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teonzo

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Everything posted by teonzo

  1. They are asking for a new volcano eruption. Teo
  2. Coconut cream for the moisture, I would go with rosemary instead of five spice. Teo
  3. The big difference between wine/beer and chocolate (especially bonbons) is your "control" on your target market. A winemaker can have a good idea of what kind of customers are going to buy his wines, it depends on the final price and on the sale channels. If a bottle of wine is above a certain price range then it's hard that people will buy it blindly, most of them will be a little informed or more. Similar with artisan beer. If you sell chocolate bonbons, then it's almost impossible to have a good grasp of your customers. Few people buy artisan chocolates on a constant basis for personal consumption (those people tend to buy industrial stuff), most of your sales are meant as gifts, which worsen your situation: if you ask your customer what he likes, then most of the times he will answer with his own tastes, not the ones of the receiver. If you explain him how to consume that box of chocolates (temperature, before X days) then most of the times he won't repeat these infos to the receiver, since giving a gift and saying "you need to do so and so" is considered rude. The only setting where you have a good control when making bonbons is in an avantgarde restaurant: you know in advance how many customers you have, they will consume those bonbons on the spot, they are there to be surprised. All other settings are a nightmare, in a way or another. Besides that, people have different tastes. Someone will like light flavors, someone else will like bold flavors, even in the same family. No matter what you do you will always disappoint someone. That's something to learn to live with: never take it as a personal offense, let it go over your shoulders and try to fix the relationship with this customer. Your goal is to do something you like and try to please the more people possible. Pleasing everyone with the same product is an impossible task. Tailor making each product for each customer is an impossible task for a chocolate business. So you need to find a balance between what you like doing (there's not much sense in working in the artisan food business if you don't have passion for it) and what most of your customers like. Some times this can be an impossible task. Personal example: here in Italy chili is a polarized taste. There are people who love it and want it strong (most of them are from the South); there are people who like it but when it's moderate; there are people who can't stand it (most of them are from the North). Time ago I made a mango + lime + chili jam, I thought "I'll try to be on the medium range for the chili strength, so to please both sides". Result: the first group complained it was too bland, the second group complained it was too strong, nobody was satisfied. How do you solve it? If you take one of the two sides, then the other one will be even more disappointed. If you make two products, one light one strong, and write it on the label, then some people will buy the wrong one for mistake and will be even more pissed off. Telling a customer "you are the dumb one because you bought the wrong jar" is like shooting on your feet. For cookbook authors it's the same. They don't know the style of the professional buying their book. Some will aim for bold flavors, some for light ones, some for middle ones. Then you need to consider the difference in product availability. A chocolatier in Brasil that aims for a quality pineapple bonbon is going to use a ripe fruit just picked from the tree; being in Italy I can only put my hands on a pineapple that is like night compared to day. So we would be starting with different tastes, different intensities, different sugar contents and so on. Pretty hard to write a recipe that is the best for both cases. The cookbook author could write to use the standardized frozen puree of a particular producer (like Wybauw did), but the guy in Brasil would be masochist to use a frozen pineapple puree when he has the ripe fruit out of the door. In this case you can make them with good advance and freeze them. Teo
  4. Beware there are many mint varieties, so the flavor strength and how it changes with heat depends on this. For the cookies, I would say the best thing is to grind the mint leaves (put them whole) with enough sugar in a spice grinder. For the infusion, I have zero experience about using mint with cocnonut. I would avoid crushing mint leaves that are going in a hot infusion. You can add them whole and leave them in infusion for some time, or you can add them whole, wait for 1 minute, then blitz with an immersion blender and strain. If you want to coat the cookies in chocolate then you can make an infusion of mint leaves in cocoa butter, then add it to the chocolate. Teo
  5. teonzo

    Mushrooms

    Jonelmus variety? Teo
  6. There are no sure rules for this, it's all on a case to case basis. Flavor strength depends on where you live and what people expect. The "traditional style" (Belgium, Switzerland and France) calls for subtle flavors, you need to taste the chocolate first, the chocolate again second, then concentrate to find the subtle flavor. A Belgian chocolatier aims for his lavender to be really in the background. From what I gather, US customers want their flavors to be frontal, not in the far background. It depends also on the way you sell/give your bonbons: if you are making a valentine box with 4 different bonbons then you don't know in which order they will be tasted, so you need to avoid the chance that eating the "wrong" one as first will ruin the enjoyment of the rest. Extreme example: the chili bonbon adapts to the the rose bonbon strength, not the opposite. About flavor variation during time, the only certain thing is that the taste of a bonbon will change with time. How and how much? Only one way to know: direct experience. It depends on lots of factors. Lavender ganache made from dried flowers is one thing, made from essential oil is another. If you make it from flowers, then it depends on the flowers themselves (which subspecies, how old, so on) and how you infuse them (temperature and time, for lavender it's always better to infuse below 70°C). In some cases the flavor witll fade noticeably after 1 week, in other cases after 1 month, in others it will fade really slightly. The way it fades depends also on the chocolate you are using. Then there is the composition factor, this is especially true for multilayer bonbons. Water migration will happen between the various layers, "merging" the flavors. This can be a good thing or a bad thing. There are cases where the bonbon will taste "raw" during the first days, then after the flavors will merge it will taste harmonious. Other cases will be the opposite. Other cases you won't notice much difference. Then there are the cases where one flavor looses strength, the other flavor not, resulting in loosing balance. Best way to deal with this is doing a test batch. You freeze almost the whole small batch and keep out 10-15 bonbons, taste one every 5-7 days, to check how this new bonbon evolves with time. If it holds up to your expectations then you put out for sale the frozen ones and keep the recipe. If it tastes "wrong" for the first X days then it tastes "good" then you write that that bonbon must be "aged" for X days before going out for sale. If it's not on par with your standards, well, you work to fix the recipe and eat your mistakes so you learn from them. As with everything it takes experience. At the beginning it seems an absurd puzzle, time after time it will become clearer (relatively speaking, hahahahhaha). Teo
  7. That's so beautiful that nobody will have the courage to eat it! Well, maybe not children. Teo
  8. teonzo

    Flavored soda

    Homemade soda calls for mint, that's my favourite one. If you buy amarene cherries in syrup, then it's a good way to use the syrup after draining the amarene. Teo
  9. Problem with Opalys is after you open the bag. If it's in the bag and has been stored correctly, then no troubles. After you open it, better using it within 2 months or less. Seems like you pay double the price for Valrhona if compared to prices here in Europe. Which is a pretty big increase, even considering transoceanic transportation and import fees. US producers should have caught up about expertise and technology, so it's strange that there is no US competitor with similar quality and lower prices. Teo
  10. That problem is often caused by a low temperature of the chocolate you use for the shells. You want it to be in the higher side of the temper window, if you go on the low side then troubles arise. If you are making dark chocolate shells, then your goal is to pour it in the molds when it's around 32°C, without going below 31°C. Similar thinking for the other chocolates, adapting the temperature for the kind you are using. Teo
  11. Sounds like a lot of fun! And ethical too. You have lots of buds, resins and leaves to play with. Knowing this, I would say that you can try a pine needles ganache. After all pine needles and chanterelles are already paired in nature, since you find a needle in most chanterelles when you clean them. Teo
  12. I'm serious, I tried that. Years ago the foodpairing.be website was free for all, on the chocolate graph they suggested garlic as one of the best pairings. I was puzzled but curious, so I tried making a bonbon. That was a big surprise, like the gorgonzola one: I thought my friends would be spitting it on my face ("taste this and guess what it is", hahahahha), but all them liked it. I would have bet good money on it being impossible. You need to blanch it in milk at least 3 times to make it "gentle". The problem is selling it, of course you need a good amount of curious customers, but if you already make candy cap mushroom bonbons then you should be already there. If you choose the correct chocolate then you can pair it with almost anything. Try imagining some weird ingredient then make a google search, most probably you'll find that someone else already made a bonbon with it. About mushrooms, my favourite with chocolate is porcini. Teo
  13. You can make a bonbon with that chanterelle non-caramel, add a little piece of candied chanterelle, then finish with garlic ganache. Garlic pairs really well with chocolate. To make the ganache it's better to blanch the garlic cloves in milk for 3 times: put the peeled garlic cloves in a small pot, cover with cold milk, bring to the boil, drain the cloves and discard the milk, repeat other 2 times. After the 3rd blanching you puree the garlic, then add it to the ganache to taste. Teo
  14. Umami is already present in the mushroom syrup, since mushrooms are among the ingredients richest in umami. If you add umami to cream then it will recall cheese because cheese is dairy with umami. You can pair your experiment with the usual suspects like figs and pears. If you want to make a mushroom caramel then you just need to add ground dried mushrooms to a standard caramel. Teo
  15. When you candy something then some molecules of that something will end up in the syrup. That syrup gets its flavor from these molecules. You can't filter them with a cheesecloth, they are too small for that. Most of these molecules are heat sensitive, meaning that when you go over a certain temperature they transform into something else, most of the times this something else is not pleasant. This temperature varies from molecule to molecule. Each fruit releases lots of different molecules in the candying syrup, so you'll have some molecules that degrade at X temperature, others at Y temperature, others more at Z temperature, so on. To reach caramelization point you need to go over 150°C, at that temperature most of those molecules already degraded, meaning the flavor of your syrup will get ruined and unpalatable. Years ago I tried to use the candying syrup to boost some mousses made with Italian meringue and/or pate a bombe. So I tried to cook the syrup to 118-121°C. My reasoning was: I make pineapple mousse using Italian meringue made with pineapple candying syrup, add pineapple puree and gelatin, then semi-whipped cream, then candied pineapple dices, so I get a pineapple bomb. I tried 3 or 4 times, each time the syrup started smelling burnt before reaching 115°C. I tried with other fruits, similar thing. If my memory is right only the syrup for marrons glaces reached 121°C without troubles, but I stopped using pate a bombe for making marrons glaces mousse, it came out too cloyingly sweet. Teo
  16. They had to use food grade charcoal and rye flour for the cookies. Teo
  17. If you try to caramelize a syrup you used for candying something then you'll get a bad surprise. Most of those syrups get ruined at temperatures much lower than the one for caramelization. For example the pineapple syrup starts getting ruined below 115°C. Teo
  18. Seems like there is a hole in the market: total lack of quality gravy mixes and lots of requests for them. I suggest that @Anna N and @Kerry Beal become partners in business to fill this gap in the market. Who votes yes? Teo
  19. You can try using a chablon with round holes with the desired dimension: - lay chablon on a pan with parchment paper / silpat; - pipe chocolate inside the chablon holes until it reaches near the sides; - sprinkle with that colored stuff; - lift the chablon; - repeat. Not many other solutions besides using a pipin bag. The chablon helps to give the uniform dimension. The weight of a single piece will depend on the fluidity of the chocolate you are using, so that's a factor to consider. Otherwise you can look into volumetric dispensers, like the ones for adding a filling (pastry cream, jam...) to pastries (krapfens, doughnuts, croissants...). There are a lot of choices. The small manual ones should be affordable, depending on your production volumes. With these you will get exact weight each time, so you still have to consider the fluidity factor (the final dimensions of the pieces will vary depending on chocolate fluidity). Teo
  20. Welcome to the forum, it's nice to see a good amount of chocolatiers surfacing from the lurking zone. I hope you and the others will continue posting, some new blood is always good. I don't see the need for a heated vibrating table. The need for a vibrating table, yes. For a heated one, no: you vibrate molds for few seconds, if the table is heated or not it won't make any difference. The only difference is that the drippings will harden on a non heated one, while they will flow back in the tank is it's a heated one, the last of your problems. If you do only molded stuff (meaning you don't need an enrober) and you are money scared, then the solution prospected by @pastrygirl could be your optimal. You need the EZtemper to temper the chocolate in the melter quickly and without troubles. That's something you do at least 1 time every day. Plus it helps a lot for ganaches. Ladling is boring, yes, as is filling dozens of molds. Ladling has the advantage that when you find the ladle with the proper dimension then you work quicker and cleaner. With tempering machines you need at least 2. If you are making stuff for vegans or people with health troubles, then 2 is not enough because you can't use one for both dark and milk, and you will always need one for white. The real advantage of tempering machines is that you can use the enrober, that makes a HUGE difference if you need to enrobe something. Teo
  21. The new forum software is malfunctioning if it allows such things to be posted. Teo
  22. Another solution: call your granddaughter and ask her to prepare a big load of homemade gravy to stock your freezer, casually (very casually) pointing out all the cookies/breads you gave her. Teo
  23. What about buying your favourite gravy from a restaurant, freeze it in ice cube bags, then pick how many cubes you need and nuke them in the microwave? Teo
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