ejw50
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Posts posted by ejw50
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I think freezing is worth doing to learn the technique. Somebody who attended an Andrew Schotts class (Sote23?) said that Schotts said that EVERYBODy freezes.
I use a foodsaver + bags from ebay. As Lior mentioned, you can use the reusable Reynolds bags (forum member David J does this). Greweling also has a blurb or two in his book about freezing. Wybauw has a shorter paragraph or two if I remember. Somebody (I think Schotts again, on here) said don't use a commercial vacuum sealer because you'll end up with mush afterwards. Just use an el-cheapo and you don't need or want the perfect vacuum.
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For what it's worth, my ACMC is hands down the best investment I've made- and I bought it knowing that I might not use it for more than a couple hundred pieces once a year. It simply frees me up to do other things, and makes the dipping easy.
It is my machine of immaculate chocolate lovin', and I would never want to live without it again.
I have an ACMC. Good machine, but as Wybauw says, hard to clean. Makes tempering very very easy. Also, makes filtering out the tiny unmelted pieces out very easy.
I use my Mol d'art more now, but I give the ACMC thumbs up.
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agree that closeups are always appreciated!
Thanks for the description of the technique. Changing the angle of the mold seems so obvious after you mention it!
Question on the red/orange ones. To get the red/orange to 'show' through, do you find you have to put a really heavy layer of cocoa butter? Assuming dark chocolate, I always end up spraying or painting white cocoa butter behind my reds/yellows to get the color layer to show up. but maybe I'm missing a trick.
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Ditto what everybody else said. I've done the vacuum seal thing many many times.
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John and Russell, thanks for those recommendations!
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Thanks for the tips. I was hoping to make it from paste and chocolate without having to make gianduja first. Ejw50, do you use any butter in your recipe? He has a few with cream and a few with butter but none with both. I guess I'll experiment and try a bunch of combinations.
No, it's pretty much the recipe in Wybauw's book, except with paste instead of praline. I didn't make gianduja in the middle.
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okay, I'll throw my hat into the ring with some stuff I've been working on lately. still playingwith finishes and learning.
Very nice. Do you mind describing your technique.
On the ridged domes, did you just spray half the mold? Did you have to block off half?
On the yello/green ones geodesic domes same technique?
Are the colored ones white chooclate?
And the round domes, is that luster dust?
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I want to do a hazelnut ganache for a molded chocolate - very smooth and soft - using hazelnut praline. Wybauw has recipes for both butter based and cream based hazelnut ganache. Has anyone tried either type of recipe? Comments? Thanks!
I use the Wybauw one. That's the 1:1:1 cream/chocolate/nut one right?
I've tried it with both praline and pure paste for the ganache. I like it best with the paste, it gives a nice deep nutty flavor that counterbalances the sweetness of the milk chocolate. Maybe the pure paste is a little worse from the AW point of view, but I like the taste better.
Either way, it is a soft and smooth center.
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OK first thanks to Jeanne who got me some callets. I was lucky enough to see her production and she runs a clean kitchen with emphasis on taste in her products. She also went way out on a limb buying ~$300 worth of stuff for a person she knew nothing about!
I made a batch of chocolates this weekend using callets.
IMO, callets are actually *cheaper*. Not cheaper in materials, but cheaper overall. They're a lot cleaner than blocks (which spray chunks everywhere when I cut them), which saves cleanup time. Also they're faster when seeding because I"m not blowing time cutting them into small pieces.
So basically the saved labor cost makes up for the increased materials cost.
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Following up on our very successful bacon tasting (http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=82167), we had a chocolate tasting last Valentine's day. We did ours double-blind, with the chocolate chopped and any identifying markings obscured.
Here are the chocolates for tasting (with a plate of bacon for "clearing the palate"
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Here are the chocolates that were represented. The unlabeled block at top right is Callebaut.
Almost all of the chocolates were dark, of varying percentages-- the one exception was the Vosges bacon bar, which was milk chocolate based. That threw many people-- they only figured out what it was because we had warned the vegetarian not to eat it. It was really good-- kind of like a Nestle Crunch bar, but with bacon.
May of the stronger chocolates did not fare well in this tasting, especially the Lindt and Scharffen Berger. The winner-- that is the favorite of most people (as well as my personal favorite)-- was the E. Wedel Bitter Chocolate. The bar is at the bottom right of the top picture, with a blue and brown wrapper. Wedel is a Polish company and I think it is owned by Cadbury. Here in Chicago, you can find the bars at most Polish grocery stores.
Cheers, Jen
lolol, love the bacon 'palate cleanser' lol.
I did a similar test of my lab. Dark chocolate with
Callebaut, trader Joe's, Valrhona, Ghiradelli, Hershey's, Lindt.
In my test, Callebaut came out tops. Valrhona came out
at the bottom.
Valrhona has a stronger, more distinctive taste that experts
can appreciate. But I think regular Joes and Joannes may
prefer something more plain.
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great find, I probably will subscribe
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woah lots of info here thanks for posting!
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Hi!
Was wondering if my fellow egullet posters could help me out. I'm going to Vegas in Feb and am looking at visiting some great pastry shops or places to get dessert.
I see that Jean Philippe Maury has a shop in the Bellagio.
Anywhere else I should be going?
Thanks in advance!
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thamks for review
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I've tried this with rice flour, unsuccessfully. It just did not taste right.
It tasted fine with glutinous rice flour, so I think the recipe was fine.
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thanks for the story.
It's important to hear reports of good customer service
in addition to the reports of terrible customer service (l'epicerie *cough*).
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There is a small chocolate shop here in Boston. I visited and was amazed at the budget saving measures she takes.
Namely
- No enrober
- No melter (!)
- Callebaut, not Valrhona or Felchlin or any of that ($$)
- About 10 flavors (not 30)
- Cutting ganache with a knife (not a guitar)
- About 4-5 molds (not mold types, molds!)
- sleeps and lives downstairs
- No huge freezer with freezer energy costs
- For efficiency, she cuts and dips ganache and minds the store at the same time.
http://www.chocoleechocolates.com/
In a lot of ways, her setup was far more primitive than that of many egullet hobbyists. I'm sure she knows about the fancier setups.
But she knew how much money was coming in and how much investment she could recover.
A real eye opener.
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If you have the book "Baking with Julia" Alice Medrich mentions her technique.
You can also see a video here
http://www.pbs.org/juliachild/meet/medrich.html#
She shows her chocolate ruffle technique at the beginning and the 'wrap' technique about 4/5 of the way. Rather than using acetate, she uses plastic matting from the housewares department used to drain glassware or something like that.
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We are obviously soul mates!!!!!!! I thought you did the same thing by ruining lots of bonbons!!! Unbelievable!!
lol
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My friends and family get used to my stuff, so it's always the same set of chocolates
- raspberry
- dark chocolate ("palet d'or")
- lemon
- Pistachio/cinnamon
- white chocolate vanilla
- cherry
- hazelnut crunch
- coffee
- caramel
- hazelnut cream
- peanut butter
- passion fruit
thanks for all on this forum who have helped me improve my technique!
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what part is buckling?
What about using straight acetate that is less flimsy than transfer paper? How tall is your cake?
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got some chocolate dried on my spatula.
Tried to use a knife to chop the chocolate off the spatula back into the melter.
Realized after I finished the batch (of 350) that I had chopped off a whole bunch of rubber off the spatula into the melter.
Said forget it and ate them/gave them away anyway.
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Those are backed off beautifully. Thanks for the pics!
I'll trust you guys on the mess factor. Maybe that guy in the video is just messy.
Chocolate Truffles
in Pastry & Baking
Posted · Edited by ejw50 (log)
I also think 2:1 is the classic for the centers. If yuo're going to eat them right away
you can go down to 1.6:1.