Jim D.

Having used my homemade box for spraying with a cutout filled with a house heating system filter and a large industrial-type fan behind the filter (thanks to @tikidoc for the idea), I can offer some information. There is some cocoa butter on the fan, so I know the setup is working, at least to some degree, to draw the cocoa butter out of the box. There is, however, still quite a lot of "blowback" of cocoa butter (toward me) as it hits the walls of the box. For reasons I don't understand, some colors are worse than others (white is the worst). My conclusion about a box is that it helps some, but if you really want to get the cocoa butter out, a strong vacuum pump drawing the cocoa butter outside the room is the only serious solution. Obviously that gets quite expensive and isn't even possible in some situations. I have seen professional setups with this arrangement, and it works. It also provides ample space to work, important because it is awkward to spray inside the box since I have to lean forward to get the spray gun far enough inside. A larger box would probably help, but it is typical (for me at least) to get so involved in trying to get the mold covered that I forget about being careful about the cocoa butter spray. I have found that wearing a respirator really works. I have a 3M brand with its own filters. It's quite inexpensive, and while it's very uncomfortable at first, I have gotten used to it now. When I wear it, I look like a creature from another planet, but that's OK if it works. I can no longer smell the cocoa butter or feel it in my throat as I did previously. There are, by the way, lots of Youtube videos on building a spray booth, from simple boxes like mine to more professional-looking efforts, some with vacuums.

I aim for approximately the same size you mention, though occasionally I have bought especially attractive molds that are smaller (such as the very popular "quenelle"). I find that recipients appreciate a larger bonbon. In cases where there are several layers, a larger one is practically required--if you really want the recipient to taste both layers. All that being said, my impression is that most chocolatiers use smaller molds. I like half-spheres, but the readily available ones are either quite small or rather large (the geometry of a sphere dictates that the diameter of the cavity will increase dramatically with more space allowed for ganaches). That's why I had larger-than-normal half-spheres made, and I use them a lot.

Thanks for those ideas. I hadn't considered freeze-dried powder, but it's a good possibility. I did get some "blueberry essence" from the same place that sold some wonderful French apple, apricot, and pear essences, but the blueberry wasn't of the same quality.

I don't believe you have mentioned the blueberry ganache, at least in this thread. Is it the ganache you mentioned paired with the lemon PdF? I have been working on getting real blueberry flavor in a filling for some time but without success. The blueberry flavor gets lost in everything else (white chocolate, for example). Can you elaborate on how you make it? I tried fresh blueberries directly from the farmers' market, but they were bland. Maybe purchased blueberry purée has a better flavor?

I think I have mentioned before that I use the EZtemper to temper colored cocoa butter for decorating molds, but I had to post my experience today. I am making (what is for me) a large batch of chocolates and had several large orders last night just before the deadline for this batch. Of course I had already begun the decorating and had to do some of it all over today with more molds. In a period of about 7 hours, I tempered around 15 different colors (in several cases I had to use additional cocoa butter from the Chef Rubber containers, which took even more time to melt). I would never have accomplished this task in such a short time span without the EZtemper. I melted the cocoa butters overnight in a dehydrator to about 110F/43C. I placed them one by one (carefully) in an ice water bath and got the temp down to around 92.3F/33.5C in a very brief time. I dried off the glass container and placed it on a counter, added a little cocoa butter silk, and stirred until the temp dropped to 86F/30C, then put a drop on the counter to test it. In a few minutes I headed to the spray gun or the paint brush and used the cocoa butter. Truth to tell, the longest wait was in doing the temper test.

It would be great if you could post a review of the Grex HVLP after you have used it for a while.

Recently Andrey Dubovik posted a video on Instagram (which is now included in the thread on the Dubovik online course) on how to get his signature "eye" effect in a decoration. Now I'm wondering how he makes the white portion of the piece below. Doing the eye effect often results in a ragged-looking top of the design (because the cocoa butter doesn't move outward in perfect circles), and something like this circle of white would mask that imperfection. So, apply the white first? But how to get that perfect circle? I don't think painting it in would work since that would require an incredibly steady hand and also painting cocoa butter into a mold doesn't come out this well. Maybe masking off the eye portion, spraying white, then removing the mask and creating the eye?

I have had disappointing (and annoying) results with putting dry luster dust in molds, disappointing because not much shows up when the shell is eventually released, annoying because it can be horrible to wash out of the mold, especially a rectangular one. If you add the dry dust to the mold first, then try to airbrush a color, the airbrush just blows the dust out of the mold. The only time I've mixed dust and alcohol and brushed it into the mold, it was not a success: I first splattered a color into the mold, then, using a paintbrush, added gold dust mixed with vodka, but when the bonbon was released, it looked terrible--splotchy (because, as minas6907 said, the wet dust beads up). Another time I mixed the dust with vodka and painted it on the outside of completed molded bonbons (I did this for some of the items I took to the Las Vegas eG workshop). It looks great (and I've not had a problem with using ordinary vodka), but (and this was an embarrassment at the Vegas event) it comes off on people's fingers. So I have resigned myself to using luster dust to paint the tops of dipped bonbons. It would still come off on people's fingers, but ordinarily nobody touches the top before eating the piece and it does add an elegant look. All that being said, I have seen some beautiful uses of luster dust with molded bonbons--I just don't know how people do it. Chef Rubber's "Jewel" series of colored cocoa butters gives a little of the effect.

I do. It's found at: http://jamesdutton.net/ganache.html

I checked the photos, and that is a very impressive market. I'm jealous. If you could get an indoor space, that might change the equation as far as keeping your chocolates safe. If customers ate them right there at your booth, it would probably work, but, as pastrygirl said, most would take them to their hot cars. Have you seen vendors who sells perishable items? If so, what precautions do they take?

You didn't say how far south you are. I am in Virginia and have been urged by the person in charge of our farmers' market to set up a booth. I would love to do it but have resisted. I'm sorry to be so negative about the prospect and you may find a way to make it work, but when I go to the market on a hot, humid August day, I am reminded how difficult it would be. I am thinking here of the chocolates, not the other products. You would have to keep the chocolates cool and away from humidity or they would be ruined, yet you must have a display of them. How would you accomplish that? A climate-controlled display case would work, but would be very expensive. You could have the boxes stored away in sealed plastic bags in a cooler and they would be OK, but people won't buy something they can't see. There is another issue that can be a problem (I think it is discussed to the thread to which you referred) and that is samples. The dreaded samples! Would-be customers want them, and you would have to be prepared for those who taste (and taste some more) and then walk on. And you would need a way to keep the sample chocolates from the dull, sticky exteriors that would develop. On the brighter side, you could have the chocolates out only when it is cool and dry enough and concentrate on your other products on the bad days. That would work.

Some interesting ideas there, and they confirmed my impressions of European chocolates in general (and of chocolates made by European pastry chefs in the U.S. as well). When my sister returns from her European jaunts, she brings chocolates, and so far the most daring decoration has been a toasted hazelnut or the occasional wave made on the top with a dipping fork! Decorating chocolates in the contemporary style so popular in the U.S. is time-consuming, expensive, and stressful, but once customers experience it, they want it all the time. "Too pretty to eat" is the most common first response. If one is clever enough or lucky enough to be working outside the large urban areas of the U.S., customers are usually wowed by seeing something they did not know existed or experience only when traveling to a large city. The downside for the chocolatier is that there is constant pressure to do more--more inventive fillings, more dazzling decor. I must confess that having customers open to novelty (such as an apple pie bonbon) is what makes it interesting for me. It sounds as if in Italy a chocolatier who wanted to do all this would need to be an independently wealthy person who did not need the income and could attempt to introduce customers gradually to new chocolate experiences. Isn't highly decorated marzipan an Italian tradition? I would think there would be a market, especially in a place like Venice where art of various kinds is so important. Certainly Italy has no shortage of producers of excellent couverture to work with (Amedei and Domori come to mind). Or the chocolatier could move to the U.S., where it seems a new chocolate shop or website opens every few weeks and where people pay up to $4 for a single bonbon.

Yes, I use them in my mango pâte de fruit and mango ganache.

I checked Shotts, and indeed he says this. With all due respect to him, I disagree. If you look at Greweling or Notter, you will see percentages of ingredients in the recipes, and it is quite easy to scale them up or down. How else would large-production chocolatiers make larger amounts using the same recipes all the time? You need to enter the amounts that Shotts provides for each ingredient into a spreadsheet and multiply them by however many recipes-worth you want to make. So if all the ingredients add up to 600g and you want to make 1200g for more molds, you just multiply the quantity of each ingredient by 2. The final proportions will be exactly the same--though, of course, you will need more chocolate to make the shells and, in the case of something like caramel, the cooking time will be increased. I assume he must mean that if you want to make this recipe to fit this particular pan or mold, you need to stick to the quantities listed.

The use of champagne and chocolate has been discussed in this thread The answer was to use marc de champagne instead of champagne itself.

So crostata di mele doesn't qualify? I guess you meant no Italian chocolatier would think of putting such odd things in a bonbon. But one does need to move beyond gianduja occasionally. Thanks for all the ideas for my (very American) project. And I agree about poire eau de vie--it tastes like pear only if you are thinking hard about pears when you drink it. Similarly for calvados.

The photo of the apple pieces showed them as fairly large, so I thought I could cut the skin off (I'm not using a huge amount).

@teonzo, thanks for all of those intriguing ideas for the project. I will definitely give the ganache a try, though I expect the chocolate taste will muddy the apple flavor. Can you explain what you mean by "candied apples"? I am very conscious of the sweetness of so many fillings and do everything I can to minimize it. I make pâte de fruit with Pomona's pectin, allowing for less sugar, and I substitute sorbitol for some of the sugar; I also use lemon juice liberally (assuming the fruit allows for it). But there is no question PdF is sweet. I would like to mold the apple pie bonbon in dark chocolate, but someone who has tried this reports that it overwhelms the apple taste, and I am sure that is true. I am definitely looking for some texture in the apple part of the filling, and that is why I plan to grind the dried apple and apple juice mixture carefully, leaving some apple pieces (which, of course, must be small enough to pass through a piping bag). Using the dried fruit adds flavor and also helps with the Aw reading. I'm considering adding some apple brandy/calvados, but don't have any on hand to try at the moment (sometimes I find that fruit brandies don't help with flavor, meaning their flavor is far from the fruit itself--I think this is true of framboise, for example).

The Granny Smith apples are exactly what I ended up buying (though from a different source). Whether for a pâte de fruit or a ganache, I think I will need to remove the skins. One reviewer said they are rather tough, and they probably would not grind up enough (I make most of my PdF fillings by combining purée and dried fruit, cooking them slightly to soften, then grind them to the desired consistency). Of the two choices (PdF or ganache), I am fairly sure the former would end up with more apple flavor. If I made a "water ganache," replacing cream with apple juice, I would get an unacceptable Aw reading. As I continued to experiment yesterday, the PdF turned out to have a really apple-y flavor. Of course, adding the usual apple pie spices helps a lot to create the illusion of eating apple pie, and the crust (cookie) I will include should add even more. I plan to make the shells from Callebaut Gold, which I have not yet tasted but have on order, and it gets high praise from Kirsten Tibballs of Savour (I know, she is a Cacao Barry rep). If the Gold taste overwhelms, I'll switch to Valrhona's Opalys.

Are you making a solid chocolate piece or making shells to be filled? If the former, then I would caution you about something I learned recently: a solid piece needs to be thin for people to eat it safely. Thick crystallized dark chocolate can be threatening to teeth! If, on the other hand, you are making a filled bonbon, I use Tri2Cook's method of calculating the amount of chocolate needed. For shells, you will be dumping most of the chocolate out but will still need enough to fill the cavities before they are emptied. I also add a little more to the weight to take care of the chocolate that lands between cavities. Another complicating factor: Are you dumping the chocolate back into a bowl/melter (whatever you are using to melt it)? If so, you will need less chocolate because you will be reusing some of it for a subsequent mold. Then the calculation becomes more complex. I think that using and reusing a single mold for multiple chocolates will turn out to be much more trouble than you can stand (washing the mold, probably retempering the chocolate).

Interesting idea, but what kind of chocolate would you use for the ganache? In the past I have found that any chocolate (less so with white, but still...) masks the flavor, and apple is such a delicate flavor.

Excellent idea. I suspect your tagging of her may get her attention.

I know this thread is not about sourcing dried fruit, but it's the only one I could find that at least was on the topic. I'm working on an "apple pie" filling for a bonbon (the subject was first mentioned on this thread on using caramelized white chocolate). In the recipe on that thread using apple compote, the water activity level was too high for a bonbon meant to be stored for a while. So I am trying to use an apple pâte de fruit layer (plus maybe a thin caramel layer and a crispy cookie buried in caramelized white chocolate to simulate the pie crust). I got some concentrated frozen apple juice, which had a really great apple flavor, but I wanted some texture, so got some dried apples at the supermarket to add to the undiluted juice (this is just an experiment so far). The juice works well, but the dried apples had virtually no taste at all. So all that brings me to ask about sources for really good dried fruits. I know the subject has been discussed in many threads, but I don't know whether the sources recommended still exist and/or are still high in quality. I note that nuts.com has freeze-dried apples and wonder if anyone has tried those and whether freeze-dried is noticeably better than just dried. Any recent information would be very helpful.

For those who are interested in Andrey Dubovik's famous "eye" technique of decorating, he himself has now posted a video on Instagram. The video is brief but shows it clearly...except perhaps for the hours and hours of practice it takes to perfect it (speaking from experience).

Thanks for the helpful list. Just a rough guess: about how many recipes for chocolates does it contain? For someone who doesn't make the other things listed, how useful is it beyond Greweling et al.?