teonzo

That's the kind of customer it's better to loose. Only troubles after that. Teo

@Alleguede, so you prefer spending time with your new love instead of documenting your trip here on eGullet? When you come back the Doc should prescribe you some suppositories! Teo

You are asking for something that people do for a living. Chocolatiers who explain these details do so in classes or consulting jobs that cost thousands of dollars. Unfortunately we do not live in a fairytale, people who gain knowledge after years of hard work are not supposed to give it away for free to anyone. Best thing you can do is buying "Fine Chocolates: Gold" by Wybauw and study it from cover to cover, then decide if it's the case to invest money in a class with Melissa Coppel or other professionals that have that kind of knowledge. Teo

It would be easier to help you if you wrote the recipe you are using... Teo

This is the most incredible part! Teo

I stopped using titanium dioxide some years ago after reading a book about false myths about food and health related matters. It was said that titanium dioxide was on the "uncertain list" about cancer causing ingredients: there were suspicions it's carcinogenic, but no actual evidence on any side, just a lot of doubts (I checked the sources). When on doubt about such things, better keeping on the safe side. This seems like one of the many cases where the HUGE money at play (titanium dioxide is used on a boatload of different products) paid for silence. Teo

I would try this: - pour some cheap chocolate on each cavity of an empty mold, arriving just at the height where the white part would start; - let these piece become solid, then unmould them, these will be the "plugs" (don't know how else to call them); - when you are preparing this bonbon, then pick an empty clean mold, put a "plug" on each cavity, spray the white cocoa butter, then pick out the plugs, this way you get the white part first then you can proceed as usual. If you need some white chocolate colored totally white (for some bars, Easter eggs or whatever) then you can fill partly the molds with white chocolate, spray with white colored cocoa butter, then reuse the white chocolate. This way you recoup some costs, since you don't waste the white colored cocoa butter that will be sprayed on the solid white chocolate. Teo

I forgot this. Episode IX will be released in a matter of months. Lightsabers ready must be. Teo

I don't know what's happening on Amazon. I'm sure the third Migoya book was available in kindle format on Amazon Italy since I wrote about it to a friend. I checked yesterday and it's not available anymore, while it's still available on the US site. Weird, since they don't have the hassle of keeping physical copies. I hope you will like it as much as I do! Yup, I got the first couple numbers from someone who traveled to France (they did not ship to foreign addresses at the time), then stopped. I cut my spendings on books and magazines, both for lack of space and the fact that finding something new is more and more difficult (I don't need the 7984537th Paris Brest revisitation). I have a copy of the book by Minifie (now I see it has the kindle edition as well), which is the "original" of this kind of technical books. I was lucky to find a used copy for around 20 euro, I would never have spent more than 30 euro for that. It's really informative, I'm glad to have it, but it's just a "curiosity", the useful infos for an artisan are really really few. So I suggest you to look frequently at Amazon, sometimes there is a used copy for cheap, you must be quick to see and grab it before others. Teo

Yup, I tried bergamot + basil + ylang ylang in the past and loved it. But I must admit I used essential oils both for bergamot and ylang ylang. Finding good basil during bergamot season is even more difficult than finding good raspberries. Finding ylang ylang flowers is almost impossible. Teo

About chocolate, Italy is a totally different market than the other traditional top pastry countries (meaning the ones with the highly considered traditions), like France, Belgium or Switzerland. For a Belgian it's totally normal to go to a chocolatier and buy some bonbons as a gift. They are seen as an affordable luxury, people don't eat them every day, but it's expected that most people buy them on various occasions during the year. Spending that amount of money is seen as totally acceptable, if not mandatory. I suppose those countries (Belgium and France more than all) will have a huge cultural barrier before moving to what you post in the chocolates showroom thread. Italy is a totally different case. Central and southern Italy had almost zero chocolate tradition up to few years ago. Top quality chocolate was limited to northern Italy. Turin was one of the chocolate capitals in the world before the advent of the chocolate industries (it's not a coincidence that Ferrero came from near Turin). Venice has a strong tradition for chocolate and coffee, but only the drinks, there was no chocolate (solid chocolate like bars or bonbons) productions in the big hotels. As far as I know the first one to produce artisan chocolate bonbons in the Venice area has been Dino Pettenò around 30 years ago, just because he had some relatives that lived in Belgium, he went there to visit them and managed to find a shop where to learn working chocolate. Chocolate tradition was localized mostly in Piedmont and they had HIGH prices: only rich people could afford chocolate, it was out of range for normal people. Then came Ferrero, who made chocolate available for normal wallets. So, up to 20 years ago, the average Italian knew this about chocolate bonbons: everyone knew there was plenty of choice for industrial chocolates in the supermarkets and they were cheap; a fraction of people knew that there were some artisans making chocolate bonbons but never tried them due to the price (thus they considered artisan chocolate to be outrageously expensive); a fraction of this fraction actually tasted artisan chocolate and knew the difference in price was justified by the difference in quality. So we have 2 obstacles to overcome: artisan chocolates are not considered an acceptable and diffused luxury but as an absurdly expensive and unjustified vice (same image as white truffles); when someone goes to a pastry shop and sees the price for chocolate bonbons then he compares it with the industrial ones and thinks that the difference is ridiculous ("they must be joking", "they are stealing my money"). If you succeed, there's the other barrier on tastes: if you stray from the classics then you are doomed. For example the chocolatier friend (the one I wrote above in my previous post) made a "aglio olio peperoncino" bonbon ("garlic oil chili", it's a traditional condiment for pasta, as ubiquitous as tomato sauce), he received only insults: "are out of your mind?", "this must suck, chocolate is not pasta". The reaction to new trends is totally different. Nobody knew what a macaron was until 10 years ago. They were introduced as a trendy thing and people started buying them without troubles, cost varies from 1.20 to 1.50 euro per piece (60-75 euro per kg, on average the same price for chocolate bonbons), just because they were new and trendy. Artisan panettone has been made trendy by television in the past 5 years, so we passed from 5 euro/kg for the industrial ones to 30 euro/kg for the artisan ones. We just need to hope that mass media will succeed in making chocolate trendy, that's the only hope. US style bonbons have all the qualities to be pretty on TV, but I highly doubt TV executives know about them. When I went on TV I brought some bonbons to the executives of that programme and they had never tasted artisan chocolates before (it was nice to meet people creating a TV programme about pastry who did not know anything about pastry). Besides those mental barriers caused by traditions there are also the production issues: I don't know a single professional that makes chocolates and does not have a tempering machine. Professionals here start making chocolates only when they expect to be able to sell enough to cover the costs for a tempering machine. I don't know a single artisan that works like you and others on eGullet do. When you have big guitar + tempering machine + enrobing tunnel, then the production costs for bonbons are much lower than the molded ones, much much lower. Logistic costs are lower too, since molds take a lot of space (if you want to make same quantities as with an enrober). So there will be a lot of resistance by professionals, since moving to colored molded bonbons will mean loosing profit margins. There is a pastry shop in the region that opened few months ago ( https://www.facebook.com/BagigioLaPasticceria/ ) and sells colored molded bonbons. When I visited they had about 8 different kinds, there were about 4-5 pieces for each kind. This should explain their sales volumes. This is the only pastry shop in the area (that I know) that sells those kind of bonbons, I'm not polite in saying this but I was not impressed by them: they chose wrong mold sizes (you can't sell a 8 g piece and a 20 g piece, especially with only 8 kinds); colored decorations were nothing to write home about. Can't comment on taste, I was not tempted to buy them and try. I'm curious to see what they will do in the next 1-2 years for their bonbons offerings. Teo

Consider that chocolate products are not usually bought for immediate consumption. This means if you succeed to sell chocolate bars and bonbons during hot weather, then most probably those products will melt before consumption, so customers won't be that satisfied. Not a good publicity for you. If you have heat resistant products (cookies, pate de fruits, so on) then just focus on them at the market, the important thing is getting known. Popsicles would be the best choice of all! Teo

Notter was available as kindle format on Amazon UK (I think it was the UK and not the US but can't swear) some weeks ago, just gave a look to check but now it's not available. Maybe I was drunk? Time ago @Kerry Beal pointed out that Wybauw books are free to read on Google Books Canada. I highly doubt that the artful books (Leroux, Morato...) will ever get an electronic version, they are intended to be artful books to be sold for artful money. "Making Artisan Chocolates" by Andrew Garrison Shotts is available as kindle format. Chocolate com Frutas Brasileiras is available for free, I like it a lot since it's stuff I don't know, but its usefulness is non existent since those fruits are not available here in Europe. It's in Portuguese, if you don't know it just copy and paste on Google Translate. The book by Dandelion Chocolate is available as kindle format, don't know if you are interested in bean to bar, if so it's a great book. Theo Chocolate has a kindle book that covers various arguments (bean to bar, bonbons...), but I've been told it's written for the home user and not the professionals. "The Elements of Dessert" by Francisco Migoya is now available as kindle format, it's a great book for modern creative pastry, there is a little section on chocolate but maybe it's too little if you are interested only in chocolate. There are kindle versions of some of the Ecole Lenotre books (for really cheap price if compared to the hardcover editions) but unfortunately not the 2 on chocolate, maybe they'll be available in the future. There are various books for the home users, like Kirsten Tibballs and Carole Bloom, but maybe you are not interested in "easy" stuff. Plus there are all the scientific/technical books, like Geoff Talbot and Ferenc Mohos, they are pretty informative and a really insightful read, but they are REALLY EXPENSIVE and not that useful for the artisan. This is all I can think about now. Teo

Bacò (you must write it this way in Italy to point that the accent is on the O and not the A, so it's pronounced like French) was another popular wine here, like clinton and fragolino. It's really silly to see how Italy and France erased all of them. With the same reasoning we should ban pizza too. Teo

I would suggest you to try pairing bergamot and olive oil. Bergamot pairs well with most kind of teas (gunpowder, sencha, tieguanyin, pouchong...), not just the basic black tea used to make earl grey. Also with lot of flowers: chamomile, lavender, ylang ylang, rose, violet, jasmine... Teo

The most basic packaging set-up here in Italy is a ring of food grade plastic (usually HD-PE) used as a base to support the egg, then everything is wrapped in cellophan. Those rings are available in a lot of sizes through professional suppliers, but I suppose you can go to a hardware store and ask them to cut a HD-PE tube to your specifications. The base+egg are closed in a cellophan envelop, then decorated whichever way the shop wants. If you want you can use aluminum foil instead of cellophan, it just depends if you want people to be able to see the chocolate or just the egg shape. Teo

The market for chocolate bonbons is not encouraging here. Sales are low, there are few pastry shops that make their own chocolate bonbons, you can count on few hands the chocolatiers (shops dedicated mainly to chocolate). Chocolate bonbons are caught in the middle between tradition and modernity. They are seen as too expensive, it's a cultural heritage since they've been on the market forever (since every living Italian was born) but were considered too expensive by the average customer. In the past years there's been the "food explosion" on the media, so modern pastry is considered cool and people are willing to spend good money for it. But in the customers' eyes chocolate bonbons are not seen as modern, so they are not cool. People are crazy for macarons, which are sold about the same price per kg as chocolate bonbons. I would feel dumb to pay the same price for macarons and chocolate bonbons, since macarons are about 50% sugar while chocolate bonbons are more than 50% chocolate, there is just a HUGE price difference ingredient wise. You can sell creative flavours for macarons, but that does not happen with chocolate bonbons. If you put out an earl grey macaron then you get good sales, if you put out an earl grey chocolate bonbon (which I would say is a modern classic, nothing weird) then you loose money. The market for chocolate bonbons is mainly for the classics: hazelnut, pistachio, almond, coffee, caramel... Volume sales for chocolate bonbons are pretty low if compared to other countries. A friend of mine, who is one of the few chocolatiers in Italy, made some top class creative bonbons but with no sales, so a couple of years ago he decided to stop being creative and just stay classic, to the point thay he has something like 4 different hazelnut bonbons and the weirdest flavour is raspberry (only raspberry ganache). He said me something like "I'm not happy to make only classic flavors since it's boring and I feel braindead and downgraded, but I'm much less happy to continue loosing money just for passion". If I made a crostata di mele bonbon then I'm pretty sure I would end up throwing away most of them and a good chunk of customers would think I'm crazy trying such a thing. Some people started making bonbons "US style" (molded bonbons with lots of colors) which is a novelty here (we are used to the Belgian classic aesthetic of no colors, just chocolate), we'll see if this will change something. Teo

The problems with that kind of molds are related to their edges. First of all those shapes tend to be an obstacle to air flow, which is needed for a correct crystalization (you need good air flow to lower the mold and chocolate temperature). I would suggest to put the molds on wire racks and not sheet pans, if you can use a fan to aid air flow then even better. Probably you'll need to put the molds in the refrigerator for some minutes (see Kerry's post). Second, those edges tend to create a gradient for latent heat of crystalization: chocolate will tend to crystalize more quickly along the mold edges (the local ratio mold_surface/chocolate_volume is much higher), this way there will be much more latent heat formed per unit of time, this can cause the chocolate to go over temperature and loose temper. So you need an effective way to dissipate that latent heat. Third, the chocolate tends to crystalize more quickly along the edges (getting solid and shrinking) while it's still not crystalized on the rest of the surface, this will create some structural tensions inside the chocolate that can result in cracks. Some of those molds are almost impossible to get right without a cooling tunnel. Teo

Dark chocolate and milk chocolate will tend to overwhelm the apple flavour, that's for sure. White chocolate will tend to mute it. Caramelized white chocolate has the same problem of white chocolate (it will mute the apple), plus it adds the caramel flavour. There's no clear winner, on the contrary. This is just a case where you make the "less bad" choice. To me it seems to be milk chocolate (something mild and basic, like Equatorial by Valrhona), but I can't swear I'm correct. But I wouldn't count on being able to get an apple ganache that has a defined apple taste, the apple taste would be very subtle (that's why the only way to go is with pate de fruits or candied fruit, see below about candied fruit). Since there is a chance to add a bit of apple flavour then better use it, it won't make a huge difference, but a 10% more apple flavour should be really welcome in this case. My reasoning is this: to get a noticeable apple flavour you are forced to use pate de fruits or candied fruit, especially if you want to resemble apple pie. This raises the sweetness problem, so white chocolate would be best avoided unless there are bigger problems (aka it's impossible to get a decent apple taste with milk or dark chocolate). Between dark and milk chocolate, I would definetely go for milk chocolate. But I would try to limit its quantity as much as possible. If I want to resemble apple pie, then I would try to get some "cooked apple pieces" in the bonbon, you can't achieve this effect with pate de fruits, but you can with candied fruit. The most effective way to maximize the % weight of candied fruit in the filling and minimize the % weight of ganache is the one I described in my previous post (at least in my imagination, hahhaha). I would put the spices in the ganache and not in the candied fruit, it's much easier to manage. Since there's a way to add some apple taste to the ganache (subbing the cream with apple juice and oil) then I would definetely follow that road, there's absolutely no risk to make an apple pie bonbon with people saying "the apple taste is too strong". Since it's possible to add dried apple bits to the crunchy base then I would follow that road too, it gives a bit more apple flavour and some more texture. This is how I would think if I had to try making an apple pie bonbon. Hard to think I will ever be in this position, since there aren't this kind of requests here. Sorry, I always forget about the problems with the use of the "candied" word when talking pastry in English language, more than all I always forget about candy apples (I know they exist and nothing more, never seen them here). With "candied fruit" I'm meaning fruit that is cooked in a sugar syrup until it reaches around 68-70° brix, making it shelf stable. Similar process for candied orange peel, candied cherries and so on (all the fruit you add in fruit cakes or pound cakes). For apples you just need to peel and core them, cut in slices, then cook them in the syrup. Don't know if you can find them ready made in the USA. If you are going to give a try and make them by yourself, then I would suggest cutting the apple brunoise from the raw apple (before candying it) and not from the candied apple (after candying it), much less hassle (candied fruit stick to your knives). As far as my experience go, I would suggest to avoid using calvados for this project. Unless you add only some drops (which would have not much sense) then it would be really easy to detect it, going too much farther from the apple pie effect. Same thing for pear, when I tried to add a bit of pear eau de vie to a pear ganache it just killed it (meaning all people thought it was a booze ganache and not a fruit ganache). Teo

Are you asking for a safe way to package chocolate eggs to transport them, or are you asking for some artful suggestions on how to wrap a chocolate egg to make it look classy? Teo

Some more clarifications: - real fragolino ("fragolino" translates like "strawberry like") is not illegal for consumption because it's illegal to plant and produce, it has no sense to prohibit the consume of something that is illegal to produce; - you can find wine bottles labeled as "fragolino" in our supermarkets, it's just low quality wine with added synthetic strawberry flavour (they can use the name because the other one is illegal, they just need to add a little print that states "strawberry flavoured"); - the definitive ban came after a huge scandal in 1986 (google "methanol wine scandal Italy" and you will find some US newspaper articles from the time), many people died after drinking wine with added methanol, this created a huge mess and authorities had to find some way to fix it to avoid the total collapse of the wine industry, which resulted in finding culprits to blame (American grapes) and banning them, it was said that they were harmful for human health because of their intrinsic high levels of methanol, hence the ban... it was a huge pile of crap, but you know how things work, they needed a culprit, wine industries were happy to kick away those grapes, so making a fake 2+2 was easy. Teo

I would try a delicate milk chocolate, using as much candied apples dices as possible (ganache would act like a "glue" and nothing more, spices should remain in the background). That part of the filling would end up with a bumpy surface, but if you add the crunchy base you solve it by piping a little dollop of ganache over the filling before adding the crunchy base (and pressing it). Candied apples and apple pate de fruits are almost identical about sweetness (a sugar bomb), but I would prefer the texture of candied apples over the pate de fruits, I also think it would give a higher "apple pie feeling". I would try the milk chocolate because white chocolate would make the whole bonbon even more sweet, but here we go about the customers' taste, as far as I understand US customers have a sweeter tooth than Italian ones. Depends on how you do it. If you start from a cream ganache that has your desired Aw reading, then sub the cream with 2/3 apple juice and 1/3 oil, then the Aw reading should be the same (maybe even a bit smaller considering that apple juice isn't pure water and has some solids). I wouldn't count on it giving a sensible apple kick, it would be just a way to maximize the chances of putting the more apple taste possible. Teo

I can't make names in public, since they risk jail, sorry. My infos are 20 years old, after I changed job I lost my contacts with those customers (farmers that kept cultivating those grapes illegally). For example clinton grape was highly popular here in Veneto up to the 70's, it was called the "farmers wine" since all families had some plants and self produced some wine for home consumption (before the economical boom after WW2 the vast majority of families were farmers). It was one of the main caloric sources in the farmers diet, my grandmother told me that most male farmers consumed around 2 liters of clinton per day. In 1987 the Italian government made a law that enforced the extirpation of that kind of grape. Many people kept some hidden plants for themselves, but being caught is not a nice thing. If a restaurant/pub/whatever sources some of clinton wine (or other wines from American grapes, all of them forbidden nowadays) then they are forced to close. There are still some of them where you are able to drink a glass, but you must be a really well known friend of the owner. For my experience it's just a curiosity, the ones I tasted were average or worse. But this can be due since it's not made in the best conditions and/or by qualified winemakers. Teo

What about using candied apples, diced really small (brunoise size), added to a spice ganache? You can use the concentrated apple juice to make the ganache, subbing the cream with apple juice + vegetable oil (maybe coconut?). Teo

I know about the existence of this one: Wine Grapes: A Complete Guide to 1,368 Vine Varieties, Including Their Origins and Flavours it's considered a great reference but never had a chance to give a look. As far as I know vitis labrusca and other American grapes were imported to Europe and are still cultivated here in Italy. Our laws forbid to produce wine from grapes different than vitis vinifera, but there are farmers that still cultivate those species and produce "outlaw wine" from them. Teo