Jim D.

It's not possible to predict shelf life without knowing the exact recipe. It would also depend on whether the purée contains some strawberries or is completely smooth. The dried strawberries will add solids, so lowering water content and increasing shelf life a little. Much of this depends on whether you are making these bonbons for personal use (in which case shelf life doesn't matter so much) or for other people (you can't know how they will store the bonbons or how long they will keep them). As far as sweetness goes (which you mentioned in your post to minas), you can control that by adding a bit of citric acid (or, if you don't have that, lemon juice).

It would help to know the ingredients in the ganache. Did you use white chocolate as the base, then add the purée and/or cream? If so, you have encountered a known issue with fruit ganaches--getting enough of the fruit flavor. There are ways to concentrate or supplement the flavor: You can substitute plain cocoa butter for some of the white chocolate. You can make a "water ganache" by using only strawberry purée, no cream (but this will have a high water content and therefore short shelf life). You can add other flavoring sources: strawberry flavoring (there are some good natural ones, such as Amoretti's), strawberry compound (which is more like a jam), or freeze-dried strawberries. Then there is the butter ganache idea that minas mentioned, using strawberry jam.

Assortment for Valentine's 2022: Top row: orange balsamic caramel, hazelnut gianduja & shortbread, sesame crunch, raspberry ganache with rosewater, "caramel macchiato" (caramel, vanilla, coffee), almond gianduja with cherries & almonds. Bottom row: "cookies & cream" (Speculoos cookie butter with vanilla ganache), "crème brûlée," dark caramel with Maldon sea salt, coconut cream, "bananas Foster," solid Arriba 72% chocolate with peppermint oil.

I pipe the marshmallow into the bottom of the shell, let it set overnight, then pipe in whatever additional filling I am using. It is essential to have the marshmallow fluid, or it will form a dome that will make the rest of the process quite difficult. Once a too-firm marshmallow has set, you can't do much with it--it doesn't allow for pressing it down to make a horizontal layer because it will spring back. If you are just adding a second layer (such as your lime) and not adding a cookie, then the shape of the marshmallow doesn't matter so much.

I too have been interested in finding a more "custardy" white ganache, for example, to use in a crème brûlée filling. I was pointed to Bird's custard powder (a staple in England). I found a homemade recipe for it using confectioner's sugar, cornstarch, and nonfat milk powder. At first I was put off by the idea, but I gave it a try, and if enough appropriate flavor (e.g., vanilla, fiori di Sicilia, almond) is added, it tastes remarkably like homemade custard (I omitted the yellow food coloring most recipes include). I tested the water content, and it had an Aw reading of 0.7--not bad. You mentioned avoiding white chocolate, so you might not like this approach, which calls for mixing the custard powder with white chocolate and cream, but, once again, it's all in the flavoring you add. I use Valrhona's Opalys white chocolate, and to me it tastes better than any other white I have tried. You specifically mentioned seeking something like pastry cream. The custard powder approaches that, but I don't think you can get pastry cream flavor without eggs. Kee's Chocolates in New York City has a crème brûlée bonbon which it (famously) insists customers eat within two days. I have food insurance, but I wouldn't trust customers to follow those directions.

@YodaI use Valrhona's Opalys for my white. It starts out thin (as you described Zephyr), but fairly quickly thickens. The issue is finding that thickening point and taking steps to counteract it. But you are interested in the thin stages. What I do is to scrape the mold (upside down), then take a look at it. If the chocolate looks thin at that point (any colored cocoa butter will show through the chocolate), I pour a little more into each cavity, empty the mold, scrape again. I try to avoid filling the cavities a second time by (as pastrygirl suggested) letting the mold sit (while it is still full of chocolate) for longer than usual. This really works, but of course knowing when to end the waiting period is the key. When the shell looks OK and I have scraped it, I turn the mold on each of its sides, one by one, letting chocolate have another chance to crystallize on the sides as I find that is where the thinness eventually shows up. Then I scrape again (mold upside down). When the edges of the shell begin to over-thicken as they crystallize, I know it's time to take steps to thin out the chocolate. I avoid making the shell twice unless the situation is really bad because you may end up with a very thick shell. All of the above are reasons I tend to use mostly dark and milk these days. There are some fillings, however, that seem to call for white. And for a popular "apple crisp" I make, Cacao Barry's Zephyr Caramel is perfect. If you think Zephyr white is difficult, give the caramel version a try for a real test of your ingenuity.

I know you didn't address this to me, but since I am a recent "re-convert" to Fuji, I might have some useful information. A few days ago, in a rush to get the Valentine's batch done, I fired up my Grex. Several hours later I had sprayed only a handful of molds. I had to reheat it every couple of minutes (the room was 68-70F, so that was not the issue). This happened once before, and Grex tech support had me ship the airbrush to them, they cleaned it, said there was nothing wrong except for some hardened cocoa butter. It worked very well for a long time...until last week. But I just can't depend on equipment that is not...well, not dependable. So I got out the Fuji (fortunately two people to whom I had offered it for sale both said no), followed @lironp's fantastic advice for controlling overspray and excess use of cocoa butter, and finished up the molds in record time. I'm not saying the Fuji is perfect (I can go into the issues I had if desired), but this time it certainly has worked better for me than the Grex. I think the larger spray tip on the Fuji is the primary explanation. And yes, there is a "chocolatier's setup" for the Fuji that you need to buy. Fuji prices appear to be the same everywhere, but with Amazon, there is the bonus of free shipping with Prime. Interestingly, since the last time I dealt with Fuji tech support, the website now includes a section on chocolatiers' use of the Fuji and @Kerry Bealis prominently featured. Finally it would seem the Fuji people are waking up to the possibilities of selling the stuff to chocolatiers.

You have certainly chosen one of the finest chocolates in the world--and with some of the highest prices. From Wikipedia: "One of their products, Amedei Porcelana, is known as the world's most expensive chocolate." I have never tried it but have read one rave review after another. The Amedei website (which gave me the U.S. English version) says their dark is $32 per pound. I might suggest you begin with something less expensive for your experiments (Callebaut is a possibility). I am enrolled in the Savour online classes and like them very much. Kirsten Tibballs (the school's primary teacher) is full of enthusiasm for her craft and has lots of inventive ideas. She provides recipes for everything and will even answer questions from students. And there is the added bonus (for a U.S. citizen) of her wonderful Australian accent. I love hearing her pronounce the word "saucepan" as if it had only one syllable.

If the ganache is being used in a bonbon, a lot of chocolatiers make the point that you want to incorporate as little air in the ganache as possible (for shelf life concerns). So the immersion blender has the advantage that it can be kept below the surface of the ganache and so makes fewer air bubbles. I don't know if there is sufficient science behind that observation, but I do it "just in case" it's correct.

One addition to all the wise advice you have received in this thread: I tried vacuum-packing chocolates and ended up with imploded bonbons (not a pretty sight). You can use a vacuum sealer only if you can regulate its pressure in very small increments. People speak of using some models of the Food Saver, but after my experience, I never tried again. Instead, I use an impulse sealer. I place individual boxes of chocolates in a bag intended for use in sous vide applications (so, fairly thick) and then seal them with the impulse sealer. They are waterproof and probably as close as it is possible to get to airtight without vacuuming. I then go through the process others have described (refrigerate, then freeze). After doing this for several years, I have not had an issue. I make extra bonbons for Christmas sales and freeze boxes (12" x 12") in this way in October, and I can see no difference when I open them for boxing in December. I am a huge fan of impulse sealers and use mine for keeping cut onion odor out of the rest of the fridge, keeping bread fresh much longer, etc.

Are you straining your homemade colors? Dubovik, Tibballs, really everybody calls for straining it through fine mesh after mixing it to get rid of the undissolved bits. All of that is why I gave up and just buy it already mixed.

Your experiments all sounds quite reasonable. I wouldn't expect a miraculous improvement when opening a brand new bottle of white c.b. First, I don't think there is a way to tell when the c.b. was bottled, and second, titanium dioxide has a smell--that's just a fact. But the other fact, that it is used in many foods, suggests its smell/taste is not so prominent in real world use. One small point: I never heard about waiting a day to use "homemade" colored c.b. In the online class that some of us on eG took with Andrey Dubovik, he used it immediately, and so does Kirsten Tibballs of Savour School. And one other thought: In your original email you mentioned that you had a "big" container of white c.b. I buy the 200g bottles, which I am sure cost more but (in theory) don't have a chance to age so much before being used.

In the case of the cocoa butter that was too thin, you just need to add more color powder to get the right consistency. About your main topic: I agree totally about the smell/taste of titanium dioxide, but I do use it both to mix with other colors to lighten them and to back colors that are not opaque (such as red). Its bad qualities will show up in any color that includes it (Chef Rubber's gold or yellow, for instance). Unfortunately, although people are working on a substitute for titanium (especially in countries where it is now illegal), I don't know of anything now available. What I discovered, however, is that after I finish a bonbon, I don't notice the smell or taste. Actually I have spent some time with this issue, trying as hard as I could to detect the taste in, for example, a bonbon with ganache, and I didn't get it. Now perhaps your senses of smell and taste are keener than mine, but if you haven't already done so, go ahead and coat a mold in white, fill it with something, and see what you find. You didn't say whether you used an airbrush to paint the cavities. If you were not using one, then it will give you a finer coating of the color than using a paintbrush.

The separation doesn't always happen. I use a recipe for orange balsamic caramel from William Curley that calls for a huge amount of butter, and it has never separated (and I don't even have to use a blender on it). So there are mysteries in all this business. In theory it could have been the cream that separated. Were you using a particularly high-fat cream or do you live in a place where the fat percentage is normally high? One other idea: if you heat the cream before adding it to the hot caramel, the whole process will take less time. I don't know if the temp of the cream affects the emulsion or not.

Are you sure the separated layer isn't butter? If it is, I used to encounter this issue often. Then I learned on eGullet about the necessity of emulsifying the caramel and the butter--mixing water and fat, much like a ganache. Now I add the butter soon after the caramel is removed from the heat and use an immersion blender to beat it in. I haven't had separation since I started doing that. You will need a sturdy immersion blender for the emulsification. There shouldn't be a problem with reheating caramel and adding salt. Perhaps you didn't get it hot enough to melt the salt? I myself don't mind a little salty crunch in the caramel, especially if it's a nice-tasting sea salt.

I am impressed with how well you do your homework. The Fuji will indeed do both splatter and regular spraying, but you would not be able to give your assistant consistent directions, for the simple reason that the air regulation required for splattering varies from one color to another. But the person could probably learn to use trial and error to get the spray you want. I have a Fuji but no longer use it very much because of all the cocoa butter it uses and my relatively small production. I should note that @lironp, who got a Fuji fairly recently, says she has conquered the amount of overspray (she lives in your area). I use a Grex (gravity-feed) and use a toothbrush for splattering. In my opinion the splatter from the Fuji and from the toothbrush are indistinguishable. I should add that @pastrygirl has somehow mastered splattering with the Grex, but in my very lengthy efforts I never attained that goal. I have a CakeSafe spray booth that I like a lot. It is not really intended for the amount of overspray that the Fuji puts out, and even with the Grex, I have to change the filters often. But it is the best option I have found. Your operation sounds large, so you may have the resources to have a spray booth built with outside venting--though it is a point capitalized on by the CakeSafe inventor that cocoa butter is not the same as paint and settles more quickly on everything around it (which would include venting ducts). The CakeSafe captures the cocoa butter immediately as it is sprayed, no duct necessary. But large professional spray booths are what major chocolatiers (such as Melissa Coppel) have. I suspect they have these specially built. Smaller spray booths are ordinarily aimed at hobbyists using paint, but there are large ones (Chef Rubber has one) you might look at. I use a ventilator from 3M that works well to keep the cocoa butter out of my lungs.

That sounds like a good idea--except that I don't pipe the chocolate to seal the molds--I ladle it on, then scrape. I can't imagine how anyone does more than a very small number of molds without having the chocolate cool and over-crystallize in the piping bag and become unusable. I've tried it. In all the videos where I have seen it done, the chocolatier is making a single mold or perhaps a couple. Do you use this method? How many molds can you do at a time? Incidentally I have abandoned the idea of using a warming tray to get colored cocoa butter off molds (before the shells are created). I got too many that showed signs of melting around the top (that is, the eventual bottom). I lowered the heat as much as I could but still suspected I was creating a mess to be revealed later at unmolding. I continue to use the warming tray turned up to high for melting chocolate from molds when I am cleaning them. The next time I make chocolates I am going to spray all the molds with a given color, then immediately scrape them. It makes a mess (and extends the time required for airbrushing), but that's better than having ruined chocolates. I will still use the warming tray to keep paper towels hot to help with the final stages of scraping, on the assumption that paper is a poor conductor of heat.

I simply use a sponge to wash mine in hot water with soap (I use Dawn, but don't know if it's available in your location), let them airdry, then polish a short time with a microfiber cloth. I don't use alcohol with any cleaning. Polycarbonate molds are considered unbreakable (by Chocolate World, for instance). I can't imagine a situation in which alcohol would cause a mold to shatter. I'm sure it is possible to break one, but it would take a lot of force. What company manufactured your mold? It should provide some perspective to know that many accomplished chocolatiers do not wash their molds between uses at all.

Questions about @Duvel's method: I have a roast with a very thick fat cap. A chef I know had recommended rendering out some of the fat (Duvel's method--low heat, fat down, water in the pan). I would like to render out more of the fat and end up with a thinner layer on top for final roasting. Can I safely leave the fat side down for a longer period of time without ending up with overcooked pork? Alternatively I could simply cut off some of the fat cap, but the chef cautioned me that, especially since I had paid a lot for that extra fat, I should leave it on and end up with better flavor. Any suggestions appreciated.

Do you have a photo of or link to the kind of "clear" ganache you mention? I am not understanding what you have in mind. Ganache is a broad term, but it does have limits. If you make a ganache in which fruit purée is the liquid emulsified with chocolate, then you will encounter the issue of a higher Aw than you may wish to have. Wybauw's black currant ganache is one example, and its Aw is on the edge of what I will make and sell. Pâte de fruit is a specific substance: fruit purée mixed with pectin, no fat such as a ganache has. It gives a great fruit punch (as Kate Weiser makes very clear in her wonderful chocolates), but it's not ganache. Do you have Peter Greweling's book? If not, it is a must, in my opinion, for all the theory you will need in chocolatiering.

I find transfer sheets are very forgiving, so those may be OK (maybe the bloom will show only on the sides). I would definitely invest in a hygrometer--they are not expensive. As you undoubtedly know with your experience, making caramel on a humid day is a form of confectionery suicide.

I am in Virginia, so not too far from you, and I have had humidity problems from time to time. Kerry's suggestion is crucial. Once I started dealing the latent heat, I have had fewer problems. Do you have a hygrometer? I check it in warm weather, and if it's over 50%, I turn on the AC (regardless of what season it is--it was around 70F here yesterday). What did the bloomed molds look like? Did you happen to take a photo? Sometimes, if it's not too bad, you can go ahead and the chocolates will turn out OK (especially if you have decorated the mold so that the bloom doesn't show so much).

I use that method (slowly melting chocolate and so tempering with unmelted already-in-temper chocolate) for ganaches. The problem with it is that it's quite exact--go too much over the temper point and you're out of luck. And it's difficult to be that careful with a large amount of chocolate. In addition (and more importantly) overtempering will happen no matter how you have gotten the chocolate to a working state. Either you have to heat it up (which works to a point) or you add untempered chocolate, but there is no escaping the fact that tempered chocolate doesn't stay that way for a long time.

A lemon curd tends to have too high a water content, and I try not to use eggs, even cooked, in bonbons. So I use Ewald Notter's lemon ganache--it has a strong lemon flavor. His lime ganache also works well in a bonbon, whether in the "pie" or the "cheesecake" bonbon.

Thanks for the info about the sale. I use the Artisan Natural flavors and like (most of) them very much. They add a real flavor punch without adding a lot of extra liquid (important for ganaches, caramel, etc.). Specifically I use the strawberry, raspberry, passion fruit, mango, probably others I can't recall now. I add those flavors to the water used to dissolve the gelatin for marshmallows and also to make the syrup. Some flavors fade as the marshmallows are beaten, and all colors I have tried have also faded. For items like vanilla, I add it toward the end of the beating or it too fades to some extent (but not too close to the end or the marshmallow thins out). I use a lot of flavoring for marshmallows because of the fading issue and also because I can't stand the smell and taste of gelatin. I have never had too much flavoring in the marshmallow I have made. Passion fruit and coffee have been the favorites with customers.