teonzo

Maybe it's a matter of traditions. Here in Italy the recipient of an Easter egg would be really disappointed if the egg was empty without a surprise. If surprises are not mandatory in the USA, then much better for you, less hassles in making them. Weirdest surprise I was asked to put in was a piece of camembert cheese, the customer collected the egg 3 days before Easter (I assume it was for someone he really hated). I used molds from various producers (Martellato, Pavoni, a handful of others, there are many policarbonate mold producers here), it depended on the workplace and the size. In few words I used what the boss had in the laboratory. Each producer gives a table that says the aimed chocolate content for each mold. You have the egg height on one column, the corresponding chocolate weight on the other column. This way when you want to make a 1000 g egg (or whatever) you know which mold you need without relying on your memory. Unfortunately I don't have any of those tables at home (never made eggs at home). The desired chocolate width varies from about 3 mm for the small eggs (100 mm height) to about 10 mm for the really big ones (1000 mm or more). The desired width for a 265 mm egg is about 4 mm. Maybe this is another difference on what happens in Italy and what happens in the USA, maybe you are accustomed to Easter eggs with really thick walls. Just checked on Amazon IT: https://www.amazon.it/Stampo-POLICARBONATO-CAVITA-Policarbonato-Trasparente/dp/B00JC2TCIS/ this mold is for a 500 g egg (full egg, not half), the height is 260 mm (egg height, not mold height). Dimensions are almost identical to your mold. I suppose the chocolate weight given by your mold producer is the one for completely filling a half egg cavity, not for the finished egg. If you make an egg which height is 265 mm and weight is 2400 g, then the walls are going to be more than 30 mm thick, I'd say way too much unless you really want to play football with it. Teo

(I missed page 7 of this thread, my previous answer was related to this post) There are various methods to make Easter eggs. Method 1 is the old classic method, the one I described in my previous answer. This way you get the eggs with the exact weight you wanted. Method 2 is making half eggs, then unmoulding them and composing an egg attaching 2 halves. To do so you need to fill completely half a mould with chocolate, wait a bit, turn it upside down, empty it, then scrape the half egg to have a flat section. When the halves are solid and unmoulded, you heat a metal pan (warm, not hot), lay half egg (section side down) on the metal pan just enough to warm the chocolate (you move the half egg around, when you see it's leaving a trace then it's done), then attach it to another half to recompose the whole egg. This way you don't get the exact weight you wanted, you need great skills to err between a 10% margin. Not much sense in using this method without a tempering machine, since you need high amounts of tempered chocolate and the exceeding chocolate that flows out of the mold is starting to crystallize (you need to work it to be able to re-use it). Method 3 is filling a half mould with chocolate, waiting a bit then emptying it (similar to method 2). Before the chocolate crystallizes you run a palette knife (with light touch) along the egg section, keeping the palette knife at a 45° angle towards the egg center: you are not aiming for a flat section, you are aiming for a negative sloping section. Then you pick a second half mould, fill it with chocolate, wait a bit then empty it (usual as above). When the chocolate stopped flowing but there is still some protruding from the section, you put this half over the other half you previously made. The first half must be on the bottom, the second half must be on the top. In this way the protruding chocolate will go over the 45° sloping section of the bottom half, attaching to it and sealing the egg. Of course the surprise must be inserted before closing the egg, you just need to lay it on the bottom half. Same weight troubles as for method 2. Your best choice is method 1. Teo

I don't have the tables here at home and my memory is faulty (I haven't been on Easter egg duty in the last years), but if I'm right those dimensions are for a 600 g egg. For sure the weight range is between 500 g and 800 g. If you pour 2400 g of chocolate in that mold then you get a brick, not a hollow Easter egg. I don't know what method you are planning to use to make your Easter eggs. Since you are working in small quantities then the best thing is pouring the desired amount of chocolate (around 600 g for that size) into one half egg mold, put the other half egg mold on top (to get the full egg) and use a couple of clips/clamps/whatever to close it securely. Then pick the molds in your hands and start spinning to distribute the tempered chocolate on all the egg surface. Keep spinning for a couple of minutes, it depends on your room temperature. I assume you are not going to do dozens of eggs, so it's better to avoid going in the snow: better spinning by hand for 30 seconds more than risking to get a badly formed egg (with really uneven width). If you need to insert a surprise then be careful. You need to open the egg molds (just to divide the egg in 2) when the chocolate is making the transition from fluid state to crystallized state. Since it's the first time you have no experience, so better erring on the fluid side than on the crystallized side. Try opening the molds after 1 minute, you just need to open on one side (the base) for 1 cm to see if the chocolate is still flowing. If it's so, then close immediately and keep spinning for other 30 seconds, then repeat. If the chocolate is semi-fluid (it's not set, but it's not flowing neither) then open the egg, insert the surprise, close the egg and put it to rest. Teo

I would say a silicone brush, especially if you care about your molds. Teo

Some questions. Why do you need to fill it completely with chocolate? If you need a hollow piece, then there is no need to fill a big mold completely with chocolate. If you need a full solid chocolate figure that big (4 liters) then you'll face hell with latent heat of crystallization. Why do you need to know the exact chocolate weight you need to fill the mold? It's always better to melt more chocolate and being sure (some chocolate always goes wasted during any passage), the exceeding chocolate will be re-used in another way. Unless you are planning to make some expensive one-of-a-kind chocolate with the melangeur. If you are planning in making blueberry chocolate or similars then it's totally understandable you don't want to make more considering the costs, but in this case knowing the density of melted tempered chocolate would not help you, since the density would be different and depend on what ingredients you use. It's easier to help you if you explain your project. Unless it's a secret and you risk to find a Sith Lord at your door, of course. Teo

A cheap and quick source for soy lecithin is soy milk. I don't know what recipe you are using, but I suppose you could substitute few grams of cream / fruit puree with soy milk. I'd try substituting 2% (substitute 100 g of cream with 98 g of cream and 2 g of soy milk), there should be enough lecithin to do its job. Teo

I'm pretty sure Amazon will make much more profits from related implications than from the direct food sales. Food is the only thing that a person needs to survive. Food habits can say a lot of things about a person's preferences. Amazon bases a lot of their sales on targeted marketing, suggesting people what to buy after analyzing their previous orders and searches. Their current database is worth billions only for this. If they add food choices to their database, then they can exploit latent needs much more efficiently. I'd dare to say that their database value would more than double after adding data on fresh food habits. If they break even considering only the food profit sales, then it would not be a problem, absolutely, they would hugely increase their profits on the other sectors. There are other profit sources too. Suppose you own an insurance company and are evaluating the health insurance costs for a 30 year old person. Having access to his/her medical history gives some infos but not everything. Having access to his/her eating habits would give you a much more detailed perspective on his/her probabilities of having health troubles in the following years. Teo

Always wear a surgical mask and glasses when spraying. Teo

<broomstick_up_there geek mode on> If we want to be precise then we should specify everything! Even altitude and atmospheric pressure! I just looked in my Minifie book, no data on chocolate density whatsoever. I gave a look at Wolfram Alpha too, expecting to find a detailed multidimensional graph that would give the answer for all possible combinations. Nothing! I'm supremely disappointed! <broomstick_up_there geek mode off> This is really funny, since the only chocolate I have at home is a 72% dark, today I baked some meringues which I was planning to dip in chocolate in the next days. So I am in the position to answer to this question without much hassle when I'll finish those meringues. But before I need to bake other batches (I can't stop eating chocolate dipped meringues), one of them will be an experimental dried porcini meringue (I'm serious about this). Teo

You did not specify which kind of chocolate and at what temperature. Teo

Doesn't seem odd to me. Whole Foods stores have a distinct image about their products, if they add stuff that's out of that image then the whole brand looses a lot of the value it built up until now. There's a big potential market for food stuff that's not top price like Whole Foods: people with standard jobs whose paycheck does not allow for top class food and who have troubles finding time to go to a grocery store during the day. If you work as a nurse, a clerk or whatever and have children, then you don't have the financial resources to afford for prime ribs or wild blueberries, plus you would be more than happy to save time going shopping (this would mean more time for children). A lot of these people would be more than happy to buy food on Amazon for cheap price and getting it delivered conveniently (on their job place, at home or else). They would save time and money, and they are not the demographic for buying Whole Foods' stuff. To me it seems like the Whole Foods acquisition was the first step for fresh food distribution: Amazon was testing how to manage it and what are the best methods to organize such a business, since it's totally different logistic wise. Being fresh stuff you need localized storage places (stores) with a highly efficient organization (minimizing wastes is the biggest problem). Now they have enough data to know how to maximize their revenues, so they are making the first moves to get ahold of this huge potential market. Teo

This is strange, since the sugar is part of the inclusion. This means that if you work correctly then the sugar is surrounded by butter and dough, it does not come in contact with air. Being included there should be no way for syrup to escape out of the dough. I can only suppose you are making some tears / holes in the dough, which is a pretty common error when starting making laminated doughs. I don't know what your sources say (probably they mention it), but remember that traditional kouign amann is made using salted butter. A lot of people makes the mistake of using unsalted butter. The peculiarity of this viennoiserie is that it tastes of salted caramel. Teo

They were all personal friends, so I knew there were no risks. Teo

It's just the look... never liked scales, I really hate snakes. Years ago I made a dual layer bonbon that had a prawn bisque ganache (dark chocolate) and a hibiscus flower ganache (white chocolate), here is the page I made when I had a blog (it's in Italian). Taste was very different than what I expected: the toasted notes of the bisque overlapped with the toasted notes of the dark chocolate, while the "fruity" notes of the prawn overlapped with the hibiscus ones. So it tasted like a weird hibiscus praline and not a fishy praline. You could tell there were prawns, but it was not frontal. After making them I gave one to various people (separately), without saying what it was, this way: me "hey, please try this new praline I made and tell me what you think" people "ok... uhm, it's weird but it tastes fine" me "so do you like it?" people "yes, it's good" me "would you buy it?" people "yes, I think so" me "what do you think the flavors are?" people "I can't say... tell me" me "it's prawn and hibiscus" people "...PRAWN???" me "yes, prawn, the crustacean" I'm an idiot and didn't carry a camera to record their faces. Teo

The usual suspects: Wybauw Jean-Pierre - "The Fine Chocolates: Gold" It's a collection of the 4 Fine Chocolates books, so you get the same content for a fraction of the price. I would suggest you to go with this one as the next purchase. Notter Ewald - "The Art of the Chocolatier: From Classic Confections to Sensational Showpieces" Good explanations and very good recipes. Personally I prefer the books by Greweling and Wybauw. About half of this book is dedicated to chocolate sculptures. Curley William - "Couture Chocolate: A Masterclass in Chocolate" This has some really good ideas for flavours. Ganache recipes are on the "difficult" side (high quantity of cream/liquids). Chocolate bonbons are only a part of the books, there are lots of other recipes with chocolate (cookies, cakes and so on). Morató Ramon - "Chocolate" This is on the artistic side and really expensive. It has some great explanations for balancing ganache recipes (plus others, the explanation for balancing chocolate mousses is even better). Bonbons are a fraction of the book, you find all kind of sweets you can make with chocolate, from spreads to plated desserts. All recipes are "artistic", meaning difficult and weird, so it's not as useful as the Greweling book for everyday production. Each of these books has its own style. This means a book will say "the best way is A", while another book will say "the best way is B", A and B being totally different. Different styles, different results. Teo

What filling did you use? If you made a turtle soup ganache then you'll be my hero! Teo

That's the reason why I don't find them appealing to eat... Teo

That effect is based on the non-miscibility of water and fat. If you add water to fat (just adding, without emulsifying) then they will remain separated. Mirror glazes are fat based (dairy fats in milk and cream, cocoa butter...) while neutral glaze is water based. You use the neutral glaze at a higher temperature just to retard the gelification (of the gelatin proteins) and crystallization (of the cocoa butter) in the mirror glaze. If you try pouring a mirror glaze over another mirror glaze (different colors) then you'll just get a shaded effect, not a spider web effect. Here is an old thread about this: If you add the word "Sattler" to your google searches then you'll get plenty of results (both pages explaining how it works and videos). Gérard Sattler is the French pastry chef who invented this technique. Teo

My apologies, I understood that you just made the jump from home baking to professional baking. My book suggestions remain valid, you find all the answers you need in those 3 books. Teo

Replacing them would change taste, texture and shelf life. Taste will change depending on what you use as substitute, this is totally obvious. Texture will change depending on what you choose to do (just omitting it or substituting it with something else). Liqueurs contribute to the liquid phase of the ganache, if you lower the water content then you risk to unbalance the fat/water ratio, risking to get a grainy ganache. So better substituting the liqueur with another liquid (better milk than cream, due to the fat content of the cream). Alcohol contribute to get a smooth texture, so you are going to loose a bit on this side (texture wise). Shelf life will be shortened due to the missing alcohol, it can be a problem if you need the longer shelf life possible. Teo

When done well (the bottom 2) this decoration is simply AWESOME. When done with mistakes it's definetely not appealing (I would not be tempted to eat the first and third from the top left), this seems to be a technique that does not forgive any small errors. Since we can see the results when it's not done well, we can try to get some ideas about how it's done. I'll try to give some guesses. The one on top left seems to be brushed abruptively. So I would assume this effect is made using some kind of bristle brush: spraying the grey cocoa butter, then pressing a bristle brush on the cavities (only vertical pressure, without moving the bristle laterally). You should need a brush with large bristles that can absorb the cocoa butter, where to find it I have no idea. The other "errors" look consistent with this idea: if you look at the 4th and 5th (counting from the top left) the parts that remained grey still have a red perimeter, this looks like that a single bristle went in contact with the mold but with not as much pressure as to touch it completely (just the perimeter and not the full tip surface of the brittle). If my supposition is right, then I would say it's almost impossible to get a perfect result for all the cavities of a mold. Teo

If you are asking just for personal knowledge, then the best thing to do is buying these books: Gisslen Wayne - "Professional Baking" Suas Michel - "Advanced Bread and Pastry" Figoni Paula - "How Baking Works" and studying them extensively. If you just moved from home baking to professional baking, then ask to your chef / supervisor to give you the due teachings / explanations. If you just moved from home baking to professional baking AND are the one responsible for producing a dessert buffet for 500 people, then it's impossible to help you from here. It's not polite to say this, but if this is the case then you are doomed. Better going to your employer and admit you are not qualified for the job, before experiencing some total failures. Teo

Other stuff (this 2019 seems slower than the previous years): Humm + Guidara - "Eleven Madison Park: The Next Chapter, Revised and Unlimited Edition" This is the revised edition of the second EMP cookbook. It's not clear if there is missing content, if there is added content or whatever if compared with the limited edition. I hope they take the Blumenthal road (same content, more basic package), but judging from the number of pages this does not seem the case. Michot Alexandra - "L' Esprit Chapel" A book about Alain Chapel and his restaurant, with recipes and stories by customers, people from his staff and so on. Bruneau + Chatal + Python - "La coupe du monde de la pâtisserie" A comic book / manga that tells the story of a (fictional?) team competing for the Coupe du monde de la pâtisserie in Lyon. Röllich + Carreño - "Bar Chef: Handcrafted Cocktails" Creative cocktails by a Los Angeles bartender. Bombana Umberto - "8 1/2 An Italian Chef in Asia" The only Italian chef with 3 michelin stars outside of Italy. His style is pretty classic, lots of truffles everywhere. Robicelli Allison - "WWE: The Official Cookbook" After this we just miss a Woody Woodpecker cookbook. I couldn't come with a WWE joke for Woody Woodpecker E__________, sorry. Glacier Stéphane - "Tartes et Gâteaux de voyage, pâtisserie boulangère" New book by this MOF, to be honest I'm not that excited, it does not seem to be on par with his best books. Price is way too high for the number of pages. Guichon Amaury -"The art of flavor" First book by this young pastry chef, king of social media like Grolet. I'm becoming a bit bored by this kind of books. Lot of aesthetic research, tons of silicone molds, after that nothing new. Teo

If you want to cream butter (adding air) with only honey (no sucrose) then it's a bit difficult, honey tends to prevent the increase of volume. For laminated doughs you just need to mix butter and honey until homogeneous, you want to avoid adding air, no need to cream the butter. The mixture will become softer and softer the more honey you add, unless you want to get something uber sweet then the mixture should hold it's shape and be pliable at refrigerator temperatures. If your dough starts weeping syrup quickly then you are doing something wrong, or you are working in an enviroment with too high umidity. Teo

What are you planning for the wedding cake? Teo