Tri2Cook

It wouldn't. If anything, it firms up. The flour hydrates a bit from the moisture in the butter, everything gets cold and you basically have a cookie dough that you can crumble over the fruit and bake.

That sounds tasty. So does the crawfish and corn chowder but crawfish, fresh or frozen, are not to be had where I live. The ham hock chowder is doable though.

Ouch... the food looks really tasty though.

That's exactly the same response I had. Those are some serious biscuits. Sometimes you see a biscuit and things like gravy, sausage, jam, etc. don't even cross your mind. Not because it wouldn't be good with those things, it just doesn't need it.

I have an Atlas hand-cranked model. I keep saying I'm going to invest in a motor for it, it's a bit of a pain to do some things with the hand-cranked version without an extra pair of hands, but then I tell myself I really don't use it that often and put it off. The next time I decide to use it, I grumble and grump about getting a motor for it the entire time I'm using it and the circle continues.

Hopefully he does... I'm curious now.

Gelatin-molded propellers! I look forward to the reveal of whatever this is going to be.

I'll file those tips away for next time. Too late for this round, I beat the bottom off of them. Not wanting total waste, I scooped the fillings out with the broken off bottoms and ate them.

The soft ganache wound up not being an issue but I did have 3 of the 24 bunnies absolutely refuse to leave the molds. The 21 that escaped look good. No temper issues that I can see, nice and shiny. Those 3 just wouldn't budge. I wacked the mold so much the bottoms broke off the chocolates and they still didn't move. Wasn't too disappointing, I looked at the molds from underneath before filling and could see that those 3 hadn't separated from the mold like the rest. Probably should have just skipped filling them but optimism pushed me to go ahead. As a beginner, I can live with a 21 out of 24 success ratio but curiosity has me wondering why those 3 wouldn't exit. Forced me to wash the mold so now I'm in delay mode while they dry. Thanks Kerry! Found the thread, gonna read through it while I wait for my molds to dry.

So, as I dig deeper into this chocolates thing, I'm beginning to see that a large part of the learning curve must be figuring out how to do this without making a big f'ing mess.

I know how that goes at work. Much more so in your profession. The ganache wasn't soft enough to be pushed out, just a lot softer than I expected. Lesson learned on not testing the recipe. Laiskonis recipes have always been trustworthy, I've never had one fail, so I'm assuming either there was some difference in the chocolates we used or he was actually going for a softer, creamy filling. But I'm not 100% happy with the level of coffee flavor either so I'll probably just look for a different coffee ganache recipe next time.

So I made the mistake of using a ganache I haven't tested as a filling. It's a Michael Laiskonis recipe for coffee ganache and I've never had one of his recipes let me down before so I was confident. I made the ganache as his recipe dictates with the addition that I added 1% silk from the EZ-Temper when the ganache hit 28 C. It seemed on the fluid side when filling the molds but I continued to trust. 3 hours later, in a fairly chilly room, it's pretty much the texture of a soft cream filling. It doesn't flow if I tilt the molds but it's pretty soft. I can live with that as far as texture for the filling goes in this particular piece (it was piped over a layer of dulce de leche and they seem to be pretty close to the same in texture, so they should meld pretty well in the mouth) but I don't have enough experience with molded chocolates to know if it's firm enough to support bottoming. I was hoping to finish them tonight but now I'm thinking I'll leave them overnight and see if they firm up more. I guess what I'm basically wondering is, how soft is too soft for bottoming? Edit: I still don't know what is too soft but I decided to go ahead and finish them tonight anyway and there doesn't seem to be any problems. So I now know what isn't too soft.

As a beverage, tomato juice is definitely not one of my favorite things.

Nothing to do with location for me... the Bloody Mary is an unpleasant concoction at it's best (and completely horrible at it's worst) and the addition of clam juice in the Caesar does absolutely nothing to improve upon that.

This question isn't directly related to mold size but it's in the general area of mold shopping so I'll ask it anyway. I'm looking at Chocolate World molds trying to figure out which one I can use for making half eggs for Easter (not this year) but I'm not sure what it means when a mold is listed as a "double mold". Does that mean it's two parts that clamp together to form full 3d eggs? I'm assuming that's what it means since they're significantly more costly than the molds not designated "double".

Still not looking too good for the smoker that weekend so maybe I'll remedy my mistake with St. Patrick's Day for Easter. Somehow I completely failed to realize how close we were to St. Pat's until it was way too late to start the corned beef I thought I was going to make. But there's plenty of time to do one for Easter. Maybe... or maybe I'll just make a sandwich and call it a day.

That's awesome that you see that price and can say "nah, I'll hold out for cheaper". I can't get the "meaty soup/dog bones" for that price where I live... much less any of the actual meat. I don't think I've ever even seen a brisket here that wasn't already corned.

The game is to figure out who it is, it was figured out. Fair game. No gun jumping occurred.

Yeah but... I added the *********** to the quote... because that's not what's in the original.

You ran with that inspiration, yours are really nice.

Something like this? I think the technique was explained a page or two after that.

I hope you get to dive back into the chocolate before too long. I'll be joining the posting soon, though probably not in the "showroom finish" thread at my experience level. I wouldn't bet on any of it being inspirational but I'm having fun learning.

Thanks! I'll take a peek at the Chocolate World site. Sometimes it's easier to find the mold there then search Chocolat-Chocolat by number. C-C and dr.ca are pretty much my best options for where I live. The exchange is too bad right now to order from the US. Ordering directly from the Chocolate World site is competitive with any Canadian options even with exchange and shipping but I'm guessing the duties would bump it up quite a bit so I like to check within Canada first. Not really a hurry, I won't be able to use them for this Easter no matter where I get them.

All that egg half joining seems like a lot of trouble to me but I like seeing the results when others do it. It's too late for this year but I want to get some molds to just do half eggs with flat backs for next year. So far, I'm having a hard time finding them. The egg molds I can find at chocolat-chocolat are all the double molds with clips, I assume for making full 3D eggs, and pretty expensive to buy just to use as half eggs.

Might have to go ahead and start with a backup plan. It's still a couple weeks away so things could easily change but right now the forecast for where I live is a 90% chance of snow that weekend. Probably because I had the nerve to broadcast that I was hoping to get the smoker out.