keychris

don't say that, say "I'm ahead of the curve, clearly" 😁

yeah, I'm with Lisa - apply the tape, spatter white, spray black, remove tape, spray copper.

It sounds like a lot of hassle to just get a lower quality version of couverture. I imagine the tempering will work the same way but I have no idea what the final product will be like. Your "chocolate" is going to be very fluid. You could be talking adding anywhere from 30% cocoa butter, which isn't a cheap ingredient, or rather, I can't get it any cheaper than couverture. Couverture is expensive, but you get what you pay for. I personally would rather use the correct ingredient than try what you're suggesting.

I imagine they've lined it with a strip from a silpain as well?

I think perhaps you just need to find the right brand and blend for your palate. Some are pretty fruity, but I find some of the higher percentage varieties from Felchlin to be intensely chocolate without that fruity flavour. I'm really enjoying the 65% Maracaibo Clasificado at the moment.

I wouldn't click that link for any money, sorry.

looks good (delicious)

Neither of those will be anywhere near the price point that @scott123 is looking for though, will they?

applying guitar sheet over the chocolate you're coating the base with and then scraping over that to seal the mould is probably the only way to get perfect bases, but this is a real pain in the butt technique at times. I can't count how many times the plastic moves a bit, or gets a hole in it, or wrinkles, blargh. But it sure looks good when it's done right! I don't think I can describe how to do it properly, I'm sure someone here will have a video they can link to (I couldn't see one on youtube with a quick search). We had a whole thread talking about it few years back if I recall correctly.

You deal with it by not scraping a spatula with solid chocolate on it over the mold 😛 Use a large flat scraper, like an offset pallette knife or paint scraper to scrape the whole mold at once whilst it's all still fluid. Much easier to clean things up when it's all still liquid. If you're dragging a lot of chocolate out of the molds doing this and it looks messy, the chocolate may be too cool or overcrystallised.

Brownies ❤️

I use Heilala, not sure if it's available in the US

CB sticking to the mold could also mean the chocolate you're using was a little cool or not properly pre-crystallised as well.

they leak because the chocolate contracts as it sets, which squeezes the filling. Have you investigated pre-formed truffle shells?

@sbain don't know if this link will work, but Savour School in Melbourne had the same idea https://www.facebook.com/savourschool/photos/a.278904635513785/840506626020247/?type=3&theater

So I made this on the weekend. It's definitely firm enough to cut easily with a serrated knife and it holds shape for long enough that there wasn't any deformation whilst I dipped 36 bars over the course of an hour or so. It's definitely chewy but not pull-fillings-out-of-teeth chewy. And it is absolutely delicious. I'll post some photos later on

from memory it's cuttable firm but not chew a million times firm. I should make it this weekend to refresh my memory

the recipe I have for something similar is 504g sugar 176g glucose syrup 100g water 675g cream 5 vanilla beans 405g butter 68g honey 7g salt 2g bicarbonate soda Boil the cream & scraped vanilla beans. Cook the sugar, water & glucose to 293F. Remove from heat, whisk in the butter & honey, add the hot cream in three portions. Add salt & bicarb, reheat to 246F (with plenty of whisking, obviously). This is from Chocolate to Savour by Kirsten Tibballs

surely the whole point of polishing is to get rid of it and not just distribute over different cavities 😛

exactly that for me, I have a 3D mold for 6 chickens at once and I always lose a few because of wafer thin shells in one spot and thick'n'chunky on the other side

I'm thinking about my kenwood... hmm.

Following on from Jo above, does anyone have any ideas on easy ways to spin molds at home? Doing it by hand doesn't really give the results needed 🤣

you're getting great results, they look really good! This is one of the biggest lessons anyone can learn - perfection is in the eye of the customer. We might see every tiny flaw, but the lay person who buys your creations only sees the beauty, and they think everything you put on there is meant to be there!

time to lose your thermometer and do it by feel Only partly kidding - when I was taught how to temper, they banned all thermometers from the kitchen so we had to know what the chocolate behaved like at each stage. You can feel it thickening up, you know that's when you need to get it back in the bowl to head back to working temperature

1,2 & 5: 18 - 20C is great, up to 22C is fine, over 24C in my kitchen at home I stop doing chocolate unless I have absolutely no choice. The shine happens because you get the chocolate contracting, which only happens when the environmental temperature is cool. 4: fridge your chocolate moulds immediately until they're set but you're really going to have issues with a 30C room. Unless you really understand what is going on with the chocolate, the tempering process & setting, I wouldn't try to do in and out of the fridge, you just get poor results. 3: the working temperature of the chocolate you're using, so 31-32C for dark. You have to remember that just because the working temperature of the chocolate is 32C, that doesn't mean you can work in that temperature!