Jim D.

Kerry's post describes most of what I do, and I have no breakthrough to announce, but wanted to add some notes from my experience. In my dealings with the overtempering problem, adding warm, untempered chocolate is the best solution (however temporary) for overtempered chocolate. Turning up the heat doesn't work as well since the excess Type V crystals don't always melt as expected. Well-tempered chocolate is quite forgiving of warm chocolate being added to it; in other words, it doesn't fall out of temper even if adding quite warm chocolate (35-36C) to it, but its original fluidity does return. I don't have a lot of success using my Mol d'Art to make shells as its temperature changes are rather slow. I use a Chocovision machine, which does tend to make the overtempering issue somewhat worse with its constant movement, but its temperature changes are very quick and register accurately. So if I have a bowl of chocolate at 32C and it becomes overtempered, I can add untempered chocolate at 35.5C, wait a few minutes for the machine to register 32C again, and a temper test will show it still in temper (I have never had the test fail). If using EZtemper silk, the chocolate is even more forgiving of upward temperature shifts. Just yesterday I had a bowl of tempered chocolate, was interrupted by a chef picking up some chocolates for his restaurant, stopped to swap restaurant gossip, then went back to find the chocolate as thick as mud. I heated it to 35.5C and, fearing the worst, tested for temper, and it was fine. @Vojta, I am sure my methods for my relatively small production would not work for your larger quantities, and obviously you have tried all the methods, but I have found that adding untempered chocolate is the way to go.

So you will write: colored cocoa butters (CB, mbpp, red #40, yellow #6, yellow #5, blue #2, blue #1, red #3, titanium dioxide, rice protein) And will you include this text on all labels regardless of whether a colorant is in a particular batch or not? Or will you go to the trouble of checking which are used? I have a bad feeling that it is the second that is acceptable.

Can one get away with just listing them all and saying something like "Depending on assortment, ingredients may include ...."? It all looks quite daunting. But thanks for providing that information. I still say the ingredient list will be very long.

That's (possibly) something of a relief, though my annoyance level continues to rise at bureaucracy run amok. It would mean, for me, going through a bottle of every color in my inventory and making a list of its ingredients. I just checked "Copper," for instance, and it has 6 colorants. If a potential customer is that sensitive, then that person might want to look for a Hershey's bar.

I just counted, and I used 23 separate colors in my Easter chocolates. That's a long ingredient list! If I were looking for a sign that it's time to hang up the chocolate-stained apron and call it quits (and I am), this may be it.

Heart palpitations, indeed. Reminds me of a recent episode: A host told us the almond tart she was serving was gluten-free. A friend, who has a wicked sense of humor and doesn't put up with a lot, said, "Oh, I am so sorry, I didn't know you had been diagnosed with celiac disease." The host responded, "Oh, I haven't been. I just find that when I eat gluten, it causes my dairy intolerance to flare up." I nearly choked on my gluten-free tart as I stifled my laugh. My inspector brought up the need to be able to trace ingredients a few years ago. I thought of the horror of recording all that information by hand, so had the idea of keeping my phone handy and photographing the pertinent information from each bag or box as I went along. He was satisfied, indeed happy, with that idea.

Your homemade melter sounds much more useful than my Mol d'Art. The Mol gets up to temp fairly rapidly, but the wait for chocolate to cool seems interminable. A few days ago I had a tank full of chocolate, melted it overnight, and lucked out with it near the temp when seed should be added. I thought I would be ready to mold in a few minutes, but such was not the case. It was something like an hour before the temp was low enough. A Mol d'Art with circulating water that can be heated or cooled would be great, but I guess that's called a Selmi (or similar tempering machine).

This change in requirements will have a huge impact on chocolatiers who decorate their chocolates. It's not unusual, in a batch of 10 different fillings, to use 20-25 different colors. Listing those individually is completely impractical. In addition, I assume that, for those who use transfer sheets, more colors would have to be listed. Are you required to include an ingredient list for chocolates you sell direct to consumer or just for those sold from other businesses (when you sell the chocolates wholesale to those businesses)? I think of bakeries, which normally don't provide ingredient lists at all--why should we have to do so?

I roast them in my toaster oven (a regular oven works for larger amounts) at 350F. Once they begin to color, frequent stirring keeps them from burning...usually. I don't mind if a few are slightly over-toasted since (as you pointed out) their flavor comes out with toasting. On some occasions I have stopped to remove the toasted ones, then continue with the others, but that is (obviously) very time-consuming. Some people prefer using a nonstick skillet with nearly constant stirring--clearly they are easier to watch in a skillet than in an oven.

I don't think it is possible to add color without having it in cocoa butter. After the chocolate shell is made, the tempered chocolate in the mold contracts as it crystallizes/cools, and the colored cocoa butter beneath it also contracts, so that they become one and come out of the shell together. This is all assuming that cocoa butter and chocolate are in temper--and that the chocolate gods are smiling that day. That contracting process wouldn't work with just food coloring applied to the shell. The coloring agent must be in an oil-based medium (such as cocoa butter), or the chocolate would seize up when it encountered water-based colorant.

I have some foam-tip tools, but they tend to make rather defined areas of color, not the "fluffiness" of this design You second idea is what Monde du Chocolat ordinarily does. Given the quickness with which cocoa butter hardens, it would take incredible speed--and talent.

These beautiful eggs are from Monde du Chocolat. The creator's work is incomparable. I read somewhere that she does many of her designs by blowing dabs of cocoa butter inside each cavity, but this one looks too "composed" for the randomness of an airbrush. How do you think this design was accomplished? Sponges? A fluffy paint brush (it's difficult to keep a brush fluffy after even a small amount of cocoa butter gets in it)? Finger painting (looks too refined for that, but one never knows)?

If the ingredient is just lime juice, I am still puzzled. "Carthage Lime Praline" is not just the title of the recipe, it is also an ingredient, and I don't see how lime juice could qualify as a praline without some added ingredients. Following up on Kerry's comment that Maison Boudina makes pastes with unusual flavors, a search for "Maison Boudina hazelnut" leads to cremedescremes.com, operated by Faten Boudhina, that does have lots of interesting ingredients, but no Carthage lime anywhere. One of the products, "Gianduia with Osmanthe and Piedmont Hazelnuts" lists among the ingredients: "80% Piedmont hazelnuts (Maison Boudina Paris)." But I cannot find a food-oriented website specifically named "Maison Boudina." I think the recipe will remain a mystery unless you manage to find the author and ask that person. Did Journal du Patissier happen to tell you the name of the author? The magazine's response to you doesn't really answer the central question, what is "Carthage lime praline"?

My initial use of the melanger has gone mostly well. I'm making a 4Kg batch of almond praline paste. The melanger is doing very well--not a morsel has flown out of the bowl, even when the amount was small at the beginning. I "pre-ground" the almonds in a food processor until they were fine and barely beginning to exude their oil. Then I made the caramel, and therein was the issue. The caramel was going well until near the end, when the sugar began to crystallize--which leads to that horrible sinking feeling, "I know where this is going to end." So I added some water and began again. The same thing happened a second time, and then a third time. Now a sensible person would have thrown out that 1.6Kg of sugar and started over, but being sensible is not always a virtue of mine (after all, I do make chocolates). The fourth time I divided the caramel in half and melted each half by itself, using a smaller pot. This time it worked. I have no idea what went wrong earlier. The humidity today is around 30%, and I followed the same procedure I always do (I prefer a wet caramel). In any event, I pre-ground the caramel in my old food processor (the sides of the bowl were already scratched from grinding caramel, so I used it), then added the caramel slowly to the melanger, along with some sea salt, and so far so good. It tastes great, needs some more grinding.

This recipe I found is not like the one to which pjm333 referred, but it does have a similar combination of praline and lime flavors (the latter showing up in Kaffir leaves and in sudachi purée). I am reasonably certain I cannot find sudachi purée [correction: I just located it for sale from AUI Fine Foods, my chocolate supplier] or probably Kaffir lime leaves, but I might give it a try using regular limes. The combination of Dulcey and Opalys in the Carthage lime recipe would probably allow the lime flavor to come through more boldly than the milk and dark chocolates of the recipe I found.

Why is this model more difficult in terms of removing the ice cream? I have the Cuisinart model where the canister has to be frozen first, and it's also fairly difficult to get all the ice cream out. The dashers in the two models don't seem that different to me, but obviously I must be missing something.

Just wanted to report about my melanger in action. The correct spring arrived today, and I ran a batch of just sugar to clean out the machine. The sugar didn't get dirty at all, so perhaps they are cleaning the melanger better before shipping. In addition, the sugar stayed completely in the bowl, no splattering anywhere (though I had it on the kitchen floor in case a hurricane ensued). The new scraper arms (instead of the deflectors) work very well at gathering the material from the sides of the bowl and placing it in the path of the stones. Similarly the new splash guards appeared to do their job as there was a little sugar on their bottoms when the grinding was done. The machine is very easy to clean (yes, I know this was just sugar). The melanger is a little noisier than I anticipated from the comments of others, but nothing I can't put up with, especially if it's in another room. I am very pleased with the workmanship and apparent sturdiness of the melanger and look forward to a large batch of almond praline paste tomorrow. The cost of this model (Premier Tilting Refiner, 10 pounds maximum, with stainless steel stone holder, Model 508) is $450, including shipping. The 8-pound non-tilting version (Model 507) is $400. I didn't intend to write a full review of the Premier melanger, but did want to thank all in this thread who answered my questions and encouraged me to move forward.

I would have thought the oil would make the paste more fluid (i.e., less viscous), so am surprised. I agree about the price of pistachios. I have a large container of already-made pistachio paste from Fiddyment Farms in California, so will begin by grinding that for a while, then gradually adding some caramelized sugar. It may turn out that buying their paste is less expensive than buying pistachios and grinding from scratch. I also agree about toasting only a little. Some people don't approve of toasting them at all. Some recipes (Greweling has one) recommend peeling the nuts, mostly to get a better color. Now that's a task for very patient people.

Do you think the box is necessary with the new splash guards installed? I have looked in vain for a box large enough to hold the whole melanger. My first grinding will be the sugar to clean it, and I suppose that qualifies as a small batch.

Can you tell me the purpose of the pistachio oil? Did the pistachios not have enough on their own?

At last (I think) I will be able to begin using the melanger next week. My first project is almond praline paste. I have usually made it 50-50 almonds and caramelized sugar, but would like to experiment with 60-40 almonds to sugar to help diminish the sweetness. Is there any reason why this would not work in terms of texture? I know that Cacao Barry's pistachio praline paste is 70% pistachios, so the principle seems to suggest it is OK. Since, by the way, that delicious and hard-to-source paste is $128 per kilo, achieving an acceptable pistachio praline at home is the next goal.

It's a fascinating recipe and puzzling as well: Lime praline is mentioned in the ingredients, but lemon praline in the notes at the bottom. A Google search for "Carthage lime" persistently turns up "Carthage limestone" from the U.S.--probably not what the recipe author had in mind. Whereas I don't find lime and praline particularly enticing in combination, I did find a recipe that includes hazelnut and kaffir lime praline.

I knew you would be interested in the resolution of this problem and just received an answer. Turns out the owner is traveling abroad, so connecting with him was difficult. Here's the response: "The spring on your top lock is actually going to be the problem here, it is too tall." I was very curious and so asked how the wrong spring was shipped. The correct spring is going to be shipped to me along with a video showing how to change it (they must know they are dealing with a know-nothing user on this end).

I thought it was fairly obvious that I was kidding.

Congratulations on the huge order.