Prabha

I have made the peanut gianduja using a regular peanut butter too (Skippy, I think) and it turned out fine. Flavor might be better with a natural peanut butter though.

I didn't realize the L'epicerie purees would keep that long. That would definitely make them worth buying. Now if I could just figure out a way to fit it all into my freezer

Thanks Mjx and Curls. I was hoping the tinned puree would work because the Indian mangoes taste so good when fresh. But I shall look for the frozen Goya puree. I'm reluctant to shell out the money for the L'epicerie ones because I'm afraid they'll go bad before I use it all up. How long would they keep?

I made a small batch of the mango ganache yesterday. I used canned mango puree from the Indian store - it's the only one I can find in small quantities. I reduced the puree by half, as the recipe calls for. The ganache tasted odd, I thought - somewhat metallic or bitter, maybe, and it didn't improve when coated with dark chocolate. Could it be because of the quality of the puree? Where do you get your mango puree? Anything I should be watching out for when reducing the stuff?

Thanks! I read various threads on this forum for weeks before trying to make them. It still took me multiple attempts to get decent looking chocolates, but I know it would have been even longer if not for all of you.

My first molded chocolates! I'm so proud! L to R - Orange white chocolate ganache in a milk shell, gingerbread ganache in milk shell, peanut butter gianduja and raspberry jelly in a dark shell.

Nice pictures, and all the food looks yummy! Thank you.

Ooh, this is exciting! I'm looking forward to meeting everyone and learning a lot of stuff. Thanks for all your work, Robert.

Will try using cooler chocolate. Thanks again.

Thanks Kerry. My filling was at room temp. I did leave the ganache to set overnight, and the gianduja set up pretty hard, which made it difficult to cut. So the pieces were not nice squares. Could that have been an issue? The differences in the two ganaches might have been the problem. But since Greweling has his PBJ recipe with the gianduja and a jelly, I didn't think that would be a problem. Also, I did notice that my chocolate shells are pretty thin. How to make them thicker? P

Hi! I'm a newbie to confectionery. I've been lurking on this board for a few weeks and I've learned a lot, thanks to all of you. This is my first time posting! I hope you can help me with my little problem. I made a half recipe of Greweling's Rasberry Bites butter ganache. I poured it into a 8X8 pan and it set up nicely. Then I realized that it only made a very thin layer, so my chocolates would turn out very thin. So I had a bright idea - I made a half recipe of the Peanut Butter Gianduja (also Greweling) and layered that on top. That also set up nicely, actually somewhat harder than expected. Anyway, I managed to cut the ganache (bottom coated) and dip the squares in dark chocolate. They looked nice for a while, but after a few hours, hairline cracks have appeared along the corners on many of them. Also, droplets of sugary stuff are leaking out in places - looks like raspberry jam. I had the window open for a while (50F outside) because it was too warm in the kitchen. Temp. inside never got below 65F. Could this have caused the cracking? Thanks a lot for your help! Prabha

Thanks for all your work, Robert! Really looking forward to it. I have just started working with chocolate and could really use some instruction

I would love to attend. I am not in the profession, but I'm very interested and I'm hoping to expand my confectionery skills.