keychris

If you've checked the calibration on your thermapen, I'd trust that (I'm assuming you're talking about one of these: Thermapen) If you're using an IR thermometer, it's measuring surface temperature. The dot is purely for your visual reference where you're aiming ie. the dot isn't doing the measurement, rather it's pointing at the spot that is being measured. IR is the only type I know that has a red dot

You could just measure out the volume of the ingredients, weigh what they are, make some notes and bake away. Then next time you bake the same recipe, use the weights, changing what needs to be changed depending on how you initial bake went.

how do you handle your cocoa butter before spraying it? Do you fill the mold with chocolate fairly soon after the cocoa butter is set, or do you leave it for a while?

I think I messed up my thought process for the calculation, 200g sucrose + 100g water is about 66% which is close enough to your number that I'm happy to say I was incorrect unless I'm completely misremembering those numbers from chemistry, many years ago!

80% shouldn't be enough for it to be considered supersaturated (for sugar, that is). But there's still a heck of a lot of sugar sitting in solution and it wouldn't take much to cause it to start precipitating out.

I have a 9 tray excalibur and recommend it to anyone that will listen - not just for dehydrating, but proving like Andie above and yoghurt making too even just to dry things out properly! oh, and melt cocoa butter and chocolate and hold it at temperature, great for that too!

I have two 6kg Mol d'Art melters and a 3kg round bowl. I use the 6kg regularly, simply because I can turn a whole mould upside down to empty the chocolate out - with the 3kg bowl, I can only do half-moulds at a time. It takes me no longer to temper 4kg by tabling than 2kg by seeding - in fact, I'd probably go so far as saying tabling is faster than seeding. But if you haven't got a big chunk of stone to work on, that option might not be available. When I started out, I used a thermapen and bowl-in-microwave and achieved exactly the same results - the biggest advantage now is I can hold the chocolate at working temperature as long as I need it The beautiful thing is that you can just spread it out on some silicon paper when you're finished and leave it to set and just remelt next time! (I'm sure you already knew this though )

it's not really a sweet (yet)... but what am I going to do with these: I can't decide!

for my food safe registration, I have to calibrate my thermometers, they say to do it with boiling water and ice water.

I love how they're so shiny we can see your reflection in them

I should point out I never wash mine either! But if you've got a layer of poorly tempered cocoa butter on there, I was just pointing out that you might want to use detergent to get that off

streaks can indicate you need more beta crystals in your chocolate at the start - so that means more stirring when you're at working temperature!

That appears to be some sort of cocoa butter application - I would guess untempered cocoa butter. ETA if you're cleaning without detergent, you're not getting all the fat off the mold.

I'm not sure if this is what Chocolot means, but I would think it's cooking the sugars in the cream and butter. Here's a recipe I've used for this method, using a depositor 375g sugar 300g glucose syrup 75g water 500g cream (35% fat) 3 vanilla beans 50g butter 50g honey 5g salt cook sugar, water, glucose to 145C heat cream and scraped vanilla beans to boiling point whisk the butter, honey and salt into the sugar syrup to stop cooking process add boiling cream to syrup in 2-3 additions, maintain temperature >110C Cook to 121C Deposit into flexipan molds. This produces quite a firm caramel that is still chewable. HTH Chris

They're beautiful! I do my zebras with many paper cones, a very small hole and lots of swearing. Start in the middle of the cavity and work outwards!

It's all about crystals - the process I follow there will (should!) create the crystals required for the cocoa butter to be 'tempered'. Occasionally I'll have one piece out of a whole mold that the cocoa butter sticks a little, but not for a long time have I had problems with a whole mold. We were taught that you should always stir the cocoa butter to temperature, but every single teacher I've had has picked a different temperature to take it to. It also depends if it's being sprayed or applied with a finger - if it's spray, you can have it slightly warmer. I usually just have it at 32C when I start.

when working with colours, I just melt them to 45C, then stir until they're at 32C, then apply. Never bother with a test for them. As soon as the colour is set up enough (usually 5-10 minutes max), I put on the chocolate layer, as you want to the chocolate and the colour to contract away from the mould at the same time. HTH

The metal might be causing the temperature to change in the cocoa butter too rapidly, not allowing it to crystallise properly. Perhaps give it a quick once over with the heat gun before spraying just to slightly warm it?

ah, the days when I only had 18 molds I'm scared to think how much money I've spent on molds! Not to mention the array of egg molds I have as well... yet somehow, every easter, I never quite have the right one

tyvm! The zebra is made by piping the lines of dark chocolate first, then when it's set up, filling as normal with white Not a task I'd enjoy doing for more than a couple of molds, all that piping takes aaaaggggeeeeessssss

Caramelised macadamia, rolled in crushed caramelised hazelnuts, dipped in milk chocolate. 'Zebra' - balsamic ganache with raspberry jelly 'Tendre' praline - three layers of almond praline with dark, milk and white chocolate. Cinnamon infusion Salted caramel Peanut - homemade peanut praline paste on top of caramel Citrus, cinnamon and vanilla infused ganache, whipped with butter until soft and fluffy. Lime These were all made over the past few weeks for a market I attended yesterday.

yeah, I have a cool bag that worked quite well, it fits the boxes I store my chocolates in almost perfectly. some cool bricks under a towel at the bottom, then the stack of boxes, then a towel and coolbricks on top again. It got to 30C yesterday, but the chocolates stayed nice in the bag. I have a nice piece of stone that I put out which kept the chocolates that I had out cool, but in the end I just left the ones on the stone as display-only and when people wanted them, I got them fresh from the cool bag. then I got to eat the display ones at the end of the day I managed to cover my costs and make a small amount of money to invest back in, which is great - it was only a small school market, so with luck, next month I shall do a larger community market with a higher number of visitors and hopefully do even better!

I'm taking myself and my chocolates to my first market this Sunday nervous and excited, but hopefully I can sell a bunch to make a little cash to invest back into making more chocolates!

did you use a mint oil? or some type of fat that could migrate to the surface of your chocolate?

the insides of your look perfectly awesome to me - the cafe ones look like the ones with the problem IMHO I'm no expert though. And if someone uttered the phrase, 'tastes like cadbury chocolate bar' to a ganache I made, I think I would punch them right inna nose, because I can make infinitely better tasting things than crapbury