minas6907

Robert, also your chocolates look semi decent. Hahaha, I'm kidding, those are awesome! I love the various shades of red, boy do you have the coloring down. I have some red color I just got (its just powdered stuff) and have yet to try adding some color to my chocolates. Good going.

Thats awesome you have a resource for metal so close in the family. When I made my own bars for a frame, I looked around quite a bit online, and just decided to go to Home Depot to see what they had in stock bars. I decided on a 1/8 inch thick aluminum (they didnt have stainless) angle piece, 4ft long, and 3/4 inch in height. I cut it with a diamond blade, cleaned up the edges with a grinder, and polished the outer faces that would touch the candy with a buffing compound to make them much less porous, so the candy doesn't have any grooves to stick in. Viktoria, I'd listen to that Robert is saying. You can use granite or marble effectively in chocolate work, you just need to see that the material is not porous. Call up some local fabricators, I think that would be your best bet if you dont know anyone in the construction trade. I polish and restore stone (mostly travertine and marble) surfaces for a living, there are some granites that are very very smooth, with absolutely no pits, which would work great. And one the other hand, there marbles that have an unbelievable amount of pits, it just varies on the stone. The white marble tables you see in kitchen stores and in professional pastry kitchens is Carrara marble, thats sort of standard because I suppose it stands in contrast to the dark chocoalte, but when polished it is very smooth surface with basically no pits whatsoever, so it's ideal for working with a fluid like melted chocolate. Perhaps you can give it a try, something I have been thinking about lately is going to a tile showroom and purchasing a few marble tiles. I have seen repeatedly 20x20 pieces of Carrara, and a 1/2 inch thick, which is thicker then most tiles (it is normally 1/4 inch thick, but it is increased because of the size of the tile) I wanted to get a few pieces and bond them together with an epoxy resin. The thicker the stone piece is, the more more it retains its temperature. Anyways, maybe one of these days I'll get around to doing that and report back how it worked.

I personally still like the idea of using a slab, I just think its cool to make candy the way they did it 60 years ago.

Just out of my own curiosity, are your bars solid metal, or are they hollow inside?

I dont think it has such a big impact on the product, its a matter of whats more accessible to the person making candy at home. Most people are going to have a mixer rather then a marble slab, so its just a way to make the same recipe that more people will be able to do practically at home.

http://brodandtaylor.com/bread-more/chocolate/ It can melt chocolate in preparation for you to temper it, its not a tempering machine. With that little video on the side, it shows you how to melt chocolate and dip strawberries, I'd get some more information before jumping on this one. For some reason I would have my doubts that a container of melted chocolate with the lid open on the proofer (allowing you to dip) would actually be the same temperature as what reads on the digital display.

Yeah, theres a possibility there may be baking soda in it, but its not absolutely necessary to get those little air holes. So far, I like this recipe for taffy: http://www.almanac.com/recipe/cape-cod-salt-water-taffy That recipe produces a nice taffy that is very similar to what you'd find at a fair. After I made this, I took a piece and cut straight through it with a knife, and there were a series of air holes, just like your picture. The only thing I dont like about it is the self life seems sort of short, after a few weeks it shows signs of crystallizing, and gets rather crumbly. As far as hardness, though, in a recipe, take the taffy up a few degrees in the boiling stage, and you will certainly have a candy you can snap cleanly. On a reference here: http://www.exploratorium.edu/cooking/candy/recipe-taffy.html They say down at the bottom to add a small amount of baking soda before pouring out, and it will result in a candy with a lighter chew. I haven't tried this yet, but as I write this, I'd like to use Grewelings recipe for taffy (because his has the longest shelf life) and add a little bit of baking soda, and see the combination. Also, if you do make the taffy, wrap it in cellophane wrap, not wax paper, I have had no success with wax paper, it LOVES sticking, but the cello wrap is wonderful (and you can more clearly see the pattern and colors). Have fun.

What is that used for in the first place?

Ah, I meant in Israel, the ancient city and now national park. There was an Arab woman selling some of this simple food inside.

That is an awesome way to build one! I didnt know that was called a saaj. I enjoyed a warm flatbread with yogurt and olives when I was visiting Caesarea, the flatbread was heated up on one of these, I had never seen it before. Thanks for the memories!

I'm not trying to sound sarcastic or anything, but if your working at a restaurant that operates like this, shouldn't some of the fellow kitchen staff be giving you some tips and training?

Yeah, I wasnt really worried about a small cutter, but I'm not sure why I didnt think of that pastry tip, thanks for reminding me! I've used that to cut small holes on the top cookie of the 'three sister' cookie, I think that will work great next time!

Hey thanks! I have the standard sets of the Ateco round and fluted round cutters, and when I compare them to altoids, these are quite huge. But I'm sure I can find a slightly smaller one, not imperative though. Was kinda funny when I put them into an altoid tin, I could barley shut it with only like 10 of my mega-mints. Thanks for the references guys.

I think your right, that tin is a trademark. I was most likely just going to keep my tins now and refill with these.

Well here they are. They turned out pretty nicely, no exactly like altoids, but no different then most after dinner mints. It took about 4 days until they were dried out completely, but I'm very happy with them. I'd try a little more peppermint oil next time, or perhaps a cinnamon or ginger oil. I also felt relived by the texture, Chef Bo made eating pastillage sounds terrible, I had this awful visual of eating glass, but they nice to suck on. My smallest cutter was still the size of a tums tablet, but thats fine. And the pastillage wasnt all the difficult to work with, but of course I was just stamping mints, not making a display.

If you can, check out papabubble. http://www.papabubble.com/

Hey, thanks for the response. I think I may know which one your talking about, but after two very unsuccessful attempts, and with the cost of tahini, I just havent gotton around to it. I will one of these days. But one thing I was wondering, does it not also crystalize at room temp? All the recipes say to store it in the fridge, but all the halva I have ever had was just stared at room temp. Did you ever store the candy in a cabinet or something and see how that affects the texture? Does it start to sweat?

Woah, yikes on the eyes, haha. I like that green color for the caramel apples, nice. Whats the inside like?

Cooooome on, we wont tell anyone!

Heres some apricot pate de fruit I made. Im very happy with the result, mostly because my first two attempts resulted in gooey messes. I used the recipe from Chocolates and Confections At Home, the one that calls for liquid pectin, it seemed a little bit more fool proof them the one in the professional book. I also used canned apricots, which I pureed (along with some white nectarine, I was a little short on the apricot. Next time I will put any fruit puree through the chinois, I was a little impatient today.) But yeah, very happy for my first successful pate de fruit. I have finally seen what pectin is like when it sets up.

A google search gave me the following quotes: "a pastillage box I made pastillage is like the same stuff altoid mints are made out of, the bunny and decorations are gum paste" "We then made some pastillage. The way that Chef Bob described it was Altoids without any flavor. It's made with powdered sugar, gelatin sheet, water, and white vinegar." "For this project, we were to create a freestanding frame from pastillage (think flavorless Altoid mints), and then use alcohol and cocoa as paint to create an image." So many are also saying it is basically what altoids are made from. Anyways, I think when I get some time, I'm going to make a small batch of pastillage, it doesnt need any special ingredients, and I also cant make gum paste since I dont have any gum Tragacanth. I'll be careful with the pastiallage :-).

Hey, thanks for the response. Maybe I'll give that a try. I do have a pastillage recipe, its from The Advanced Professional Pastry Chef. I assumed the altoids were gumpaste, since the ingredients on the tin basically match exactly whats in gumpaste, while pastillage contains cornstarch. But I'll make up a small batch and see how it comes out. One little worry though. In the forward to the recipe in Bo Friberg's book, he says "Theoretically, pastillage is edible, but is rarely intended to be - nor should it be - eaten when it is dry. It is hard and brittle like glass, and I really do not recommend you try it even if you have a ravenous appetite, strong teeth, and good insurance." Ummm, yeah now I'm scared. I haven't worked with the pastillage before, is it really that horrible to eat? I just envision myself chomping on little glass beads.

Hello all. For some reason I had the idea of making some altoids at home, not really sure why. I do enjoy these little mints, and thought 'how difficult could it be.' Anyways, just a simple google search yielded a few leads. http://www.nilarosa.com/2009/02/how-to-make-altoids-or-how-to-make.html http://www.instructables.com/id/Homemade-Altoids-Recipe/ It seems that all the little mints are made up of is gum paste. It has pretty much the same ingredients as listed on the can of altoids, and the thought of making different flavors (gotta us those candy oils for something) made me smile. Anyone every give this a shot? I've never made gum paste nor have I worked with it, but I have a general idea of what it is. Maybe I'll make up a batch. Hmmm, interesting. Just thought I'd share :-)

Thanks for those. I did previously read them. So far, I've made two recipes, and I know they are not going to set up enough, no matter how long I leave them in the fridge, they are too soft. My next attempt will likely be the recipe here: http://tasty-recipes.blogspot.com/2005/12/sesame-halva.html This recipe is basically the same as one I've already tried, and as was my suspision of the the candy setting up firmer if the sugar was cooked longer, this recipe calls for cooking the sugar 20 degrees f higher then all the rest, so that seems like it should do it. But after that, depending on how that turns out, I think I'll try the recipe Kerry did here: http://egullet.org/p1750184

Hi everyone! Recently, for some reason, the idea of making halva popped into my head, and after doing some research, I've seen that the agitation is a very important part, inducing crystallization of the candy. I've seen various site give recipes that are pretty much 'boil, mix, pour,' and they dont seem too promising, though I havent tried them, but just by perhaps a picture of the result, I can see that the halva is too soft. I'm looking for more of the crumbly texture halva that I've had since a kid, no particular brand, though around here we have Sadaf. Anyways, I was wondering if anyone had a recipe that they swore by taht they could share. Probably the most promising recipes so far have been from this post: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20101209192453AAY9LZA I'm not thrilled that the recipes came from someone posting on yahoo answers, but the pulling, mixing, and kneading processes seemed to be what I'm looking for, as seen in these videos: and Anyways, I also was reading this thread from '09, but havent made any of the recipes mentioned. All in all, anyone have a recipe that is promising? The tahini paste is not such a cheap product to be wasting, haha. Thanks!