Jim D.

I would like to have a discernible cakey texture (perhaps like a somewhat overbaked ladyfinger, or a soft cookie), but not a crunch. I agree about the cocoa powder; it probably would be lost in all the other ingredients.

My latest project is to make a "tiramisu" bonbon, and I am seeking help with the inclusion part. For the whipped cream and mascarpone layer in a traditional tiramisu, I will probably use Susanna Yoon's cheesecake ganache, substituting all mascarpone for the various cheeses she uses (it has white chocolate to firm it up a bit). It is the ladyfinger (savoiardi) and coffee part that concerns me. Most recipes call for the firmer savoiardi (rather than just-baked soft ladyfingers), which are then dipped in coffee (sometimes Kahlúa). I know that it is undoubtedly safe to use cooked eggs in bonbons, but I prefer not to do so and have located several recipes for eggless ladyfingers. The rise comes from baking powder and whipping the butter and sugar. So one question (not my main one): The best-looking recipe calls for a tablespoon of vinegar, and it's the only recipe I found that has this ingredient. I assume it has something to do with activating the baking powder. Can anyone explain this? The main issue is how to get the ladyfinger-dipped-in-coffee taste, maybe texture. One option is to grind up the ladyfingers (which I think would need to be baked a bit longer than traditional ladyfingers), then mix them with a coffee ganache (this is done in several tiramisu truffle recipes I found). Another method would be to cut the ladyfingers into rounds, then add them to the cavities after a thin layer of coffee ganache. In both cases the ladyfingers would soften, but of course that is what happens when you dip them in coffee in a traditional tiramisu. So the question is whether this would become a disgusting mush over time. Encasing the ladyfingers (ground up or left whole) in a gianduja would be an ideal solution, but I can't think of any way to get coffee flavor into a gianduja. I did see one suggestion for mixing powdered instant coffee into chocolate, but avoiding grittiness would be tricky. Yet another idea is spraying the "ladyfinger cookies" with cocoa butter to protect them from moisture, and if this technique didn't keep them firm forever, it would probably slow down the softening. Finished tiramisu is usually sprinkled with cocoa power, and I have some delicious Valrhona cocoa powder, but I can't think of any way to incorporate that without grittiness. So I'm planning to use dark chocolate for the shell to add the chocolate flavor. Any suggestions would be welcome.

You are really heading into uncharted territory now. Sounds delicious, though certainly too far out there for my customers, but still interesting. Can you say more about the three flavors and how they were made? Bacon has been discussed a lot on eGullet, and, if I recall correctly, the consensus was that bacon fat gave better flavor than bacon itself.

You might find some interesting combinations in this thread on flavor combinations. It covers both savory and sweet ideas, but there are lots of suggestions, some of which I have adopted.

As requested: (with thanks to pastrypastmidnight for her tips on doing "the cut," at which she is a recognized master) Tasting a new bonbon all assembled and ready to go is always different (to me) from tasting the components during production. This tasting told me the Notter lemon ganache recipe is great, but, when paired with marshmallow, it could use more zest. It's not clearly visible, but below the lemon there is a thin "moisture barrier" of white chocolate flavored with the wonderful Boyajian lemon oil, keeping the cookie crisp. I made some new discoveries about making pipeable marshmallow (this was the best it has ever turned out--it even self-leveled as I piped it into the molds), and I have incorporated those into the recipe I posted on using marshmallow in bonbons.

Chocolate assortment for May 2020, clockwise starting with orange sphere at top: dark chocolate ganache with orange & spiced honey, Irish coffee ganache topped with a coffee bean, "lemon meringue pie" (marshmallow meringue, lemon ganache, shortbread crust), "pecan pie" (dark caramel, pecan praline gianduja, pecan shortbread), strawberry ganache with St-Germain elderflower liqueur, caramel flavored with mango & passion fruit, hazelnut caramel, Speculoos cookie butter, apricot pâte de fruit & pistachio gianduja: Flowers on the outside, strawberry and elderflower on the inside:

Now that I have purchased the Wybauw all-inclusive "Gold" volume, I am offering for sale the two individual books I already have: Volumes 2 and 4. They have a great deal of information on shelf life and contain many recipes. In excellent condition. $50 + shipping charges for both of them (for sale together, not individually), payment via Paypal, shipment by USPS.

Last time I thought I had figured peach out (bought tree-ripe peaches and roasted them, sought out a peach liqueur--which by itself was delicious, purchased a "peach nectar" that had spectacular Amazon reviews, and got some dried peaches), I ended up adding some apricot at the last minute to provide some flavor. So you will understand that I look forward to your experiments. I am surprised pectin is difficult to find. Aren't jams and jellies made in Finland? You may have to make your own pectin. That will test your dedication to this endeavor!

I have been happy with the flavor and level of sweetness. That being said, there are a few other "tricks" I use to emphasize the former and obfuscate the latter. In the first category, I found some wonderful French fruit "essences" made from the fruit only that are outrageously expensive, but just a few drops "punch up" the flavor. I use the apricot, pear, mango, and apple--I neglected to mention earlier that I also make an apple PdF. In cases where I have found liqueurs/brandies that (to me) have an authentic flavor, I also add some of that; this includes pear, cherry, raspberry, and apricot. In the second category (sweetness), Pomona's calls for lemon juice for fruits that need it, but I always add lemon juice.

No, I have not. I don't have any dextrose. In the U.S. I found dextrose at $6 for 500g, whereas sorbitol was $12/500g. As 500g for such a light-weight product is a large amount, the $6 difference does not have such an impact. This summer I might get some dextrose and give your idea a try, though at this point I have just about had my fill of PdF experiments! I think that in the recipes I use with added dried fruit (such as apricot, cherry, pear, mango) the dried fruit makes a substantial difference in available water.

I am no expert, but from charts I have seen, dextrose has .75 the sweetness of sucrose, whereas sorbitol has .55. Do you have an objection to using sorbitol (I used to, but don't any more since I saw so many well-known chocolatiers using it)? Why not reduce the sweetness of the PdF as much as you can while still retaining the Aw improvement contributed by a sugar? The PdF recipe posted by Pomona's (manufacturer of the pectin I prefer) calls for adding more sucrose (as in the traditional PdF recipes), but I thought of using sorbitol as a way of lowering the sweetness. Obviously (powdered) dextrose would do some of that. I don't know what would happen if you replaced even more of the sucrose with dextrose or sorbitol.

@GRiker, @jimb0: There is a reason Peter Greweling repeats in every caramel recipe that temp cannot be the only guide and therefore the confectioner needs to test the texture of the caramel. And therein lies the rub. There is no way the conditions for making caramel one time can be repeated exactly (there is room temperature, humidity, measurement of ingredients, intensity of heat, etc.). And checking temperature and consistency of the caramel has its own variables: If you intend to stop at 250F/121C and take the pan off the heat to check the temperature, the caramel will continue cooking, so the temp you thought you had will increase. These are not great insights, just some of the basic facts that make getting a "consistent consistency" difficult.

I purchased an O'Creme mold with 56 cavities, mainly because it produced the size I wanted, and at that particular time Chef Rubber did not have the size. I was with Ruth when she saw molds in use at JinJu in Las Vegas and, like her, was struck with what a clever idea the mold is. Jin's assistants were releasing caramels from the molds at an impressive rate of speed. They work without a hitch. I don't use mine very often because I haven't yet mastered getting the viscosity of cut and dipped caramels to something that will turn out consistently--it's often too firm to eat comfortably or too soft to hold a shape for dipping.

I love the expression "working a treat." Out of context, I would have no idea what it meant. I had something similar happen with my Grex. I had reached the point where I had to heat it every few minutes to get it flowing. I contacted Grex tech support (the most responsive tech people I have ever encountered), and they offered to clean it free of charge (I paid just the shipping). They knew it was for cocoa butter and so used nothing poisonous. When it came back, I was, of course, skeptical. But that was 1 1/2 years ago, and it has behaved ever since. Considering how small an airbrush needle is, it's a wonder, I suppose, why this doesn't happen all the time, given that I use a lot of cocoa butters with metallic bits (I try not to think of what those bits actually are). Someday I really need to learn how to clean the airbrush myself, but when I watch the videos on taking it apart, I am compelled to reach for the nearest bottle of gin.

I have now used a few of the Chef Rubber Zen colors: Nirvana Gold and Lotus Pink (have not yet tried the Yang White). They have a kind of pearlescent quality that is nice. I like the pink a lot (it's more of a rose in my opinion). The gold is a dark shade of gold, and I really prefer the gold from the Jewel line. As it dries, the gold takes on a darker hue. As discussed earlier, I had hoped these colors would not use titanium dioxide, but from the smell (and from the information my email contact gathered from Chef Rubber) they do, and the gold at least produces the usual overspray that all the Chef Rubber jewel colors as well as white have. My new spray booth mostly contained the "backspray" that can be really obnoxious to the sprayer, but the task of cleaning the aerosolized cocoa butter off the sides remains for another day. One side observation: There was a hand-written note in the package from Chef Rubber thanking me for the purchase and asking me to send them photos of what I make with the new colors. I've never received anything like that from them before. As for pricing, regular CR colors are $19.95/200g; all of the Zen line is above that, ranging from $21.60 (the pink) to $28 (the gold). All in all, I might purchase the pink and some other colors in the future; I don't think I will get the gold again. As for the "natural" aspect of the ingredients, it's not possible to tell what substances have been used, so really no judgment can be made.

Beautiful. I especially admire the perfect stripe in the second photo--very difficult to do in a tall dome like that.

Of course, copper is considered the best, so if money is no object, what about getting a larger copper pot/kettle? I bought an All-Clad 6-qt. pot and have been very pleased with it. It is from their "Copper-Core" line and has a layer of copper (among other metals). They have various sizes and shapes. If I am not mistaken, @RobertM used to make caramel for a living (before he became rich and now just lies in the sun all day), so he knows what he is talking about.

What size is the batch you are making? And what is your price range?

I use Felchlin for my dark and milk chocolates, but unfortunately they decided to go with one U.S. distributor (AUI), and now the chocolate can be bought only in whole-case quantities (a decision that is fine for me, but I really think they are limiting their audience). When Venezuela, the source of Maracaibo, totally collapses, which I expect any day, for dark chocolate I will switch to Valrhona's Caraïbe (66%). Chocosphere sells it in 1 kilo bags ($31), only slightly above your higher price point. Many people on eGullet use Guittard, so someone will probably chime in with recommendations. For white chocolate (there is a whole thread on this), I have tasted many of them and settled on Valrhona's Opalys.(at $35/kilo priced a bit higher than the dark I mentioned). It is a white chocolate that those who do not like white chocolate (well, some of them maybe) actually like. My second choice is Cacao Barry's Zéphyr, priced considerably lower ($26/kilo).

The regular line of CW molds includes both sizes; indeed it appears to be standard in the business to use those two sizes and no others. The smaller molds are 275mm x 135mm (often 3 x 7 or 3 x 8 cavities, but the number varies depending on the shape of the cavity), and the larger ones are 275mm x 175mm (sometimes the 4 x 8 layout you mentioned, but even 5 x 8 is possible). I agree with the earlier post that suggested the color of the Greenline molds would almost certainly interfere with selecting colors for the shell.

I have received three bottles of the new Chef Rubber Zen collection: Yang White, Lotus Pink, and Nirvana Gold. In contract to previous CR bottles, however, which listed the coloring agents in detail, these simply say "Cocoa Butter and Natural Colorents [sic]." Fortunately for those who want to know more, someone not an eGullet member saw my post here and wrote me as follows: I checked and it would appear that titanium dioxide is considered a naturally occurring mineral, though perhaps one that humans might not wish to be inhaling from an airbrush.

I just watched the Lemon Drop video. Indeed the ganache ratio is approximately 1:1. And who am I to question Kirsten Tibballs? All I can say is that she uses milk chocolate, which is more viscous than dark, and shes doe comment that the ganache is quite fluid, but still I am surprised it sets. She does say that she let it sit overnight before sealing the chocolates. This goes to prove, I suppose, that everyone breaks the rules at some point in the chocolate world. If, however, when you wrote "the ganache tries to squeeze out while capping," you meant that some ganache came out of the shell, then the shell is too full and/or the ganache is too fluid.

Notter recommends a humidity less than 50%. I am surprised at your comment on the humidity in SF. The several times I visited there, it felt very humid (fog rolling in for the afternoon, frequent drizzle, showers, etc.). In fact, an SF website states: "The average annual relative humidity is 68.3% and average monthly relative humidity ranges from 65% in June to 75% in January."

I think most of the issues you mention come from creating a ganache with a 50:50 ratio. All the authorities I know of call for considerably more chocolate. In the case of dark chocolate, it's often 2:1 chocolate to liquefiers. At that ratio, a ganache will not be so easy to pipe at room temp, thus the (approx.) 83F I mentioned. When you pipe it, 1/4" to 1/3" space should be left between ganache and top of cavity. I leave my fillings overnight to set, though if it firms up before then, I don't see any reason to wait. With the space I mentioned, you won't scrape the top of the ganache so easily. It is crucial that the seal be as near perfect as possible or the filling may leak out and even spoil. And a final note: a 1:1 ratio ganache probably has a high free water content, thus will not last very long.

I don't know. The Chef Rubber website does not (as far as I can tell) list ingredients for any cocoa butter product; the ingredients are printed on each bottle. Amazon does provide the ingredient list for CR cocoa butters, but it doesn't yet offer the Zen line. I plan to get some of the Zen white to find out what they are using (if the label is that detailed). If I could find a white that didn't have the odor and the overspray of the titanium version, that would be a real find and worth some extra money. Unless someone else reports before my Zen arrives, I will do so.