[Troubleshooting Caramels]

7 hours ago, Chocolot said:

I use it when I only want a few hundred pieces.

Maybe I'm not really cut out for this after all... I'm not sure I can completely comprehend having to scale down to "only a few hundred pieces". 

[What to do with big batch of seized pumpkin fudge?]

4 minutes ago, Kerry Beal said:

Or what if you made some cinnamon bun dough, mixed your fudge with sufficient butter and spread on the bun dough and rolled it up (maybe a cream cheese layer too), slice, proof and bake as for rolls.

Wow... I almost want to make and intentionally mess up a batch of pumpkin fudge just to try that.

[Tempering Cocoa Butter?]

4 hours ago, Madsandersen said:

 

I think that I have heard someone say that if you spray cocoa butter with airbrush, the "airbrush" will temper the cocoa butter when you are spraying? Due to the cooling of the cocoa butter when blown out as small particles with cold air  

One thing I've learned is everything involved with chocolate work will have 20 different people doing it 20 different ways and they all seem to work for the person doing it. Somewhere in all that, you just do what works for you. 

[Chocdoc Does Dallas]

Nice looking chocolates!

Her name pretty much requires a signature beer bonbon. 

[Chocdoc Does Dallas]

7 hours ago, heidih said:

Can someone please just crown Kerry the Queen of Adapability?

I thought I did that a long time ago... maybe it was the lack of an official ceremony. 

[Build your own chocolate tempering machine]

3 hours ago, Madsandersen said:

 

I think the smartest method would be to use the sous vide as the source of heat, mounting a bowl in some enclosed box with water, controlling the temperature by the sous vide in the water. While some kind of mixer keeps the chocolate in motion?  

I suppose the best way to find out would be to give it a shot. Personally, I'm not a big fan of having water or potential condensation anywhere too close to my chocolate as a general rule. Maybe just a melter instead of a tempering machine? You still have to do the tempering that way but you said you're not having any trouble with that anyway.

[Recommended chocolate molds?]

8 hours ago, Jim D. said:

 

Yes, the business selling the molds is in Vancouver. I assume the stated price of $10 is in U.S. dollars.

Still a good deal if cross-border shipping, duties and taxes aren't involved.

Edit: so not the one I'd hoped. Nothing listed that is of interest to me but I sent them an email asking about the "others available, contact us at..." part. So we'll see how that goes.

[Recommended chocolate molds?]

10 hours ago, Jim D. said:

Seriously, these molds and the others from a Canadian source are amazing bargains.

One of those ads was in Canada? I'll have to look again. I saw some stuff that might interest me at those prices but figured by the time I did currency exchange, duties and shipping from the U.S. it wouldn't be nearly as much of a bargain.

[Starting a high profile new restaurant (after closing another)]

8 hours ago, gfron1 said:

There are a number of details that I won't be able to announce here until I can announce them through the local media. "Many decisions are yet to be determined."

Completely understandable. Not even entirely sure why the question crossed my mind since I'm not local and don't have the benefit of dining there anyway. I think maybe just because I've been following what you're doing there the entire time on Facebook and seen how much work and love went into the place. Anyway, wasn't trying to get you to serve something before it's time. I'm excited to see what you get up to in the next chapter.

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

5 hours ago, pastrygirl said:

though I guess "shit" works too

Works for me... more fun than the Wiktionary version and political correctness is not a strong part of my skillset anyway.  

[Starting a high profile new restaurant (after closing another)]

Congrats Rob, that's awesome news! You may have already covered this and I just missed it but, strictly out of curiosity, will this mean the end for Squatter's Café once you get things solidly moving with Bulrush?

[Labor Day cooking plans]

I once again did my Labor Day weekend food day on Saturday for Bama's opening game against Louisville. Made a couple different sushi rolls, shichimi roasted shrimp and Sichuan green beans. Today, I didn't cook a thing. Ate leftover shrimp and green beans from Saturday and called it good enough.

[Callebaut bittersweet chocolate viscosity]

All of the Callebaut chocolates I have on hand right now (white, milk, 54.5% semi, and 70% bitter) have the "3" star number for viscosity and I find all of them to be a little more viscous than I'd prefer at working temp (which, for me, is as soon as it's cool enough to add the EZtemper silk). You can get nice thin shells but it takes a lot of banging the sides of the mold to get rid of the excess.

[Chocolates with that Showroom Finish, 2012 –]

1 hour ago, Kerry Beal said:

It was you I was thinking about!

Confession time: it's not so much that I want to avoid colored cocoa butters, it's more I don't want to pay for colored cocoa butters on a recurring basis.  

[Chocolates with that Showroom Finish, 2012 –]

7 hours ago, patris said:

With so much gorgeousness in this thread I was hesitant to post anything

No need to worry about that, those look amazing.

 

7 hours ago, Kerry Beal said:

It occurs to me that the dendritic technique could be used by those who wish to avoid colour cocoa butters.

It occurs to me too... now. 

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

3 hours ago, Pete Fred said:

I think raisins would be better next time.

If you're lucky, you'll never know the full extent of the rabbit hole you just went down with that... 

[Melanger experimentation]

4 hours ago, Kerry Beal said:

I would be very hesitant given the adhesives involved.

Me too. Fortunately, it's really not all that difficult to clean. There are a couple of tight places that I use a toothbrush for but the rest is really quick and easy. If I'm not in a hurry and let it sit in a sink full of warm water for a while, I don't even need the toothbrush.

[Outside the Brown Bag - Taking my Kitchen Toys to Work]

2 hours ago, Kerry Beal said:

Anna sent me a recipe for cornbread yesterday - very rich and moist

Gonna have to put on my begging face and send her a message! Always on the lookout for good cornbread recipes. Especially as we start getting closer to fall, which means big pots of chili to accompany football. Nothing goes better with a big pot of chili than a big pan of cornbread... well, there may be a tie between the cornbread and a bowl + spoon.

[Making the best of a bad situation]

That's how you do it. They asked themselves "Do I want to make money or don't I want to make money?" and the answer was "I do want to make money." 

[Smoking cheese]

Cheese needs some time after smoking to be at it's best. I vacuum pack it and toss it in the fridge for a week or two, sometimes even longer than that if I can make myself be patient. It doesn't seem to be as harsh straight out of the smoker with my Bradley using the pucks as it is when I've done it with wood burning smokers but it benefits from some time either way.

[Strange Pizza Toppings]

Well, pineapple definitely doesn't belong on pizza* so I don't know if it's strange but it's certainly wrong...  


*I will admit that a friend of mine made a pizza using bacon, fresh pineapple and fresh jalapenos that wasn't bad. There was enough salt and heat to tame the almost dessert-like sweetness that is the usual ham and pineapple pizza. Still not something I'd make or order for myself but I didn't hate eating it.

[Melanger experimentation]

In that case, I don't know what the reason for waiting that long would be. I've never waited anywhere close to that long to start adding sugar and anything else a particular batch may call for. As far as heat, I just keep my heat gun handy and give the stones a shot now and then when I'm adding ingredients if it seems like it's needed. So far, once an ingredient is incorporated, I haven't had any issues with the heat produced by the friction not being sufficient to keep everything flowing nicely. Sugar loses some degree of sweetness over time exposed to heat but I don't know what the temperature where that begins to occur is so I have no idea if that could be a possible reason... to more accurately control final sweetness. I guess a test run of identical batches and run times adding sugar early and late would give a reasonable comparison to decide if there's any noticeable reason to do one or the other.

[Melanger experimentation]

9 hours ago, pastrygirl said:

Does it matter when you add sugar?  Will I get a different result if I grind the nibs alone for a while vs adding everything into the melanger at once?

I don't think the problem with adding everything at the beginning is the end result, I think it's that there's not enough heat and liquid (cocoa butter) at the beginning to avoid getting a thick mass that makes the machine struggle. If you're adding enough melted cocoa butter up front to keep things flowing, I don't see why it would matter when the sugar goes in. But maybe there is some chemical reason for it to matter, I honestly don't know.

[Rice cookers for singletons]

3 hours ago, liuzhou said:

Most rice cookers do not work on timers, but on a thermostat basis. When all the water is absorbed, the temperature rises above boiling point, switching the machine to 'keep warm' mode.

Sounds good to me. I was just guessing about the timer, I've never been curious enough to actually research it.

[Rice cookers for singletons]

6 minutes ago, ElsieD said:

Does the rice cooker you have @Anna N and @Tri2Cook only cook white rice or does it do others as well?

No idea. I've never tried cooking any other type in it. I assume it cooks on some form of a timer and there's no adjustment for that so I think any rice that wouldn't be cooked in the amount of time it runs wouldn't work.