (the bonbon thread)]

You are probably right. I can see some smudging on the first chocolate in the picture. 

[Confections! What did we make? (2017 – )]

Rosemary Crunch. Rosemary creme fraiche ganache with a crunchy layer with homemade feuilletine and cocoa nibs. I added grounded rosemary powder to cocoa butter for the top decoration, I wanted more rosemary hint in there. I think the crunch should have been thinner, next time.

[Your Daily Sweets: What Are You Making and Baking? (2017 – )]

On 2/17/2020 at 2:28 PM, pastrygirl said:

My SIL organized a surprise party for my youngest brother and asked if I had time to make a cake.  She suggested Dungeons & Dragons or Lord of the Rings as a theme and this is what I came up with, had a lot of fun with it.  All my V-day stuff was done so I had time to play.  Fire breathing dragon for Joe.  A good time was had by all.

 

chocolate scales and flames, marshmallow fondant mouth

 

The flames were my favorite part

 

and some bonbons of course - i don't tape molds for just anyone!  Note, green painters tape is not the best for this

 

 

birthday boy and our nephew discovering the layer of sprinkles between cakes, plus the only shot of the tongue

 

 

 

so messy!  scales and buttercream everywhere, it was a cold wine cellar so the buttercream was brittle. 

 

 

Gorgeous work!! As always, and we are a little nerdy like that at home, so the theme is a bonus!! Now I want one too, my Birthday is coming up 😅

[How do they do that? (the bonbon thread)]

I was checking Iginio Massari website the other day, and peaked at his chocolate line.

That is a signature, but it looks like it was applied into the molds, like a transfer sheet?

[Chocolates with that Showroom Finish, 2012 –]

I have to say that all in all, I din't get a lot of the tangy profile, mostly the creaminess, but also the chocolate I am using at this moment is not of the best quality (what I have available at work), it has a quite dominant flavor. In any case the overall texture of the ganache was incredibly smooth, I think I am hooked.

[Your Daily Sweets: What Are You Making and Baking? (2017 – )]

More lamination going on this week. This time I found a recipe, I thought I had lost long time ago, from a workshop I did in Italy, a million years ago. 

The original recipe had lemon curd in them and it was to die for, also uses lievito madre (sourdough), but I have been too busy to refresh my baby so I made a biga instead. 

[Chocolates with that Showroom Finish, 2012 –]

Not Valentine's Day production, but just experimenting. I don't get to do fun stuff like these at work, not yet anyway, so I do it on my own spare time 😁.

I had this idea brewing for few weeks and finally I managed to execute it.

Cherry compote, creme fraiche ganache (plain a simple dark chocolate and creme fraiche, nothing else. It made the smoothest ganache ever, I am in love!), small disk of pistachio gianduia, truth to be told, I didn't have any round cutters, i had to use a small pastry tip, they were tiny! Again at work I don't have a lot of specialized tools, most of the stuff i brought from home.

[How to avoid "circles" on small bar mold]

I think you are absolutely right! I tried a slower and higher temperature (still very cold in the kitchen). I need to check when I go back in tomorrow. 

 

Thank you so much, I know you would have the answer for this 🙂

[How to avoid "circles" on small bar mold]

Indeed extreme! It makes work a little tricky.

I have tried warming the molds at same choc. temperature, at no avail. They said they always had that problem with those molds, but also they don't have a ton of education on chocolate when it comes to troubleshooting. 

I will try room temperature, which is as you said, plenty cold.

 

Fingers crossed!

[How to avoid "circles" on small bar mold]

Mal comune mezzo gaudio

 

Misery likes company 😄

 

it is really frustrating, usually I can troubleshoot, but not this time.

 

I'll keep trying 

[How to avoid "circles" on small bar mold]

So, at work they have these custom molds for small bars, I believe they are Tomric, looks like thermofolded one (SP?). Anyway, they have an order for 500 business card size chocolate bars, but we only have like 6 molds, 4 cavities each (you do the math :-P). But as the chocolate set and shrinks, it leaves spots, like circles. We polished the molds and all, but it feels like there is not preventing this from happening. Any thoughts? I tried different ways, let it set at room temperature (which is 58F, yeah its cold here), until set on top and then in fridge on open racks. Still got those shrinking circles. 

[Some help with Salted Caramels (caramels au beurre salé)]

I used the November 10th adaptation. I find that the lecithin isn't necessary, at least in my opinion. Also I found out that sorbitol is not my friend!!! I think I will skip it from now on, really hard on the tummy 😣.

About Greweling caramels, I find that I like the non caramel notes of that type, when making fruit caramels, which I have used for my vegan ones. The caramel note, where the once I was trying to avoid when making those specific caramels, if that make sense. But based on the reading we did about Genin caramels, I think slower longer cooking is the ticket. I personally like higher faster (at lest with the recipe I have been using for the past several years), because I have noticed that long and slow, inverts too much sugar and creates a soft, dark caramel that I don't particularly enjoy.

[White Pan Bread Help]

Ops sorry, my bad. 

My answer stand 🙂

[Some help with Salted Caramels (caramels au beurre salé)]

So I made one batch, where I dry cooked the sugar the added cream, glucose etc. Cooked to 112C, added butter and cooked to 121C. The caramel was extremely dark, my bad, and soft, little too soft, but what a flavor!

The second batch I cooked all of the ingredients together except for the butter, that I added around 112-114C, then cooked to 121C, but I was more like 125C, so the caramel was not as dark, but too firm, lol me!!

Then I decided to out both of the caramel back into the pot (at this point I was running out of counter space, as I was also making croissants 😋).

Added little water, melt it all and cook back to 121, this time paying better attention of getting the pot off the stove right away. I am still not used to this stupid electric top we have in this house, I don't love it.

In any case the caramel is of perfect consistency and the flavor wow! I have cut and wrap them in wax paper and keep their shape wonderfully. I should mention that I didn't use any lecithin, as I don't have any. So much fun.

[White Pan Bread Help]

 

Not sure I can help you here, but when I bake loaf type of bread, like a semolina loaf, I bake at 350 for 40 minutes. 

Just for an example here is a link to KAF recipe for white sandwich bread. They have a pretty good selection of recipes and also the blog is very useful. 

https://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/king-arthurs-classic-white-sandwich-bread-recipe

 

Hope you find the solution and good luck!

Vanessa

 

[Some help with Salted Caramels (caramels au beurre salé)]

How did the experimentation go? I just made a couple of small batches (250 gr sugar), and I am very please with how different the flavor and texture profile are.

[Your Daily Sweets: What Are You Making and Baking? (2017 – )]

1 hour ago, rotuts said:

@Desiderio 

 

is that chocolate on the top ?

 

if so , was there any inside ?

 

and what keep the chocolate from melting and sliding off ?

 

best looking PaC Ive ever seen

 

and Im a bit of a connoisseur  of the PaC

 

if i say so myself.

Thank you :-) 

Not chocolate, is just another layer of dough that has been colored, the original recipe from Master Johan Martin (now if you want to see gorgeous PaC, head his way :-D), uses brown colorant, which I didn't have and I am always little hesitant to use artificial coloring in my food, so I used cocoa powder, substituted some flour for it. The cocoa dough was a little too stiff (well that is what happen when we go and change perfect recipes!), probably due the cocoa powder, me not adjusting properly and my flours being harder than the recipe calls for. So it pulled a bit on the dough underneath. Also butter wasn't of good quality, too much water, and even though I worked and made sure it was the same consistency of the dough, it still tore while laminating, the second turn. All in all a good experiment, the dough was beautiful to work with (the non cocoa one), supple and silky and with some good butter, it would laminate perfectly. 

[Confections! What did we make? (2017 – )]

On 11/17/2019 at 11:42 AM, curls said:

Cooler weather has come to Virginia so it is time to start making chocolates! Picked up some moulds from JKV chocolates while on vacation this summer (took lots of photos to share but have yet to sort thru them all). JKV has a great showroom and amazing "museum" with a collection of antique metal moulds. I found a 50 gram bar mould that I liked -- using it to make dark chocolate bars. The pictured bar is with Agrimontana orange peel.

Yum! There is something special about chocolate and orange peel 😍

[Confections! What did we make? (2017 – )]

Since I started working in the chocolate world again, I have been busy with production. Of course it didn't help that I started during the busiest time of the year. My hands haven't healed yet, and at this point not sure they will ever.

Anyways, work is fine, products aren't exciting, but I am trying to find my creativity here and there and helped them out update some stuff.

These are one of the new ones, not fancy, but they use our toffee, which for some reason they weren't using for production, like chocolate bars etc, but instead buying crappy toffee somewhere else!🙄 Toffee Butter Truffles. A butter ganache made with the long shelf life method of using 75Brix syrup and butter, toffee bits inside and in the coating as well.

[Confections! What did we make? (2017 – )]

On 12/25/2019 at 12:58 AM, pastrygirl said:

A few recent things

 

passion fruit ganache with tangerine pate de fruits

 

coffee caramel 

 

strawberry vanilla (Valrhona fraise shells, dark & white vanilla ganache layers) 

 

pistachio saffron

 

boxed

 

strawberry, pistachio, candied lemon mendiants for a vegan option (candied lemon slices from Trader Joe’s were good) 

 

snowflakes are a regular winter item but cute round jars are new and sold better than expected - I piped about 100 kg of these little guys!!!

 

made toffee for some corporate gifts, couldn’t resist a few colorful sprinkles. 

 

Gorgeous work. I wasn't sure where you worked at. It would be fun to visit you sometimes 🙂

[Your Daily Sweets: What Are You Making and Baking? (2017 – )]

Pain au chocolat for the weekend. Fun experimenting with a new recipe from Savour. I need to work on it, I always have limited time and space. I am ready to retire so I have time to play!

In general I like to make Italian style croissants (cornetti) because I find croissants not flavorful enough. 

Sadly I haven't had the chance to try them yet because my gallbladder is acting up, so this is on the no no list 😑

[Contemporary viennoiserie]

Thank you so much, I really appreciate it! I saw a couple of recipes from Johann Martin at the Savour school, I really enjoyed them.

[Contemporary viennoiserie]

Good Saturday fellows Egulletiers 🙂

 

I am looking into some contemporary viennoiserie classes. I saw there are a couple at Melissa Coppel atelier, but I am not sure I can shell the cash at the moment. 

So I am thinking of getting this book, Sweet Devotion by Daniel Alvarez, and was wondering if any of you have the book or took the class?

I apologize if there is another thread about this.

 

Thank you 🙂

[Chocolatier's Hourly Wage]

Thank you Kerry!

[Melting Chocolate in the Microwave]

Lately I have been using a combination of microwave and melter, due the fact that I need larger quantities of chocolate, but I don't have a large melter. I do leave an 11 lb block over night in the melter, and then I melt more during the day as I go.