minas6907

I just realized its been a month an a half since I've posted. I've been busy with alot. More notably, I've gotton the hang of making and using cocoa butter colors on molded bonbons, as well as found a nearby source for callebaut chocolate, and I'm loving the stuff! Heres everything in order of posing: Anniversary macaron. A test using Callebaut white chocolate, first time tempering white chocolate, so just made a few bonbons. Caramel bonbons for a friend of mine. Espresso macaron. Key Lime berligots Pear berlingots Piped ganache. Red Velvet bonbon (special for my girlfriend!) Sour Cherry bonbon Starbucks French Roast bonbon Strawberry macaron (also for the girlfriend) Tequila cordials And finally, wedding macarons. Lavander buttercream and chocolate ganache. 240 pieces total.

Cooking Basics for Dummies

How do you go about calibrating an ir thermometer? Whats a good test to do?

I have a question for those with tempering machines, the kind that keep a huge amount of chocolate in contant roatation. How long can you keep chocolate like that in temper? I remember reading something like one week, is that true? After that do you just drain the system and reuse the chocolate? How about cleaning the machine, how is that done? It seems like if it was to be cleaned it would be very meticulous, but do you use any water? Let dry completely in every way before adding chocolate again? I was also wondering about ganaches. Is it ever an issue with an enrober that small pieces might break away and combine with the chocolate? Also, what about starch molded cordials? I've dipped the cordials by hand before, and had the bottoms of some of them break, if that happened inside an enrober, it seems like that's it for the chocolate. I'm sorry for all the questions, but when I see these systems I've always wondered about the small details.

I can't even begin to tell you how long this was on my mind. I'm glad I'm not doing amything wrong, I too always thought I was covering my mistake, but it was working. Thanks for asking this and taking the time to explain the little details, and thank you Kerry for the answers.

A ginger caramel sounds delicious. I'd use your normal caramel recipe, shread the ginger, infuse in cream for a day, strain, then go ahead and boil the caramel.

I'd look into getting a spearmint or wintermint oil. I think either will do, they'll taste nice when combined with the chocolate. I dont think its going to be overwhelmingly difficult to pinpoint the mint chip flavor, its just chocolate and a mint oil, you'll probably be able to make a much nicer flavor then what found in most ice creams. And definitly not on the veg oil. If your using tempered chocolate don't include the oil.

I was wondering if someone could aid me in my macarons cracking. I started making macarons at the beginning of this year, and have had very good success. Just last week, though, my shells started to crack, first time ever. I have been using a french meringue, and I can tell only a few subtle differences between these batches and the all my previous. The first two batches I saw cracking were when I didnt want to make a full batch (fill recipe weighing around 450g total). So I made a half batch, noticed about 12 or so shells were cracked. Then a few days later I made another half batch and got the same result. What was different in the second batch was that I had used some almonds from my freezer that I has blanched myself a while back, where as I normally use blanched almond slivers (Trader Joes). After some googling, I saw a comment that moisture in the almond meal could contribute, which would have been on my almonds from the freezer (just some ice crystals), so I concluded that was a factor. But the previous batch was didnt use those almonds, but my normal packaged almond slivers. Anyways, overall, I came to the conclusion that by making a half batch I probably whipped the egg white more then I should have. Do any of these reasons sound plausible? Today I went ahead and tried the macaron with an Italian meringue. I really enjoyed the way it came together, how stable the meringue felt, as well as it seeming much easier to make larger batches. But from these, about 70% of the shells cracked in the most horrible way, they look absolutely horrid. So....I'm not really feeling too confident right now. I made a normal batch of French meringue macs, and thankfully they came out well, no problems. Overall, I'm just looking for some direction, I am starting to really hate these cookies. I was thinking of getting Pierre Hermes Macaron book, that seems like a pretty common guide everyone's using, and I think it may be time. Anywho, any tips, pointers, suggestions are appreciated.

I went to Bj's Boston Pizza with a friend for a casual meal. It wasn't bad, but the server was a young kid that was a little odd, it seemed like he was making it too obvious that he was trying to upsale and move us out. He asked about apps pretty soon, but we were still looking at the menu, then we ordered entrees. 1/4 into our meal he asked if we wanted any appetizers, which I politely said no with a mouth full of food. Then 1/2 way into our meal he came back and asked (no joke) if we had 'saved room for dessert.' So I told him we were still eating. I wasn't too particularly annoyed, I thought it was sort of funny, but it pretty much reaffirmed my dislike of many giant corperate chain restaurants.

Hey Alleguede and Kerry! I just have one picture to post for the time being, but the did exactly what you both said and I got the cocoa butter to work perfect! Thank you, really! One question though, so do you two just have a bunch of containers of colored cocoa butter already made up, so they are ready to just bring out, warm slightly, blend with hand blender, then use? Also, the 10% color, I'm assuming that's by weight?

I cant say I eat too many cherry cordials, I'm much more interested in their construction then consuming them (although I really dont have anything against them). If the cordials were starch molded, as in the way outlined in chocolates and confections or in Notters text, they would have a distinguishable, though thin, sugar crust. I dont think many cordials have this. This would be the way you'd make it by hand in a kitchen, but when it comes to commercially made confections, I suspect something different is being done, truthfully, something I havent really figured out yet. I say this because recently I purchased a 64 piece (from Costco) box of Anthon Berg brand liquor cordials. They certainly were delicious, but I was equally interested in their makeup. The cordials didnt have a sugar crust on the inside of the piece. On about 1 in 4 pieces had sugar bloom, some more severe then others, but it may not have been sugar bloom from the chocolate, it almost looked like during the process some of the liquor syrup spilled on the side and crystallized. Its sort of hard to explain, but I'm going to take pictures the next time I pick up a box. All in all, I was interested in how they cap their chocolates, and wasn't really able to come to a conclusion. There was no sugar crust, and no sign of doing the whole cocoa butter being floated in fondant. So my assumption is that something else is happening during the manufacturing, and I'm quite curious as to what it is. As for an answer to your question, I know what you mean, though, about the clear syrup vs the milky white. My guess is that it has to do with the formulation of their candies. Its hard to say exactly how they are made, some pictures I googled of Cella's cherry cordials looked like they were dipped, others clearly looked like they were molded in a polycarbonate. And my guess also is that if you compare the ingredients list on both company's cherry cordials, you'll find almost identical ingredients. Overall, for a company that size, I would say they are not starch molded. They could easily be molded in polycarbonates, then enrobed to give it that old time look, I've definitly seen that done, it can be totally automated. It seems like on a automated line, the delicate cordials would not hold up. As far as I know, I believe that gummies and jelly beans are among the few candies that still go through the starch molded process. Cherry cordials would be starch molded by a confectionery that is producing on a much smaller scale then Cella's.

What's the fix using commercial pectin? Would the same work on pate de fruit?

Are you able to elaborate when you say the individual used the green apple jelly instead of commercial pectin in her recipes? Im not quite following that, what type of recipes are these? As far as I know, and everyone else is more then welcome to correct me, I didn't think it was possible to get a jam to gel by reboiling, when it initially failed to do so the first time it was cooked.

I really didn't. After about 16 hours the tops were fully crystallized and they sealed pretty easily. There were two pieces along the edges that seemed like they weren't holding up, but amazingly they didn't leak.

Oh no, those aren't dipped. I made shells in a polycarbonate, boiled the syrup and deposited once cool.

You wouldn't happen to have done more blown sugar work, recently? Those apples you made we stunning. Hey thank you! I haven't done much more blown sugar lately, but I've been wanting to do a snowman for a while, so that will probably be coming up soon :-)

Hi Jim! I got into sugar work and candy about three years ago, when I look back at my old photos I realize I'm doing things I never thought I'd bother with, like the candied fruit, not to mention the cordials. I'm also quite flattered you enjoy my pictures, that's something that just sort of came along by accident. I found that the lighting in my kitchen is actually quite nice during the daytime, that makes the biggest difference for me. I don't want to sound like I'm giving you photo advice, because I know very little about photography. Pretty much all my photos from the past year and a half have been from my droid x2 cellphone. After a while I started to see what kind of lighting made for the best photos. As of about three weeks ago, I just replaced that phone with a galaxy s3, that's what the last batch of photos were taken with. So truthfully, I don't know anything about lenses or anythng, I just take photos from various angles, various plating arrangements, and then there's usually a handful of photos that stand out to me. So sorry I can't give any real advice, I just got used to using my phone!

Kerry, I believe it is a mouth atomizer, the item on amazon looks exactly like what Friberg describes, thanks! Looks quite inexpensive as well!

On the topic of sprayers, does anyone know what a fixative syringe is? I really cant find out what these things look like. The only reference to them I've seen is from The Advanced Professional Pastry Chef by Bo Friberg. In the chapter on sugar work, theres a little box on page 607 for those who have it, and he mentions fixative syringes, which a google search didnt yield much that was related, since he says that its used to apply color to pieces of sugar work, it seems like a piece of equipment meant for pastry, not something he adapted to use in pastry work. Part of the description reads "The liquid coloring is sprayed (blown) on the sugar by submerging the end of the thin tube in the color and placing the end of the other tube in your mouth. When you blow air into the syringe, the color is sprayed in a fine mist." If anyone has an idea about what this is, I'd love to know. I've googled this many times with no results that even come close to matching this.

Not necessarily, I had in mind just adding untempered chocolate to room temp butter, then tableing that mixture, I was just wondering if you could get the same result doing it that way, since it seems to work for the other items.

Thank you! I pretty much just followed the guidelines that Greweling lays out in Chocolates and Confections. I blanched the clementines, then added them to a 40º brix syrup. Each day I boiled the syrup to increase its density by 5% each day. I've noticed that on some fruits I'm able to go a bit faster, especially with pineapple and mango, but when I'm doing whole citrus fruits, like the clementines ot kumquats, I go a bit slower on increasing the density of the syrup, since going too fast seems to contribute to the fruits collapsing on themselves. Overall though, I was quite pleased with the clementines. They were more or less just like a citrus confit, except they are left in spheres rafher then just the cut rind, but it still makes for a cool presentation.

Hey thanks for that, both of you! Lately I've started to get a bit more confident with chocolate, so I'm going to have another go at it, Ill post the results, thanks again!

Heres some things I've been working on recently. Candied mango, candied clementine, coconut pomegranate pate de fruit, playing with luster dust as a garnish for macaron, strawberry banana berlingots, and, saving the best for last, molded Captain Morgan cordials.

This was something I was wondering about recently. I know that Greweling does say that the chocolate needs to be in temper when adding it to the butter, but why couldnt you add untempered chocolate to the butter, then table it to temper? The only reason I bring this up is thats exactly what is done when you make meltaways. The untempered chocolate is mixed with a huge amount of coconut fat, then the entire mass is tabled to temper the chocolate so it sets up properly. Even when your making gianduja, you still table the mixture to temper it, so why would it be any different when making a butter ganache? Greweling does say that tableing is totally optional, mainly just to cool down the mixture to a proper piping consistency, but is it possible to temper it as you would with a meltaway or gianduja? Anyone every done this?

I was going to start a topic similar to this, but maybe I'll refrain now since this is pretty much on subject. I too want to make my own colors with cocoa butter, but I'm not really sure where to start. I dont want to purchase the bottles of colored cocoa butter, they are too expensive considering the little use they would get. I'm not using an airbrush, I mostly want to do simple colors using a gloved finger. To apply the colors to a polycarbonate mold, I know the cocoa butter needs to be tempered. Mainly what I'm wondering is how to go about the tempering process. The amount of cocoa butter I would need for, say two or even three molds is quite small, since it would just be a spatter or smudge here and there. So to temper the cocoa butter, would it be normal to table it? Do I table the cocoa butter then add my color? It seems like most everyone here uses the colors that come from the bottles, and even in Chocolates and Confections it seems like Greweling says that the colored cocoa butter needs to be tempered, but doesnt really say how. Anyways, if anyone can clarify that would be helpful, I'll check what Notter says in Art of the Chocolatier.