Tri2Cook

Yes it is... and they've been harder to come by the past couple years which feels too much like making excuses so I've been pushing myself to work harder at finding them.

I feel like I've already pretty much figured out how you did it, at least in a general sense (though I could be way off)... me actually getting around to trying it may be a completely different story.

I have plenty of colors and even use them but that doesn't stop me from occasionally thinking "it might be kinda nice to not have to". I realize, of course, that there's nothing actually saying I have to... but you see all of this really nice work people are doing and it's hard to fully accept having a box of plain chocolates while constantly saying "but the flavors are really nice!"

I'm only 3/4 convinced I even want to mess with colors to any great extent, I don't think adding the additional task of making the colors myself would be conducive to pushing through the laziness barrier that is the remaining 1/4.

It even works in ice water. Sadly, her blog is dead and no longer accessible but there was a post on the Playing with Fire and Water blog where she did a plated dessert for Halloween based on black forest cake flavors and actually made a little spooky section of forest. She did the mousse filled tree by placing the hollow chocolate trunk in a bowl of water and ice cubes and piping the branches on. I thought it was pretty cool at the time and gave it a try myself... it worked great.

I wouldn't agree that's necessarily an accurate indicator of how much a person making chocolates cares about what they do but as you said, "you do you".

Most websites I've seen that sell chocolate molds tend to carry the non-polycarbonate plastic molds in addition to the polycarbonate. Some places carry them in two different grades, professional and hobbyist. As far as that specific design goes, I have no idea. I'd be happy to help if I just happened to know the answer but I don't want to sift through hundreds of plastic molds on 20 different sites to see if I can find it... but you could. Or you could email a picture of it to Ikea customer service and see if they can help.

Interesting. 50% sugar and 17% fruit. So, not having tried either, I'm guessing a whole lot sweeter and somewhat less fruity than what Kerry is doing... but explains why they can afford to sell it at their price point.

I don't think Kerry's home kitchen is the standard piece of kit. I think a lot of food labs and high end restaurants would be jealous...

A Herpstat and Flexwatt… do you work with reptiles? Herpstats are amazing controllers. Most of them are a bit pricey for a cocoa butter warmer but the Intro that you're using is pretty reasonable. I'm running a Herpstat 2 on each of my enclosures controlling a radiant heat panel up top and a UTH underneath and I've had zero issues with them. I have some less expensive controllers that I used to use for enclosures with less temp-reliant species that I'm going to play around with and see if they're precise enough for cocoa butter purposes. Not trying to convince you to do it but just for the record, I'm willing to say it isn't beyond your skills and I don't even know you outside of here. That stuff is marketed to the reptile hobbyist/enthusiast and is very user-friendly to work with.

Got sidetracked with other ideas and never got back to it after my initial disappointment that it was too soft. I have it stored with some other things waiting to be molded and it actually did seem to harden up more eventually, it just took longer to do it than most things usually do, so I need to finish that and see what I end up with.

In my universe! That's my story and I'm sticking to it...

Nice! I'm still going to give this a try just so I can say I did but I became a little less excited about it when I started tracking down freeze dried fruits and realized what it would cost to do it as a regular thing. I can still see maybe doing it as a seasonal limited edition or something though.

Decided to play around with a different rub than I usually make. Made a basic rub with sea salt, brown sugar, garlic powder, onion powder and a little cayenne pepper then tossed in a fairly large amount of fresh ground black pepper and very finely minced fresh lemon zest. 2 hours with pecan smoke followed by 2 hours wrapped in foil at 225 F and the ribs are out of the smoker... Sticking with the lemon theme, I made a bbq sauce with lemon juice replacing the usual vinegar and a healthy dose of fresh lemon zest that I strained out at the end. It's tasty but after a quality-control rib without sauce, I'm not sure how much I'll be using. I'm really happy with the flavor of the dry ribs. The goal was to not heat the house today with oven or stove, it's really hot and humid for here, so the only side dish is a basic garden salad.

Are those break room finds hints or just happy coincidences?

I have to confess that I haven't actually ordered it yet. I was excited about it and geared myself up to grab it when it hit the website, especially when it hit the site with an introductory sale price. But then I took a careful read of the specs and now I'm waffling over whether I consider a 500 gram minimum batch size micro enough to be worth the expense (which is significantly higher than the number on the website after shipping and currency conversion to Canada are added on). That's not really as small as I had in mind for testing and experimenting, I can get down almost that small in the full size unit. I realize there are limits to how small it can go and still generate the forces necessary for it to do it's job and I'm betting that 500 gram minimum is a safe number and can be flexed lower so I'm still giving it serious consideration.

That's a pretty hefty time savings but I don't think I have the patience required to stir something every 10 seconds for 5 - 10 minutes.

Thanks! That was easy. I really do learn something here every day.

I am following them... I just don't know where to find the stories I suppose. Social media beyond forums really isn't my strong point. I kinda have Facebook down now but I was pretty late even to that one.

Yeah, I saw that. I assumed I had 24 hours from when Rob posted about it. That was probably a silly thing to assume, it may have already been available for hours before that.

I gave up. I'm a social media dummy... I can't find it.

Man, that's some serious hair-trigger there. You read a whole lot more into what Rob posted than I managed to. I bothered my mom about a recipe from a restaurant she worked at for years. She wouldn't give it to me even after she stopped working there because the restaurant didn't want it given out and she respected that. But I still asked every so often just in case. I felt 0% guilt over asking. I didn't twist her arm or guilt-trip her or badger her, just asked. And she would laugh and say "maybe someday". As it turned out, when I was going through her things after she passed away, I found a little notebook and it turned out to be her notes from when she worked there. The recipe was in those notes. And to this day, I've never given that recipe to anyone else. And there are people who have asked and continue to ask. I don't feel uncomfortable because they ask and I don't feel they owe me an apology for asking. I'm so far removed from the time and place that recipe originated now that I may even give it up at some point so it's probably in their best interest to keep asking.

Yeah, they probably would... but I like them just as they are. I like chocolates that have that fancy design look but are still in the range of colors generally associated with chocolate.

All of it looks awesome but I really like these.