teonzo

For my tastes, unroasted is better. I always used roasted until trying the unroasted version in one of the best ice cream shops in Italy. I must say that one was a dairy ice-cream, but I tried the MC version with unroasted pistachios and feel the same for that too. Teo

You will still get it in 3 kg bags, packaged in carton boxes each one containing 3 bags. Nothing bigger from them, even if you order 100 kg of the same product. Teo

Sorbitol should give a better texture both about smoothness and elasticity. But I don't think this ingredient was available when this confectionery was first created, so saying it's "vital" is quite a stretch (as using the sous-vide). Teo

I wrote something when talking about easter eggs in the last days. If you have a tempering machine with good capability (which is your case) then in my experience this is the quickest method without using a spinner. First step. Pick the first half mold, fill the cavity / cavities to the brim with tempered chocolate, wait a bit until the chocolate reaches the correct viscosity to get your desired width. When the viscosity is correct, turn the mold upside down over the tempering machine tank, so the excess chocolate falls on the other tempered chocolate in the machine. Lay the mold upside down until the chocolate starts to crystallize. Until now the process is the exact same as for molded bonbons, the only difference is that for big figures you need a thicker chocolate shell (you need to wait for a higher viscosity). Now things changes from usual: instead of running a scraper on the mold to get a smooth plain section, you run a palette knife along the cavity perimeter, holding it at about 45° towards the bottom of the cavity. Here is a crappy image to try to explain what you are aiming for: After this comes the second step. You pick the second half mold, fill it to the brim, wait for correct viscosity, turn it upside down to empty it, then immediately put it over the first half mold, to compose the full figure / mold. The chocolate that normally would protrude from the mold (the one that you scrape away when making bonbons) will fall over the 45° depression of the first half mold, glueing the two halves together. Best thing to do is working mold after mold: as you complete the first half (just after running the palette knife to make the 45° effect) you start immediately with the second half, so they two halves crystallizes together. If you work the second half after the first one is crystallized, then you risk causing cracks on the first half. This method is pretty quick. Only downside is that you don't have perfect control on the final weight. Teo

Be strong, because these will not be the last troubles you'll have to face, especially in the first years of a new business. I would suggest you to look for the best ways to dissolve your stress. Between the long hours of kitchen jobs and the big pressure you are putting yourself into, then there will be a lot of stress coming your way. Better trying to keep it at manageable levels, both for the quality of life and your performances (the more stressed a person is, the worst he/she performs). From what you write you seem at high stress levels in this moment, better taking precautions. Teo

My spontaneous answer would be "everything" but I suppose you would kill me, hahahaha. The thing I'm more interested about is the vegetable charcuterie, if you can tell something about how it tastes and how it's made, then it would be great, thanks. Teo

After. You use the wood frame for laying the mold and keep it horizontal. It's mandatory to keep the mold horizontal while chocolate crystallizes (especially for solid figures), it won't stay horizontal by itself in most cases due to the shapes of the models. It comes handy for vibrating too. Teo

With old-fashioned mold making you use sand or similar: you bury half of the model in sand, then you pour the molten metal / whatever. From what I understand this machine works thanks to all the little holes on the base, which are used to suck out the air so that the mold can adhere to the model and the machine base. Whatever method you choose to raise the flat surface level as to reach half-heigth of the model, you must keep those holes functioning. So you would have to make holes in whatever thing you use to raise the surface, and those holes must be in line with the ones in the machine base. I don't think there are lazy solutions for this, it's much quicker to cut the model. This is one of the reasons why I was suggesting the 3D printer as the best choice for creating models. With a 3D printer it's pretty easy to print the 2 model halves. A 3D printer can also solve another possible problem. If you have a cavity in your model (a negative depression, just like in the handle of the tools you used as models) then there will be problems for the plastic sheet to adhere perfectly to the cavity surface: as the sheet touches the cavity perimeter, it becomes more and more difficult for the machine to suck out the air between the plastic sheet and the model, there will always be a air sack that will prevent the plastic sheet to adhere to the model. With a 3D printer you solve this problem just adding a little hole (1 mm diameter is enough) that runs down to the base. It's really quick to do with a CAD program, plus the 3D printer has no troubles creating such a small hole, while drilling the hole on a ready model can be really troublesome. If you find the right geek kid then you both can have fun. Geeks Kids love playing with this kind of troubles (designing the holes in the right places and so on), you have fun letting them have fun and avoiding getting mad yourself. Teo

Here I am. Sorry for the delay and the crappy drawings (I feel ashamed for the bad quality but hope they are understandable). Everything I write is my personal supposition, written without trying anything. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- VIEW FROM ABOVE #1 I would suggest adding an indentation running along the mold perimeter. The indentation should leave some space on the sides, so the wood frame can lay on the exterior. Best choice for the indentation would be a semicircular section. Radius should be small (the smaller the radius, the more rigid effect you get), but not too small, I would say 1 cm diameter is a good choice. If you get a rod/stick of semicircular section, cut 4 pieces of the desired length, glue them together to form a rectangle, then you are done once for all future uses. Just lay it on the machine and you are game. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- SECTION Here is the section (not the same measures as the first image), just to give an idea. If you get a wood frame with the correct measures then you can lay the mold on it and the indentation would act as a lock, preventing the mold to move. Building the wood frame is pretty easy, you need a wood bar with rectangular section, cut 4 pieces of desired length, glue them together (something totally basic for every wood hobbyist). You can build various wood frames if you need to work with many molds at the same time. You can build them of various heights too. If the mold perimeter does not shrink during the thermoforming, then you can use the same model for the indentation and the same wood frame each time. The indentation should be big enough to act as a blockage, not too big to avoid 2 problems: the bigger the radius the less rigidity; the bigger the indentation the smaller space for the cavity. This is why I say 1 cm diameter should be ok. The indentation should add enough rigidity to be able to scrape the mold as you with rigid policarbonate molds, you will not get a perfect scrape, but something decent is much better than nothing. Only case when you could face ig troubles is if you have 1 big cavity, filled to the brim (sensible weight that will bend the mold), in this case hold the mold putting your hand under the cavity. The combination of wood frame + indentations should be enough to be able to put the mold on the vibrating table without creating a mess. The indentation adds rigidity so you should avoid the slingshot effect. The indentation should be high enough to prevent the mold from running out of the wood frame (the mold should lay in place without going anywhere). ----------------------------------------------------------------------- VIEW FROM ABOVE #2 If you have moltiple cavities on the mold, then you can add one or more other indentations, to act as a "spine" and add more rigidity. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- I hope I've been able to explain my idea, if not then I'll try to do something better. Teo

We can call @liuzhou and ask for help. Teo

I talked with some people in the Callebaut circuit in Italy, they said it was similar to dark chocolate as far as composition (cocoa beans + sugar lecithin + vanilla, no added milk solids). Still haven't seen it for sale here (haven't spent a single energy searching for it, though, hahaha). If what you wrote is the real data, then things are completely different. If there is only 4.5% cocoa mass, then it must have a really strong taste in origin. This makes me even more curious about all the possibilities and about tasting the raw cocoa beans (just out from a freshly harvested pod, but I'd need to travel to a cocoa producing country). I wonder what could come out producing a chocolate with the same composition of classic dark chocolate, but using only unfermented untoasted white beans, or using fermented but untoasted beans, all the combinations. There is space for a lot of experimenting, so I assume the best thing to do is waiting and seeing what will happen in the next couple years, since the other producers won't stay put and the pastry chefs are only at the beginning of working with ruby. Teo

My mistake, I've always been told it does not have milk. Teo

I don't have any bias against American chocolate (I would be totally dumb to do so since cacao comes from the Americas). I'm not partial to Callebaut (on the contrary, never been a fan). Simply I don't like when people write negative comments basing them on rumours and not facts. Before bashing somebody / some business it would be better to check the facts. The webpage you linked is a perfect example of writing stuff without checking facts. My turn to criticize the critic: The fermentation part of producing chocolate affects the final price for less than 5% (it takes time, yes, but it's unattended time without using machines). Reducing costs for a 5% is pretty far from "dramatically reducing". Besides that, are we sure that producing ruby chocolate is the same as producing dark chocolate, just only with 2 steps less? No, we can't. Ruby chocolate is produced from peculiar beans that are purple. Those beans must be sorted. Most cocoa plantations have different cocoa varieties planted on them. This means the farmer can't collect all the mature pods from all the trees like they do for dark chocolate, they need to take them from the right trees. After that, most probably they must sort the beans, not just opening the pod and throwing all the beans together. When a pod has purple beans then most of the times it does not contain ONLY purple beans, there are at least the white beans too. So there must be some manual sorting, which most probably affects final costs more than fermentation (which is just done in bulk). There are other additional steps too: as Kerry pointed out, since there is no roasting the producer must process the beans in another way to reduce microbial activity. This is another cost that is present only in the ruby chain of production. So you take out costs from one side, add costs on the other. If someone does not know these facts, then better not writing those assumptions, because they are based on nothing. Some other things on that webpage. She writes "The Switzerland-based company" referring to Callebaut. Too bad Callebaut is based in Belgium (Barry-Callebaut has the headquarters in Switzerland, that is another thing). Someone that makes this mistake looses his/her chocolate credibility in a matter of a second. She writes "More than the fourth flavor of chocolate, Ruby sounds like a pink cocoa butter with hint of fruitiness." - If so, then the third flavor of chocolate (white chocolate) sounds like what? The taste of white chocolate is given mostly by the milk solids, they do not come from cacao. Ruby chocolate has no milk solids, just like dark chocolate and contrary to milk chocolate and white chocolate. Her sentence simply makes no sense. I stopped here since it's way too long and the few lines I read were so full of basic mistakes that it was just wasted time to continue. Before claiming to be a "chocolate journalist" someone should study what being a journalist means. First thing a journalist must do is checking sources, a quality that's totally missing in those first lines. Those lines also imply a huge lack of knowledge about basic chocolate notions. It's like someone talking about integrals without knowing what an integer is. Don't misunderstand me as a ruby chocolate maniac or as a Callebaut fan. I'm neither. On one side I think that the technique for producing ruby chocolate has a lot of potential and can lead to many interesting new things for us pastry chefs (what if they use the same technique but starting only from the white beans? what if they ferment and not roast?). On the other side I don't like how Callebaut is marketing it, they are basing the marketing campaign just like it was a new fashion scarf. Teo

I suppose you start from pre-made plastic sheets, all of them having the same dimensions to fit the surface of your machine. So you can ask someone to build you some wood frames to act as a base for the thermoformed molds. You just need a rectangular frame that runs along the perimeter of the molds, so it will be ok for almost all the molds you will make (with the exception of the models that are as large as the Vaquform surface). If you add an indentation (as I was trying to explain in my previous post) with a rectangular form that is just a bit smaller than the wood frame, then this would act as a "stoppage", keeping the thermoformed mold in place on the wood frame. Don't know if the thermoforming process causes shrinkage in the perimeter dimensions of the mold, this can be a problem. I'll try to draw something tomorrow, trying to explain what I mean. If you add the indentations at the correct places (perimeter and some internal ones if you have a mold with multiple cavities) then you should end up with a pretty rigid mold that allows for scraping too. You could even put it (with the wood frame) on the vibrating table of your Selmi, as suggested by @EatingBen. This Vaquform machine gives you tons of potentials. For example for next year's Valentine's day you can propose a sort of "high roller gift": for $100 (or whatever it costs) you can make a customized chocolate figure. Is there a better Valentine gift than a customized chocolate figure (a heart with her/his name, whatever) for your loved one? Everyone can have a box of bonbons, only she/he will have THAT chocolate! Teo

I would say it's the opposite. As far as I know you need a peculiar variety to produce the Ruby chocolate, you need beans that have a natural purple color, they are a very small percentage in the worldwide production. So they don't have many choices for the starting beans: purple or nothing, can't use the other colors. Quality wise they can't hide behind fermentation and roasting: if they use poor quality beans then there aren't many ways to mask it (like high roasting does for cheap chocolate). Blending has been the only way used to produce chocolate up to when people started producing grand crus. If you are producing a grand cru then you end up with a different product from season to season: you just depend on that singular bean producer, his trees will give different beans from season to season for basic natural reasons. Most consumers want a consistent product, that must taste almost identical season to season, year after year. This takes HUGE skills production wise: you need great expertise and great nose. High end producers keep using the blending method not for cutting costs, but for being able to produce a chocolate with consistent taste. If you are a bonbon producer then you need a consistent chocolate for your shells and ganaches: you balance your recipes for a given chocolate, when you buy it you expect it to have the same taste batch after batch, otherwise you would need to fine tune every recipe every time you receive a chocolate purchase (pure nightmare). Teo

Some more comments about this would be more than welcome, thanks! Teo

Using Mycryo for tempering gives more problems than not. It takes a lot of efforts and caution to melt all the crystals, if you don't succeed then you end up with little grains in your finished product, far from optimal. Is it quick for tempering? Yes, if you don't care about grains. Is it quick if you want a smooth result? No, definetely not. Last time I heard someone tempered chocolate with Mycryo was years ago. It mostly fell into oblivion, there are better solutions for all its applications. Teo

Better get used to this feeling, it will just keep growing. Costs depend on what you are aiming to achieve. Personal hobby? Full time job? If you write you need to practice tempering and molding then I assume you are at the beginning. So it's better to put some more practice under your belt before committing to a financially expensive choice. Try all the manual ways to temper chocolate (tabling, seeding...) until you have a feel for it. No matter how much you read and how much you spend on equipment, working with chocolate will be always based on sensibility. Best way to develop your sensibility to it is while tempering it manually. Buy some policarbonate molds, go for the useful and easy ones (demispheres and domes), avoid fancy shapes. Practice making filled bonbons that taste great. The average person does not care if there are 1 or 5 layers, if it was technically difficult or else, he/she just cares that it looks nice and tastes good. A simple coffee bonbon will always be a hit. Practice with decoration methods. Just start with the most basic techniques (no airbrush). There are plenty of threads with lots of explanations. Start with them and then try to be creative. Having technical restrictions (no equipment) is the best way to develop your creativity and your personal style. To do the above you just need few money for your equipment (I'd say less than $200), but don't under-estimate the biggest costs: chocolate and the other ingredients. After you feel confident with all these sides, ask yourself what road you want to take. If you want to make it a job, then plan carefully and take this road only if you are 100% sure you can commit for 5 years or more, otherwise it has no sense. When deciding what equipment to buy think about it not twice, not thrice, but 17823 times. You want to spend money once and well, you need to buy something that you will really use and that will suit your needs for the next 5 years at least. In few words: if you decide to committing to airbrushing for decorating bonbons, then buy a big air compressor. It has no sense to buy a small one, grow your business, then buying a medium one at the 2 years mark, grow your business, then buying a big one at the 4 years mark. Buy a big one at the beginning and only, repeat myself, when you are sure you want to commit yourself for many years. If you don't want to commit yourself then it's not a tragedy, absolutely. You can have a lot of fun even with the most basic equipment. Another important thing: if you want to sell chocolates then you must consider the licensing costs, this depends on the laws of the country where you live. It can vary from humanely affordable to almost impossible (this is the case here in Italy). Teo

Another thing that just came to mind. The problem with that kind of thin molds is that they flex and tend to not keep their shape. This can lead to some deformations. You notice this effect with the outer part of the thermoformed mold: the flat surface (the one outside the model, that is formed touching the base of the machine and not the model) will always tend to curve and bend. You can solve this problem giving more rigidity to your thermoformed mold. You get this by "breaking" the flat surface with something with a small radius (the smaller the surface radius, the more rigid the plastic, a flat surface has an infinite radius). You can buy some cheap O-rings and use them for this purpose. Cut some and place the strips alongside the mold perimeter, then place a whole ring outside the model (leaving some space between the model and the O-ring). The little cavity created by the O-rings will give much more rigidity to the thermoformed mold. Just think about water bottles: if the plastic surface is flat then it's really easy to compress a empty bottle, if it has a corrugated/wavy surface then it's much more rigid and more difficult to compress by hand. There is the problem that you won't be able to scrape out the chocolate that will end in those indentations. Well, just wait for it to crystallize, then you'll be able to get it out when it's solid. (I hope I've been able to explain what I mean, I'm ignorant about English technical terms and just used google translate for them) Teo

CNC milling would give you perfect models, but it's pretty expensive. To be cost effective you need to produce quite a lot of figures, I suppose the breakeven point is well above 100 units. I don't know how many times you can use one of this thermoformed molds, so you must consider this cost too. I would go with the 3D printer route. There are tons of ready-made models on online libraries, you just need to find a geek kid with good computer skills willing to help. You would cut all your learning curve time, considering how busy you are I suppose you have 98439843 better ways to spend your time than nerding with a CAD program. This would help the geek computer skilled kid in his social life, since he could brag with his friends showing some chocolate figures and saying "I made the models for these chocolates and now we're going in full production!" (chocolate is always a nice way to impress some chicks, much much better than saying "I drawed this 3D model with my PC"). This would be good advertising for you too, all his contacts would see that it's possible to create chocolate figures of whatever shape they want, so it's much probable you'll find someone interested in doing business. Win-win for both sides. There is the problem that the surface of 3D printed models is not completely smooth. You solve this problem just using a "polishing brush", don't know how it is called in English, I mean stuff like this, which is used for polishing copper and so on. Use that while wearing hardware gloves and protective glasses, of course. After polishing you get a perfectly smooth surface. Only downside is that all the sharp edges get rounded, which is really not a problem with molded chocolate (I'd say it's a desired feature). But this is the MOST IMPORTANT thing: now you can make a video of you thermoforming a Han Solo action figure while screaming "I SHOT FIRST BWAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!". I'm eagerly waiting for this. Teo

The Dark Force is strong with you, young JoSkyWalker. Now you can ask @Kerry Beal to thermoform a lightsaber mold for you. Teo

Look for a kid with a 3D printer and propose him/her a fun-fun trade: he makes the figure you need, you give him some chocolate in turn. Teo

My apologies, I did not watch their video when I wrote my previous replies. Now I did. The technique is correct. The chocolate amount poured in the molds... not so much, with all that chocolate you get THICK walls: you don't get a hollow figure, you get a full figure with a small hole inside. If I poured that much chocolate inside a mold then I would be fired (with a blowtorch) on the spot. You made a beautiful egg, compliments! But I'm sorry to ruin the party and keep suggesting you to break it to check if you are happy with that thickness. Use a hammer to break it, if you go the traditional way (with a fist) you'll get hurt. Teo

So they are implying people use the method 2 I wrote in this post. Since you are not interested in putting anything inside the egg then I suggest you to use method 1. If you go with method 2 there is a good risk to end up with a "defective" egg (some little holes along the seaming line, which are not nice to see), plus it's much easier to leave fingerprint marks on the chocolate surface. The less you touch the finished egg the better (I'm talking about shiny undecorated eggs), always wear disposable gloves when you need to touch them when wrapping/packing. Touch the egg for the less time possible, since the body temperature will tend to melt the chocolate surface. Resuming: - pour 600 g of chocolate inside one half mold (I say 600 g and not 500 g just to get a bit thicker egg, so it's less probable to break it before time); - put the other half mold over the first to compose the full egg mold, if possible use a couple of clips/clamps to keep them together to be sure; - pick up the mold with your hands and spin it slowly to distribute the chocolate on all the egg surface (mold is transparent so you see where the chocolate is going and if there is a hole remaining), it should take around 10-20 seconds; - keep spinning the mold in all directions (a couple seconds in one direction, a couple seconds in another, so on) as you did in the previous passage, this is because after covering the whole egg surface the chocolate is still fluid, so if you stop spinning then you end up with thin walls and a huge pool of chocolate on the bottom of the egg (the part where it lays while crystallizing), so be patient and spin for at least 3 minutes, no need to spin quick, just keep spinning slowly in all directions until the chocolate stops being fluid, better spinning 30 seconds more than less since you are not producing dozens of units; - put the mold to rest until the chocolate is completely crystallized, it does not matter in which position you put it to lay since if you did things correctly then the chocolate won't move from where it is at this point; - unmould the egg when the chocolate is completely crystallized and completely detached from the mold (it's really easy to see, the egg matte changes from "smooth" to "fuzzy"). Since it's better to be safe than sorry, then I would suggest to break the first egg you make, just to see if what you made is really what you want (if the chocolate width is good for your tastes, if you distributed the chocolate regularly on all surface and so on). You are not forced to eat this broken egg, you can re-use the chocolate, but eating it is fine, it helps to keep a happy egg producer. Mai Tais are suggested for moral reasons, but only after finishing. Be really careful when using these molds, it's really easy to scratch them. Teo

It would be a nice battle between the two! I don't know what the molds on the camembert rind can do after 3 days at room temperature inside the egg and I prefer to remain ignorant. Teo