Jim D.
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Posts posted by Jim D.
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@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?
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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.
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@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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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@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.
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5 hours ago, Rajala said:
Carrot cake!
Will you share your recipe? I'd like to see how your approach differs from mine.
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2 hours ago, Vojta said:
Hello
I struggle with my colors lacking brightness and saturation (unless I mould in white CH). I've read this entire thread and I would like to ask some follow up questions. I will be so happy to hear from your experience.
- Is a white coat after color coat necessary? Is there a way how to skip it and half the time spent spraying?
- How do I know if my colored cocoa butter is opaque or transparent when shopping for it?
- With what do yoi do white base coat with? I tried 1:1 CB:white CH, still dark bonbons. And reccomended titanium dioxide (white coloring) is now banned.
Bonus: do you buy or make your own colored CB?
Whats the best way how I can give some of my knowledge back?
Thanks for having me here
You bring up a significant issue with using CCB--opacity. As Kerry wrote, you can look at the ingredients, and if there is white (usually titanium dioxide in the U.S.), it will PROBABLY be opaque. But not always. I airbrushed orange recently. You might think orange would be opaque, and it is to some degree, but dark or milk chocolate behind it make it dull. If you want it to pop, then go for the white. Some other colors (I use Chef Rubber) that you might not expect to be opaque turn out to be. There is a way to test: If you have a sheet of something transparent (hard plastic is ideal), paint some of the melted CCB on a small area. Let it crystallize, then melt some chocolate (dark or milk whichever you are going to be using for the shell) and paint that chocolate on about half of the CCB area. When everything has firmed up, turn the plastic over and look at the blob, comparing the parts with and without chocolate. This is not infallible, but it gives a fairly reliable prediction of what will happen. One last thought: You might expect red to be opaque, but it's one of the most disappointing colors--without white behind it. I don't know if you have access to Chef Rubber, but they now have a non-titanium white that is getting very positive reviews. I think it's the White Natural color, but I am not sure.
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1 minute ago, Rajala said:
Really? I really liked it, although I didn't use it much and I can understand it not being a huge seller.
If you recall, I started using Orelys in your cinnamon bun recipe, a recipe that has been insanely popular. An eG member has formulated a recipe for making Orelys in a melanger. I'm thinking of giving it a try. It will probably end up costing more than a 3kg bag shipped by Valrhona to me (via many in-between people, I am sure), but I will really miss having it. @Rajala, since you are so close to the Rhone Valley (I know, typical U.S. concept of geography), why don't you make a trip over and find the Orelys warehouse?
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19 minutes ago, RWood said:
Thanks!
Well, that sucks. I love that stuff 😕I do know a very smart eG member who has figured out the recipe and has made it in a melanger. A reason enough to get a melanger. What irritates me is that you just know Valrhona has a warehouse full of the stuff sitting on the banks of the Rhone. I used it for my pecan pie, cinnamon bun, and more. My Valrhona supplier suggested I substitute Dulcey, but of course they aren't anywhere near the same.
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47 minutes ago, RWood said:
Finished up Valentine's (early! Yay!)
Flavors: Tiramisu, Raspberry Pinot, Strawberry, Orelys, Raspberry Caramels, Dulcey with Hazelnut Crunch, Passion Fruit
Delicious-sounding assortment and beautiful decoration.
Just one downside: I just learned that Valrhona has discontinued Orelys. I have used it in several of my fillings and am very disappointed.
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1 hour ago, Kerry Beal said:
Extra silk does cause over tempering and thus less contraction.
Excellent information. Thanks. I will start weighing--though if I don't temper airbrushed CCB, I suppose it's not an issue. Among my upcoming experiments, I will try your high temps for CCD.
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21 minutes ago, Kerry Beal said:
I don't temper coloured CCB for the Fuji (or any airbrush) - 35º C.
I know you have said that previously. And you don't have any issues (such as the ones I have mentioned above)? Do you use that high a temp for regular airbrushes, or just for the Fuji?
What about the overtempering issue? I have never known whether adding extra silk leads to overtempering (whether chocolate or CCB).
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12 minutes ago, pastrygirl said:
Another layer of CB is another layer of unpredictability
The white has to stick to the orange and the chocolate has to pick them both up. Has it been particularly cold? I think I have more issues with CB sticking when it's cold.
The basement where I spray was about 70F, or even warmer when the Fuji has been running for a while.
I think a post-Valentine's round of experiments may be in order: spray just orange, spray with white, clean using heat, clean using just towels.
I posted this issue on the "Bonbon and chocolate painting techniques" FB group and got the usual confusing mix of explanations. The most comforting one started "I've run into this too." The consensus was that I am taking the CCB out of temper: "You are 100% taking the CCB out of temper. Plus, you have WAY too thick of a CCB layer. The combination of the two is your problem." That person concluded: "if you’re using milk or dark chocolate, just let it be. That minuscule amount of CCB isn’t going to affect your whole batch."
But I don't clean off the mold just for appearance. Leaving the CCB makes it more difficult to seal the chocolates and scrape them so that there isn't a thin--or not so thin-layer of cocoa butter everywhere).
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22 minutes ago, pastrygirl said:
I don't know if those two issues are necessarily related.
In the pic, was the orange CB backed with another layer of white, or is the white the chocolate shell?
The orange was backed with white. The issue may be showing up with other molds, but of course the white makes it more obvious. It does happen more commonly when I back with white, but I don't see any connection, do you?
How do you clean off your molds after spraying?
Confections! What did we make? (2017 – )
in Pastry & Baking
Posted
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.