keychris

When I coat hazelnuts, I do it in two stages. First, I cook the sugar syrup to 114C, remove from the heat then add the warm nuts. Stir the nuts through and keep stirring until the sugar has recrystallised over the nuts and looks like superfine icing sugar in the bowl. Return the bowl to the heat and stir constantly, lifting and moving the nuts away from the heat, until the sugar remelts and coats the nuts as a caramel. This second heating takes me >20 minutes for 250g nuts. Don't know if you can apply the same process to walnuts though

I personally prefer the Felchlin paste - I know you can also buy coarse grades that aren't smooth though, so perhaps you got one of those? Well, when following their formula, they assume you're using exactly the same ingredients! If your slab hasn't set up, perhaps it just hasn't crystallised enough? Some of the ones I make with almond praline can take overnight to crystallise nicely. although, I've not run into a solid praline paste... not really a paste then

I meant double whammy of good! (as in, that's why it's a recommended thing to do)

the commercial ones will give you a consistent product, as they have sugar and pH adjustments. When you reduce the puree volume by boiling, you're increasing the flavour and decreasing the water content, so a double whammy

I made a flower! Not too bad for a first attempt, need to think a bit more about it to do it better

I just use scissors... must have cool hands or something, I've not smudged any sheets yet!

was it kept in a fridge, or cool cabinet? It could just be rolled fondant, as Mjx describes, and it's absorbing moisture from the air because it's cold and getting soft and sticky. Here's a pic of a marbled cake I covered last year: could it be something like that?

It was a long weekend this weekend, so I pushed out some chocolates

I love the colour on those eggs, just wonderful!

Those sound awesome! Thanks for the ideas. How does one fill an egg with such fluid fillings and still stick them together?

I wonder what everyone's favourite fillings they put into easter eggs are? I'm quite partial to a peppermint toffee that you sprinkle over the inside of the egg as it's setting up - gives a delicious crunch later on I'm curious about more liquid fillings though, and how one goes about filling an egg with something like, say, a salted caramel. Any ideas?

Those are just beautiful! I'd love to know how you get that application of metallic - so you mix it with something, I assume a cocoa butter based colour, finger apply then spray over it with the second colour? cheers Chris

I hope there's plenty of photos for us poor overseas people Chris

I'd love it too! Great that you came back to the original topic to let everyone know, too!

A raspberry confit on top of a balsamic ganache

Hi Jim, thanks for the comment - starting piping in the middle of the mold and drag the piping bag along the surface of the mold out towards the rim. In this case, I had to tilt the mold as I was piping so that I could pipe up the side nicely. It's hard to describe without seeing! Basically, you're piping big Y shapes for that one, and the point where the lines in the Y intersect is where I started from. Chris

yay piping!

Just use it as you would normal cocoa butter, as that's what it is. Just in another form

You definitely should *not* melt chocolate in a glass bowl, IMHO. Glass has a massive capability to hold heat, so if you overheat the chocolate, it's going to stay hot for longer. My 2c is also that you shouldn't melt it over water, simply because it's so easy to get water in your chocolate. Heaps of people are going to say they've never had problems, but for me, it's not worth the risk. If you use your microwave, with a microwave safe plastic bowl, you're going to have no problems at all, so long as you're careful, monitor the temperature and just use short bursts, never more than 30 seconds. I always microwave on high, just carefully. I've never overheated it. Other options I have available are a melt tank and a dehydrator set at 45C, dump the chocolate in it and seal the bowl with gladwrap the night before and it's ready to precrystallise the next morning.

To bring this discussion to a dedicated thread: Chris, I not trying to challenge what your saying at all, in fact I feel like I barley understand invert sugar, I have many questions. But if what you say is true, about raising the temp too high, what would be the point of Greweling specifying invert sugar in his marshmallows or fudge, both things that are boiled to 240f or so. I've made chef Eddy's recipe for invert sugar, it seems to be keeping fine in the fridge, but I feel like it shouldn't be refrigerated, from a confectionery point if view, nothing really seems to be in the first place. I feel, like Greweling says in his book, that a reliable invert sugar can be made with invertase, but have get to find a recipe that uses it, only cream if tartar and citric acid. Anyways, thanks for reading my jumbled questions and thoughts! Sent from my DROID X2 using Tapatalk 2 Chris, On the heating invert sugar issue, there was a thread about this previously. From Kerry Beal: We have had this discussion before about overheating invert sugar - which seems to have originated with something Wybauw said. Is there any evidence that overheating invert sugar really does change it's chemical structure in a way that negatively impacts shelf life and taste? Answer from lironp: I asked him about that in the course I took with him- He said that he found that to be true only for one type of inverted sugar he had worked with that had been inverted with some sort of chemical, (that is not really available to purchase), instead of the traditional way (which is what confectioners usually buy). I don't remember the details of the whole explanation, or the differences between the sugars, but at the end he explained that there is no problem boiling the invert sugar that we usually buy, and the one we used in the course. I merely parrot what we were told in class on this issue - I don't know enough about it to know the technical details. But our instructor said they had been told by three separate chefs, two MOF's and another from the Chocolate Academy in Chicago, that this was an issue... so I'm going to trust them! Why some formulas say to just boil it and others don't? I have no idea

Bear in mind that if you raise the temperature of invert sugar too high (I think it's 70 or 80C) it loses all the properties that you are using it for in the first place. Pat, looking great! Chris

they have done it with regular spray guns (used for paint) on Masterchef. so long as you haven't used it for paint! and so long as your air supply is clean and dry.

IMHO, yes. There's really no need to add commercial yeast to a wild yeast starter, unless you don't want to call it a true wild yeast starter anymore.

Might as well bring this thread back from the dead... hope that's not breaking any rules! (I have been on forums where they frowned on this) baguettes, using the formula from Reinhart's Bread Baking Apprentice. Except I never remember the preferment the night before, so I add 0.1% (of the final dough weight, ie. 1g/1000g) diastatic malt powder to get some enzymatic action on the starch... with fairly good results, IMHO! cheers Chris

Thanks Minas, it's a firm-ish caramel - still nice and chewy at room temp, not going break your teeth. And yes, I deposited whilst hot into my flexipan I finished this cinnamon ganache today