lebowits

Having JUST come back from attending a chocolate show piece class in Chicago, my admiration for these people went up 1000%. To have this level of skill in so many areas of pastry and to deliver such beautiful pieces inspired me. I've now felt the terror and joy of building a chocolate show piece. Mine was no where near as beautiful as those in the film. I too gasped in pain as the sugar showpiece fell apart. I watched two of my classmates pieces fall and felt great sympathy for them.

My favorite application at the moment is a simple pistachio gianduja consisting of high quality pistachio paste, chocolate, and confectioners sugar. Slab it, cut it, dip it in dark chocolate, and decorate with a bit of pistachio flour on one corner. Looks elegant, tastes amazing. The only down side is the cost of high quality pistachio paste. From what I can tell, the majority of the products available are a combination of almond and pistachio, not pure pistachio. To me, the difference in flavor is worth the price.

The "Fancy Food Show" will also be coming to Washington DC in July. The link is here.

Two of these fancy machines were installed at a local burrito joint. The biggest problem I noticed was that people seemed rather confused by them and took far too long to figure out how to use them.

Chef Wybauw is definitely speaking about glucose syrup. If you don't have glucose, you should be able to substitute light corn syrup without much difference. The only down side to corn syrup is that it often has a light vanilla flavor already added.

No information was given as to what would be changing or when it would be published.

Tabling agitates the chocolate promoting crystallization. Doing so, shortens the time until the slab is firm enough to cut. If you don't wish to table the ganache, you can leave it overnight in the frame and it should be fine by morning.

I finally found a method that was successful. For me it was a combination of adding a bit of confectioners sugar to the peanut butter filling, and technique during folding the "dough". In the original almond formula, confectioners sugar is added to the almond paste that is made early in the method. Since my peanut butter filling was consistently softer and "wetter" than I liked, I added about 1/2 the amount of confectioners sugar called for in the almond formula. This "dried" the filling a bit, but still left it very soft. It didn't seem to change the flavor enough to matter as the peanut butter is already very sweet. The more important element came in the making the 3-folds. As I rolled out the "wrapped" confection, the peanut butter would always squeeze out of every available crack and crevice in the caramel envelope. Since I had stiffened/dried the peanut butter a but, I was able to easily scrape it up from the extrusions and spread it across the topmost layer of the package. Since this is a laminated product, I reasoned that this was simply adding another layer. I would then complete the 3-fold and place the package back in the oven to soften the caramel for the next iteration of rolling and folding. After repeating this process a number of times, I wound up with a rather nice product that had many layers. I warmed it a bit one final time before scoring it with my caramel cutter and completing the cuts with a knife. I cut the pieces roughly 25mm (1") square and 12mm (1/2") thick. After cooling them completely, I dipped them in milk chocolate. I took a bunch with me to a party as it was a perfect opportunity for a tasting and they were very well received. I'm not sure if I would add this to my production schedule given the length of time required. Keeping the product warm during folding/rolling adds far more time waiting between iterations which simply aren't long enough to do something else. I'll probably try it a few more times just to see if I can streamline the process a bit.

Your posts got me interested in trying to make this again. I had done it a couple of times before but only with the original almond formula, and never with the peanut butter. I made the original formula again last week and it came out really well. It simply doesn't have a strong enough almond flavor, even after toasting the almonds. I've done this twice now with peanut butter and both times have been pretty much a disaster. The formula specifies that for the peanut butter "center", combine 400g of peanut butter (melted) and 100g of glucose. What I'm finding is that the resulting compound is much too soft and oozes from every crack. I'm thinking that I can remedy this by using confectioners sugar to bind some of the oils and give me a stiffer product (but not too much). Keeping the caramel soft enough to manipulate is an exercise in patience. I've people make hard candies use a heated table to keep the product warm enough to manipulate. With the cold weather I'm wishing I had something like that. I wonder if a heating pad underneath several inverted and stacked sheet pans would do the trick. Hmmm... something to try tomorrow.

All that is required for the foot is to let the chocolate be "dry to the touch". It isn't necessary to wait for it to fully crystallize. The goal is for the "foot" to be very thin. After many attempts to cut straight lines by hand, I broke down and bought a guitar, which admittedly is more expensive than most people are willing to pay unless you sell your product.

For me, the labor savings is enormous. I can fill, cap, and dip a batch of 126 pieces (63 per tray) in much less time than I can hand roll. The ingredient cost you pose is about what I get as well. I figure that the total food cost is less than $0.25 a piece which is certainly not the most expensive piece I make. Of course, you have to be able to sell them for a good multiple of your total cost.

Chef Greweling also posted on his public Facebook page that "Chocolates and Confections", 2nd edition will be published in 2011.

For my "traditional truffles" I use pre-made truffle shells, which are very thin, and provide a vessel to pipe ganache into. Once the ganache has become firm enough to support more chocolate, I cap the shells and dip them. I can do far more of these per unit of time than I can hand rolling, pre-coating, and dipping or finish coating.

You might also want to contact Albert Uster Imports. They have several "lines" of couverture. I've used their "gem" and "orchid" lines which are about $6/lb and $3.50/lb respectively. They will also deliver relatively small quantities.

What she said...

I took a class with Chef Wybauw earlier this year and on the last day, he had an impromptu conversation with me and a couple of others on ganache formulation and shelf life. The crux of the conversation was that there are a number of things you can do to extend shelf life, and the longer you want something to last, the more "exotic" you need to get with the components that will reduce the water activity or otherwise inhibit microbial growth. In the end, it is the decision of each "artisan" to balance flavor, shelf life, and the value proposition you wish to bring to your market. I personally, have decided that for most of my pieces, I won't go beyond the use of glucose, invert sugar, and/or alcohol (if it also brings flavor to the piece). I currently use sorbitol in one piece because that is what is called for in the original formula. My value proposition to my customers is that I make flavorful, fresh chocolate candies. They don't expect long shelf life, and I explicitly warn them about how long they should expect to keep them. This all being said, it is nice to have something of a guide which allows us to choose how and when to use different additives to give us a targeted shelf life in line with our own values.

Unless you are cooking sugar simply to cook the sugar to "caramel" and thus have a hard candy product at the end, people add water to make it easier to get the cooking process started. Many cooks are intimidated by the "dry cooking" method for making caramel products which include a milk product (e.g. cream), glucose or corn syrup, etc. Adding the water helps to mix the initial ingredients together. By the time you reach your desired temperature, the water will have mostly boiled away.

I second this. In my own case, I remove the seed when the bowl reaches 90F so as to prevent over seeding.

If you had more than one layer of masking for the cavities, each successive color would hit the "clean" part and thus look to be at the same level. It would certainly be "painful" to do this repeatedly for many molds over serial batches and make them look the same. There will always be minor differences in how you lay down the tape.

I've never seen a transfer sheet used in a 3D mold cavity. Only on flat pieces (even molded ones).

I use a larger Chocovision (X3210) but have hand tempered chocolate many times. Melt your chocolate to approximately 118F, add at least 10% of the weight of your melted chocolate in seed, large chunks work well, let the temp fall to 90F and remove remaining seed. Continue to cool and agitate to 82F - 83F, and then bring back to working temp which will vary based upon your chocolate (approx 88.5F for dark chocolate). Test your temper.

What xxchef said. I believe there is a variation of pate brisee which incorporates sugar to sweeten the dough. It could be that your formula would work if you use the brisee technique. Chill all the ingredients, even the flour.

The confection "center" of a Butterfinger is actually a "laminated" product in the style of croissant dough. Greweling has a good formula and description of the technique on p.198 for "leaf croquant". It's not the easiest technique as you need to keep the "dough" warm enough to roll and fold seveal times in order to get the proper lamination. It's definitely delicious and if you have the space, worth the effort.

I use his "sweetened condensed milk" formula because it has the least amount of water to start and seems to be the quickest to cook. In the past, I've made a "ginger caramel" by grating fresh ginger on my food processor and using the resulting "juice" in place of the water called for in the formula. This gave the caramels a nice spicy flavor. I imagine you could add pumpkin puree as well. My suggestion would be to "cook" the pumpkin and the spices together in a small pan before using them with the caramel. This will take some of the starch out of the puree and develop the combined flavors. Give it a go! i'll give it a try, thanks steve i was worried since raspberry puree is so "wet" lots of liquid instead of a pack solid like pumpkin...i'll write out how it goes, hope to get it done by next week I don't think you'll have to worry much about the water content of the puree. From the reading I've done, the total water content of the caramel is a function of the temperature you cook it too. Thus a "firm ball" is always going to have similar water content no matter how much water you start with.

Check with Revere.