Jim D.
-
Posts
2,271 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Store
Help Articles
Posts posted by Jim D.
-
-
@ChristianD, thanks for the instructions you provided in your last post. It's what I was missing from the app as it exists. I was pleased to find the Felchlin chocolates I use in your list, but didn't quite know what to do after that.
Many people who don't own Aw meters will be happy to see your estimates, but, as I think @Rajala implied, there is no substitute for an actual measurement with an actual machine.
Thanks for allowing us to experiment with the fruits of your labors.
-
In the continuing discussion of whether to temper colored cocoa butter, I thought this post from May 31, 2024, on Instagram from Sosase Chocolate might be of interest:
QuoteUsing silk to temper Coloured Cocoa butter
When the volume of required cocoa butter goes above 200g I will always choose to use “silk” to temper the CCB
-below this weight, it’s a challenge to be accurate with the % of silk required
-200g of CCB requires 2g of silk added at 33°c and blended in
-if I use too much silk, it will crystallise too quickly during spraying
-when I use silk, I can spray at a warmer temperature of 31°c as long as the mould temperature is below 19°c
-I choose to add the CCB into a square plastic, but you can add silk directly to the bottle & shake it
-if I’m using the Fuji spray system, I’ll add the silk to the bottle, so I can maintain fluidity and warm the bottle easier and pour directly into the spray cup
Silk is so much more aggressive at crystallising CCB, so maintain a slightly warmer temperature of your CCB
BETA5 crystals melt (full attrition) at 33.8°c, adding silk above or warm above this temperature will leave your CCB out if temper (pre-crystallised)
I was especially intrigued by the poster's discussion of using silk (particularly "if I use too much silk, it will crystallise too quickly during spraying)." -
3 hours ago, Kimberlene Brown said:
Hello Jim, Hope you are well? I know this is an old post, however I’ve been trying to search for topics related to balancing of a recipe for truffles. I’ve been reading books but I would like to get some more knowledge on how to balancing a recipe. The links you’ve posted above seem like there might be some info there to help me, however I can’t seem to open any of them. Can you kindly help me please. Thanks
The ganache spreadsheet to which I referred in the post you mention is available on my website: https://www.santiagochocolates.com/ganache.html
But I need to add that I have not found that spreadsheet all that useful. I actually developed my own using dBase software. There is other software discussed by Kerry Beal on eGullet, but I don't have have a link to that; a Google search on balancing ganache will lead you to other software options. Chocolate Academy has a (free) video on the subject. Another option is to sign up for Kalle Jungstedt's course that includes his method of balancing ganaches. The issue with all such methods is that they depend on the particular ingredients you use. For instance, the compositions of 60% and 72% dark chocolate are substantially different (especially the amount of cocoa butter each contains). Another way of dealing with being fairly sure your ganache will be balanced, have a decent shelf life, and also taste good is to use recipes from reputable sources (such as Peter Greweling, Ewald Notter, Jean-Pierre Wybauw, Melissa Coppel, and the aforementioned Kalle Jungstedt).
-
1
-
-
13 minutes ago, RanaMN said:
Amy Levin has a post on her Instagram (October 9th 2023 -I tried to share a link I couldn't ) showing how to do this. She uses her finger to spread the color, but I have also seen people dropping the color and then use just air with their air gun to spread it. And maybe you already know these techniques but I thought I would share. Now I want to try it too. I feel like the trick to get the look like Monde would be using really light colors in the right order. Amy's colors make the transitions a bit stark.
Thanks very much for the Amy Levin reference. I like the look of what she does in that post, but I agree with you about the stark transitions in her colors. I think many people who use the marbled effect use an airbrush to spread the colors, but I have not had success--the colors never spread enough unless I use a large amount of colored cocoa butter--and that makes a huge mess. I also agree that getting the right order for light colors is crucial. I have some success using a finger (as Amy does), but it's a hit or miss proposition (some are beautiful, others turns brownish with all the colors mixing too much). I must say that Monde du Chocolat's Easter eggs are incredibly beautiful.
-
1
-
-
Does anyone have an idea why this hole appeared in my sandwich loaf? It is an all-whole-wheat recipe (mostly white whole wheat, some regular WW, based chiefly on one from marysnest.com). Baked to a temp of 200F. A somewhat wet dough, which I treated like a no-knead type of bread. I'm searching for a whole wheat loaf that takes a minimal amount of time to prepare so that I will make it regularly. The hole develops from time to time, but not always. Thanks for any help.
-
Before the workshop, someone requested that the "watercolor effect" of Monde du Chocolat be demonstrated. Did that take place? Achieving that effect reliably has always eluded me.
-
3 hours ago, curls said:
I’m wondering if anyone here has worked with Cacao Barry Mi-Amère 58%. It is 3 drop fluidity chocolate. I’m wondering what it tastes like and if it would be good for shelling and ganaches. I’ve seen it at my local Restaurant Depot and it is priced well below the Valrhona I use. I don’t want to buy a 5kg/11 pound bag to try out this chocolate. Hoping to find it in smaller quantities.
All the talk about rising chocolate prices has me looking for some other potential chocolates.
I have not tasted it, but Chocosphere has it in a 1kg bag for $26.29.
-
On 4/4/2024 at 4:44 PM, Saltychoc said:
@Jim D. Sure thing! The mold is chocolate world 1252 but I imagine any mold with a good amount of surface area would work. I laid tape on sticker backing paper and cut out the shapes, then stuck the shapes inside the molds to form the resulting "cracks"/lines. I only pressed it down along the line portion. Speckled some white, placed some dots of gold leaf mixed with cocoa butter, very lightly sprayed some brown so it covered about 1/2-1/3 of the blank space, sprayed white + pearl white over the rest of the area, then drew a line with a skewer and sprayed the back with gold, then removed the tape, polished the unpainted areas and sprayed the blue. Blue is a mix of chef rubber med blue artisan, jewel white, plus a light blue and light green that I made.
It is time consuming to place the tape shapes in the mold but once you do that the spraying is very quick. Like anything you get better with practice so taping the last few molds didn't take nearly as much time. I'd like to figure out some other molds to use for this sort of thing, I don't think cw2295 would work. I have seen people on social media do something similar and achieve a sort of geode look by using a mold with a shorter cavity and simply breaking the tape and pressing it down. The eggs are quite tall so that wouldn't have worked here.
Thanks for the details. I am in awe of the amount of work you did for this design--and of how beautifully it turned out. I'm afraid my customers will not see an egg anywhere near this level of artistry.
-
1
-
-
@Saltychoc, a beautiful collection of chocolates. I especially admire the decoration of the blue and gold eggs. Do you mind telling how you got this effect?
-
14 hours ago, Rajala said:
Did anyone ever make a PDF made out of pomegranate? I'm thinking if I should add some other fruit/berry to the mixture. It's not listed in the old PDF (the real PDF haha) from Boiron that's been shared over the years.
Here are a couple of recipes that might be of interest:
https://lucysfriendlyfoods.com/2020/12/19/pomegranate-and-grenadine-pate-de-fruits/
https://www.julescooking.com/single-post/how-to-make-pate-de-fruit-best-candy-ever
Neither recipe is exactly a "professional" Boiron-style recipe, but they are interesting because they don't use any other fruit.
-
@Saltychoc I bought the Opalys from International Gourmet Foods. They have locations in various parts of the U.S., and the northern Virginia one is fairly close to me. This means the chocolate is delivered by truck, which is a good thingy primarily because I don't have to worry about melting during the warmer months. Shipping is "free," but of course I'm paying at some point. The refrigerated truck also means that I can order frozen fruit purées, but I don't know whether they have the same 12-tub minimum that AUI has (I buy my Felchlin from AUI, and again, shipping is "free"). Prices are lower at the wholesale division of Chocosphere (the only place I have found 3kg bags of Valrhona for less than $100), but shipping chocolate from Oregon to Virginia is another issue--and I just learned that Chocosphere has new owners, so who knows what that will mean?. Pastry Depot in Atlanta has just gone all wholesale, but their prices are higher than Chocosphere's.
-
2 hours ago, Kerry Beal said:
Not quite sure why you would waste a piping bag though when you have a marble slab in front of you. I'd just cool it over cold water for that small amount myself.
I think she is very good in her teaching style, but the method of cooling seems incredibly fussy and time-consuming. I too use a cold water bath, and if I am impatient, add some ice to the water.
-
1
-
-
My rep at AUI said to expect a big jump in the near future for Felchlin (we didn't discuss other brands, so I don't know about that). I've also ordered what is for me a huge amount of Valrhona Opalys.
-
2
-
-
Yes, I have continued with experimentation. I am reasonably sure the heated warming tray was the cause of the missing colored cocoa butter. I was able to replicate the problem with heat; it did not occur without heat. If the tray's thermostat were more reliable, I think this would be the perfect solution, but it's not.
So I returned to wiping the freshly sprayed molds upside down on shop towels, and the difficulty of removing the CCB returned. I followed Kerry's information on not adding too much silk and started going through the annoying procedure of weighing the CCB, using a chart to add 1% silk. Alas, the issue continued. I find it puzzling to watch countless videos of people turning their sprayed molds upside down and effortlessly wiping off the CCB. But it's one mold, and they are usually employing an airbrush not a spray gun.
Next attempt: It occurred to me that even a tiny amount of silk may be contributing to overtempering and thus CCB crystallizing almost immediately. So I started using the ancient tempering method of melting the CCB, lowering its temperature to 27C, then raising it to 28-30C. I didn't have a lot of molds left in the current batch to give this idea a real test, but it seemed to give better results. With reputable chocolatiers not tempering their CCB (see above in this thread), I also was less careful when using the heat gun between molds, and that also seemed to help. Since a huge majority of chocolatiers do temper their CCB, I am not yet ready to abandon the practice.
As @RanaMN pointed out, a Fuji blows a lot more CCB through the gun and creates unique issues. If I recall correctly @Chocolot uses a scraper on her molds after she has finished spraying them. Scraping makes a huge mess and sometimes removes chips of color below the tops of cavities.
-
I used pastrygirl's recipe to make a batch of homemade Orelys (and I want to thank her for doing all the work to develop a recipe). I used the same India Tree dark muscovado, but also used white sugar (as the recipe she gave me called for). After much searching I found whole milk powder (from King Arthur Flour), so I omitted the butter. I had never made any sort of chocolate in the melanger, so was not sure what to expect. It was very easy. I put the melted cocoa butter in the melanger, then added the sugar, followed immediately by the milk powder (about 1/4 cup at a time). The mixture thickened up with the powder, so I used a hair dryer for a little while until everything flowed smoothly. I had the melanger in a room where I could easily regular the temp, so I managed to get everything quite warm. Premier melangers has a recipe that is somewhat similar and calls for 3.5 hours of grinding. I found my "Orelys" was smooth enough before 3 hours. The taste is close to Valrhona's product, but it could use a little more of the muscovado taste, so next time I would use more muscovado and less white sugar (or maybe use some brown). I think it is the muscovado that gives Orelys its slightly licorice taste, and I would like to have more of that. I kept some actual Orelys for future taste comparisons. In the recipes where I used Orelys (pecan gianduja, cinnamon bun ganache), the chocolate doesn't have to stand on its own, so I am content with something close to Valrhona's product.
My calculated price was about $60 for 2.5kg (compared to Valrhona's $87 price for the same amount). Would I do it again? Maybe, but given my uses of Orelys, I might be tempted to use Valrhona's Dulcey plus a little molasses powder. Washing that melanger is not as much fun as one might imagine.
-
1
-
-
3 hours ago, GRiker said:
Agreed. I have only a few types. One that shape that is a pain and your hemisphere mold that I have to work with carefully because the piece sometimes wants to come out before I’m ready for it to. Quite the contrast.
Chef Kalle Jungstedt's own mold, which is a somewhat flattened dome, helps prevent the dome's suction effect. Chocolate World has a similar one but larger. When I am making something with several layers, those molds tend not to be large enough.
The hemisphere shares the issue you mentioned with all the shallow molds I have--the one often called a quenelle and also egg shapes. They are a test of one's ability to keep a steady hand when moving the mold--and not tapping the mold too enthusiastically. They also have another irritating characteristic: some chocolate often gets between the shell (with any color it has) and the mold when sealing the mold is taking place. I did learn (I forget where) that a little heating of the mold with a heatgun before sealing the cavities helps prevent that. I think this melts the top edge enough so that the fluid chocolate can't get behind it. Ah, what we go through for beauty.
-
1
-
-
3 examples of the "dreaded dome"--you know, the mold that looks wonderful in theory, is easy to decorate--and loves to stick to the mold before reluctantly dropping out. @Kerry Beal once said she thought the dome fit so well in its mold that a sort of suction formed. Whatever it is, it's a pain.
Fillings are (clockwise from top left: "cookies & cream," sesame crunch, cherry & almond ganache.
-
2
-
1
-
-
6 hours ago, Kerry Beal said:
There used to be a sprayer that was headed - Kreb's I think. But it was a big thing and not elegant in any way.
I did see that little invention - will be interesting to see how it works out.
I think the heated sprayer is the renamed HotCHOC by renamed company Krea Swiss. I investigated that, but it is not intended for cocoa butter, just chocolate (mostly for the flocked look). I should have known that you would have come across the invention I wrote about. The more I thought about it, however, the more I questioned how it would work in the fast-moving process of spraying CCB. The wires would have to be quite long to allow for all the maneuvering required to get good coverage of a mold, not to mention the process of changing colors. I think it would be necessary to make the device easily removable. But if it can be done with the hotCHOC, it should be doable with a CCB sprayer. The market is probably not large enough to entice a company like Fuji (and its competitors) to look into it.
-
I saw an interesting post from Tom Sampson on the "Bonbon and chocolate painting techniques" Facebook forum about a device he invented to keep an airbrush warm. Another member of that forum responded that he too is working on such a heater, and the two of them are now corresponding. Such a device might revolutionize the decorating of bonbons.
QuoteI think we are all a bit obsessed with temperature and I have found it particularly difficult to keep the temperature of the cocoa butter in my airbrush constant. I've tried wrapping it in a heated mat and using a hair dryer but I can never be certain that the temperature is correct. I therefore decided to make a heated airbrush and posted my preliminary results on the Chocolatiers Forum on which there was a lot of interest and several questions....I have spent many hours to get to this stage and although it has been suggested I patent the idea (which would require me to make a charge to recover the costs) I am aware that there are many small businesses and hobbyists who are on a limited budget and so I am happy to give anyone the parts list and instructions.
-
2
-
-
15 minutes ago, pastrygirl said:
I meant the nozzle size. 1.0 mm?
I have the 0.8mm (recommended by Kerry and others); Fuji has them up to 2.0.
-
1
-
-
1 hour ago, pastrygirl said:
You keep saying that, but I'm not convinced. How big is the Fuji?
I just got a sagola 0.8mm, the spray pattern is 3-4". So far I've only tried it on larger molds, not my small bonbons.
Not sure what you mean by "how big is the Fuji?" Are you referring to physical dimensions or volume of the spray cup? And I'm not trying to convince you. People have different priorities.
The Sagola looks very much like the Fuji.
-
51 minutes ago, pastrygirl said:
If you're spraying so much CB that wiping off over-spray is a whole necessary thing and that's all the color you get, that is super weak. Is it natural or just lame?
It's a regular Chef Rubber color (one I don't like and could easily use for experimentation). The bonbons are fully covered; it must be the light that makes them look otherwise. The Fuji does spray more than an airbrush, but it is much faster. It's a tradeoff, one I am willing to make, esp. at times like Christmas.
As for wiping off overspray, just about every chocolate-spraying video I have watched includes that. If I let it fully crystallize on top of the mold, I have a terrible time cleaning it off later.
-
@Kerry Beal @pastrygirl This is a continuation of our discussion that originally began under the topic of cleaning colored cocoa butter from molds. It's probably more relevant here.
First, I concluded that the little chips that came off a lot of shells (shown in previous thread) were caused by cleaning the molds on top of a food warming tray that was too warm. If it had been caused just by rubbing them too vigorously on shop towels, the CCB would have come off completely; instead it stuck in the mold when I unmolded. However, the rubbing procedure is relevant (see below).
I did my experimentation on whether CCB needs to be tempered. I used the Fuji to spray both molds. Although the bonbons in the photo below appear not to be colored, they are--with Chef Rubber's idea of what magenta looks like. I sprayed one mold with untempered CCB around 90-95F/32-35C. Excess CCB was very easy to remove because it was not starting to crystallize; in fact, it took more than a half-hour for the CCB to attain the matte look and not come off when I touched it. I was sure I faced a daunting task of cleaning the mold. The second mold I sprayed with CCB I had tempered with 1% by weight of silk (today I happened on a video by Brian Donaghy of Tomric, and he recommended 3%). It was at 86F/30C (I think this is the temp recommended by Andrey Dubovik). It took much longer to attain the matte look than what I have been getting by using more silk, but the time was more like 15 minutes. Again, it was easy to clean the excess CCB from the mold.
I filled both molds with tempered chocolate and let it crystallize. To my surprise, both unmolded equally easily--only a light tap on the counter was necessary. In the photo below the top group is with untempered CCB; the bottom is tempered. There is a defect in one untempered bonbon, the left bonbon in the second row (a bit of CCB stuck in the mold), but aside from that, I saw no other defect, and both are equally shiny. Before I filled the molds with chocolate, I did note that there were some spots with missing CCB on the top edges of the molds (such as showed up in the original post). I assumed this was from rubbing on the towels and was able to replicate the issue by additional rubbing (the fact that the CCB was not crystallizing so fast gave me more time to experiment). I don't know what to do about this except to rub more gently or perhaps find towels that aren't so rough in texture.
Conclusions: This was a very limited experiment, but tempering CCB does not appear to be necessary when airbrushing. Going without, however, takes considerably more time for the CCB to crystallize and may be responsible for the one defect (though this is not certain). I am left to puzzle over several issues: Did the untempered CCB ever properly crystallize? If the act of spraying is supposed to temper it, then it should have firmed up much more quickly. When we temper chocolate, don't we say that the temper is subpar if crystallizing takes a long time? But what happens to the common explanation that CCB sticks in a mold when it isn't tempered? We are left to puzzle over whether the legion of chocolatiers who recommend tempering CCB know something that didn't show up in my experiment. If one is using silk to temper CCB, my experiment suggests that in the past I have been using too much and, as a result, the CCB was crystallizing immediately on being sprayed and was prone to sticking in the mold and to being very difficult to clean off the mold.
-
3
-
-
5 hours ago, Rajala said:
Carrot cake!
Will you share your recipe? I'd like to see how your approach differs from mine.
Confection shelf-life, and managing production
in Pastry & Baking
Posted
I have found similar issues with my method of calculating how much of a particular filling I need to fill x number of molds. The calculation works very well with something like a ganache, but with the (difficult-to-predict) reduction involved in a caramel, it's another story. From measurements I did with various recipes, I concluded that the resulting caramel is about 40% of the original weight of ingredients. But that is really just a (somewhat educated) guess.