keychris

hah, I was going to post "open mouth, pipe inside" but it didn't sound very professional

The lumps could be cocoa solids clumping together perhaps? I find this sometimes, as with Gap, when I remelt chocolate that's been stored untempered. But I also found last week that they just melt back out after a couple of days, I only stirred it a few times a day. Best way to prevent bubbles is to make sure the mixer never goes above the surface of the chocolate. Have you tried tapping the metal bowl on the bench for a while to get all the bubbles to rise up? Do it when the chocolate is at 45C so it's more fluid, the bubbles will move more easily.

The answer, I believe, is also the least helpful thing you could be told. Your chocolate was not perfectly in temper. I usually only see issues like that on chocolates when I've sprayed colour that hasn't been perfect and it sticks to the mold. Was your test smooth and non-streaky with no spots? How thick are those shells? What are they filled with? Was your room particularly cold or warm, ditto for the molds? Carbonate or silicon mold? It's possible that if you have thicker shells, the chocolate has released enough heat as it's setting to break temper. That is a beautiful shape though, and I promise that anyone you give those to won't even notice the defects! You could call them Doctor Who chocolates, that's a crack in the fabric of time

Not in Australia though Ours is labelled "icing mixture" whereas pure powdered sugar is labelled "icing sugar" I know this is completely irrelevant to the original post

commercial purees are usually sweetened at about 10% sugar, but all my different boiron purees have a different amount of sugar depending on which fruit it is

You're going to have to at least give some information about your recipe!

If I have 4kg of couverture at 45C, how do I cool that down to working temp without generating crystals? If I just leave it to sit, it will take an hour, surely (I've never tried it!).

... I think I have something wrong with me. That's remarkably sexy

High fat simply means it has a higher % of cocoa butter left in it. When I bake, say, a cake with the higher fat cocoa butter, the cake seems moister, but this could just be my imagination!

You're going to need to give us more info than that to work with

THIS SO MUCH THIS. Why can't hardly any websites that I want to cook their recipes use weights, dammit!

If all the rest of your work is any indication, I'm sure you will produce some amazing things pretty darned soon Looking forward to seeing it!

That's exactly what I did with mine

This might be a stupid question, but I've never had to think about it before - how do you get your couverture to working temperature without crystals forming so you can add the silk?

I don't see why not, so long as the cocoa butter is sealed away from the water. It's something I'm thinking about trying, if I get around to it I will post the results

it's a choice between butter and cocoa butter into your ganache, choose cocoa butter, it will firm up more and you're not adding any extra water to the ganache. But adding extra fat could change the ganache too - just give it a go and see if you like the result!

your room is pretty warm, as curls said. I'd want it a bit cooler - I think perhaps your chocolate isn't setting up nicely right at the start because it's so warm.

I have an excalibur, it lives in the laundry because the rattle from the fan is really, really loud. Other than that, I have no complaints, it's a great unit.

Why would it be useless? Just seal the cocoa butter in the pouch, put it into the waterbath and leave it to do its thing, just like the EZTemp thing. Then when it's ready, just dry the pouch completely, remove the cocoa butter and you've got the same product. I can't justify $1000 on something I can do on a slab of marble in under 10 minutes I would have to increase my production a heck of lot to need it!

Isn't this just how you seed with Callebaut mycryo? Thanks for the pics, looks like you had a great time

if you're not going to spray it, I would just make a nice ganache to pour over the top instead of thinning chocolate out with oil - I would guess that if you thin it with that much oil and try to spread it, it won't set again. Could be wrong though, it's happened once or twice before

I'm already jealous! Keep up the posts with lots more pics

I was asked to make a large number of small boxes (6-pack) as thank-you gifts for people at the state conference of the Australian Breastfeeding Associated here in Victoria, so I made these fairly disgraceful chocolates The boob chocolate is actually pinker than what it appears there

get a set of scales and double everything by weight instead of volume. It will make your end product much more consistent. Do you check your gluten development after kneading with the windowpane test?

urgh: Wed, Jun 10, 2015 2:00 AM - 3:00 AM EST (Australia) I might register in the hope that it will be saved and you can watch it later anyway