Jim D.

What was it like after sitting overnight? It it's extremely firm, you could add more liquid to the recipe to help a bit. The puzzle is that Greweling recommends a ratio of 2:1 dark chocolate to liquefier, so you are way beyond that in the amount of liquefier.

@Rajala, if you check the previous thread on pipeable pâte de fruit, you will see various approaches to this goal. Kate Weiser appears to be the champ at accomplishing this (I bought a box of her chocolates, all pâte de fruit fillings, to check her out, and they were delicious). I don't know what technique she uses (I see that she teaches classes on her techniques, but Dallas is a bit far to travel for me). The method I now use is with Pomona's pectin, a low-methoxyl pectin. I include a recipe on the page to which I linked above. I have found, after dozens of times, that--in my opinion--the greatly reduced amount of cooking time allows the fruit flavor to come through much better. This is a forgiving pectin--if it ends up not firm enough, you can reheat it and cook it for a little longer. I have played around with the amount of pectin and have made a few "refinements" to the recipe I posted there. It is pipeable and can be flattened out with piping technique. The big issue with using pâte de fruit in a bonbon is the water activity, which tends to be high because of the liquid necessary to make it pipeable (whether you leave liquid in by taking the PdF off the stove early or add liquid to liquefy it later). I was inspired to experiment by, among other things, this quote from Michael Laiskonis: So my technique uses sorbitol to get the necessary solids to reduce the Aw (it has the added benefit of being less sweet than sucrose). If a person has objections to using sorbitol, then this method will not work. I also add to the solids by supplementing fruit purée with some of the same fruit dried (if it exists). I have done this with apricot, cherry, and pear.

Yes, I still have some. Send me a personal message telling me how many you would like, plus your email address and shipping address. I'll send you an invoice from Paypal. Jim

Makes sense. I don't specifically temper chocolate for ganache. I start with tempered chocolate from the bag and melt it slowly over hot water (it doesn't require much attention during this) until most is melted, then remove it from heat and stir, using the unmelted pieces as the seed. It never really falls out of temper. As I am sure you know, this is one of Greweling's methods. As for your question as to why the Valrhona method didn't work this time: You said this was your first white chocolate ganache, so I would guess the chocolate is the factor. I have had many disasters with white chocolate in ganaches--disasters until I added more liquid (usually mixing in drops of skim milk or liquor or even water). This separation regularly happens with Notter's lime ganache--when the small amount of cream and melted white chocolate are mixed. Then magically, when the lime juice is mixed in, it all comes together smoothly. I used to have attacks of "ganache separation panic" when the mess appeared; now I just reach for the skim milk or liquor bottle and make a note that I need to adjust that recipe a bit. I should add that the white chocolate I use (Valrhona's Opalys) seems especially prone to this problem.

I was about to do the same (that's what the eGullet instructions said to do--post on the most appropriate forum), but I guess this new forum was established for classifieds.

I know about the Valrhona method (with the liquefier and the chocolate at roughly the same temp), but I'm not sure why you would choose to follow it. Is there some advantage? "Normal" recipes (as in Greweling and Notter) call for having the liquids at a higher temp; the separation does not happen (or if it does, as I have had occur with white chocolate ganaches, it means there is too much fat and a little more liquid solves the problem). There is some disagreement about how warm the liquid should be; I myself don't follow the method of having the liquid very hot or even boiling. But I would be interested in knowing any benefit to the "Valrhona method."

I did report back, but in the marshmallow thread. I now have piped marshmallow that will work (based largely on the strawberry marshmallow recipe in RecipeGullet). When I am using a marshmallow layer, I let it set, then brush on some melted cocoa butter to insulate the layer (or that's the hope), then put something else on top. I think coated feuilletine would also work. I have doctored Notter's lime recipe so that it sets up a little more, but it's still quite fluid.

As they are by definition dry, I don't think they would add any moisture whatever to the filling, so the water activity (Aw) is unlikely to be affected. The biggest culprits in my experience are with ganaches that have too high a proportion of cream to chocolate and with what are essentially water ganaches, where a fruit purée is substituted for cream.

I assume you are using a brush to mingle the colors (perhaps the "dusting" brushes you referred to?). That means you apply the colors quite quickly and mingle them just as quickly before they crystallize. So you keep all the colors (you referred to various shades of yellow) ready at once? That is quite a feat unless you have a way to keep them all heated to the appropriate temperature. I use a heating pad, but its temperature is not reliable. I know some use yogurt makers. P.S. I'm glad my demisphere molds are being put to such beautiful use! You inspire me.

Her work is very impressive. Take a look at her Easter eggs. Her flavor combinations are also intriguing. However she achieves the pastel water color effect (my guess is paintbrush with a very light touch--maybe using some of the "opaque" cocoa butter colors that contain white coloring), I imagine she uses a lot of white chocolate in her work.

I agree with you about the shapes. There are very few that hold enough for two bites--and that is the kind of chocolates I try to make. The familiar scalloped circle is one, and the rectangle with cut-off edges is another. I can tell you that the plain one I have (a cube), which is quite small, does not unmold well--it tends to show release marks much more than other molds. I don't know whether that is a result of the plainness or perhaps my lack of skill. I have used the Chocolate World oval and teardrop shapes, and they make a larger piece than many others. I have had a non-magnetic mold made, and I can tell you that if you could find someone to make a magnetic one, you would pay an astronomical amount of money, given how much more expensive magnetic molds are than the others. The tooling fees are what get you; the individual mold cost is not that bad--but just imagine the tooling involved in a magnetic mold.

I guess I'm not concerned about the appendages at this point--but probably would be when I got around to production. I assumed it would require gluing.

I have a recipe (from an ancient Bon Appétit) that calls for making truffles from (sweetened) cream of coconut, chopped macadamias, white chocolate, dark rum, lime zest, and toasted coconut flakes. Sounds a bit similar to what you are thinking of.

@Kerry Beal, is the frog mold a Chocolate World one or ... ? I have not made any 3-D figures so far. What is the level of difficulty? the rough percentage of failures? I ask because the process looks as if it would be difficult. The city where I live has an annual Harry Potter festival that attracts thousands of people. I know practically nothing about Harry Potter but have been told by someone connected with the festival that frogs are very important in Harry's world; she suggested that, having seen the amount of money parents were throwing around last year on all sorts of stuff for their kids (including some cheaply made candy frogs), they would pay virtually any price for anything connected with frogs, especially with good chocolate involved. I suspect the cost of frog molds would virtually wipe out any profits, but it's worth a little exploring. Alternatively you could bring down a batch and get rich yourself.

The latest from Jess is that she wants more molds and will probably pick them up. The problem with the flat rate boxes is that, with fairly light-weight items and short distances, flat rate costs considerably more than just priority mail. I learned this from (expensive) experience with shipping chocolates. I shipped a box flat rate weighing a little more 1 lb. to Canada, and it cost around $60--twice what it would have been if I hadn't used the flat-rate box. I have now bought some boxes so that I can ship lighter items non-flat rate. I know, this is irrelevant information in terms of shipping molds, but thought it might be interesting to others.

Just to let you know: I just finished packing 4 molds to go to Wisconsin, and shipping (Priority Mail) was $14.15.

As luck would have it, tikidoc does. She is tentatively planning to pick hers up at my house on a trip to Kentucky. If she has hers mailed instead, the shipping is low as she is not far away--a rough calculation was about $12 for 5-6 molds (depending on how many boxes it takes to fit them). I am so glad that you are ordering some. I was worried that you didn't have enough molds already!

No, I haven't. Valrhona has come out with several whites recently, and I kept buying a kilo of this one and that one (didn't care for Waina), but I finally gave up. I will give Orelys a try. Thanks for the tip. Actually I have never been a huge fan of Dulcey. I just looked up Orelys, and Valrhona tells me it has "hints of biscuit" so maybe I won't need my shortbread cookie bits!

Yes, after reading an article by Peter Greweling on water and fat migration between layers, I have started painting on a layer of cocoa butter between layers, e.g., between marshmallow and a pâte de fruit layer. Interestingly Greweling, who likes using layers in bonbons, does not specify the cocoa butter layer in his books, but certainly does so in that article.

Thanks so much for researching that. My search for "dried molasses" came up with the soil additive--but I didn't go on to page 2 of the results, where the edible molasses powder appears. I will certainly give that a try.

I do something similar when making a cookie layer: I pipe a little caramel in the bottom of the a large mold, then a little gianduja, then add the cookie layer, then a bit more gianduja. Protected from the caramel, the cookie stays crisp. I like your idea of baking the cookie dough a little, then cutting it. I have had trouble with the cookies spreading out (even after I chilled them) so much that they don't fit easily in the mold. I assume your method helps them maintain their size. I really had trouble finding a cookie cutter small enough to work, and as a result of buying several sets of miniature biscuit cutters, now have a large collection of such cutters.

I tested a marshmallow layer made with the eGullet strawberry marshmallow recipe, and it had an Aw reading of 0.67--well below the cutoff point I use of 0.85. It will, of course, depend somewhat on the quantity of water left in the syrup.

I just made 125 of the chocolate chip cookie truffles discussed in this thread. They were based on a ganache with Dulcey, cream, and molasses, plus chopped toasted pecans and the cookie bits described above. I thought the taste definitely suggested a c.c. cookie, and, thanks to the shortbread flavor, tasted better than the ganache had previously. I tried several methods of making the cookie bits, but the best (and least OCD) way of doing it seems to be to cut the (unbaked) dough with a long knife into pieces (roughly squares about 1/4" each dimension). Then I baked those and let them cool, then I placed them on parchment. I tempered some dark chocolate and poured some of it over a section of the cookie bits and quickly used a fork to coat the bits as thoroughly as possible. This is a race against the crystallization clock (perhaps the chocolate should not be tempered?), and it's not possible to coat every piece of cookie thoroughly. In any event I mixed those into the ganache after it had cooled to around 80F (so as not to melt the chocolate). It's difficult to form the truffles with the protruding cookie bits, but not impossible. My results and resulting questions: As I said earlier, the taste is what I was looking for. I do think the dark chocolate coated cookie pieces plus the dark chocolate coating on the outside may be too much. Maybe use milk chocolate for either the bits or the outside? The only disappointment was one of the points of including the cookies--to get cookie-like crunch. For a few days the cookie bits remained crunchy, but after a week or so, they were not. The taste was still there, but not the crunch. Every spot where the bits were not covered in chocolate they let moisture in. I would still include them in the ganache because of the substantial improvement in taste, but I'm back to considering a move to a gianduja so as to avoid the moisture problem entirely. So, as suggested above, a Dulcey and pecan gianduja, plus some chopped pecans and the chocolate-covered (mostly) cookie bits--or I could even add the cookie bits without any covering and some separate chocolate bits, to simplify matters considerably. I am still left with the missing molasses flavor. The recipe does not include any glucose, or I would substitute dark brown sugar for that. Perhaps it could handle some dark brown sugar added to the gianduja, and that would balance the dark chocolate used inside and outside the truffle? But does the sugar have a strong enough molasses flavor? There is actually such a thing as dried molasses (much to my surprise), but it's a gardening product.

Sorry, I'm not going to the workshop.

I had custom injection polycarbonate molds for chocolates made for me by Tomric Plastics. I had found that the demisphere (or hemisphere or half-sphere, whichever term you prefer) is the easiest shape to decorate but that the available molds (at least the ones I could locate) were either too small or much too large, thus the custom mold. The overall mold size is 275mm x 175mm (about 10.8" x 6.9"); each cavity is 34mm in diameter x 17mm in depth (about 1.3" x 0.7") and makes a chocolate weighing approximately 12 grams. The bonbons made in these molds have proved extremely easy to decorate and to unmold. Unfortunately the minimum order was 100 molds, and I am interested in selling about half of them (the molds for sale are new, never used). I would strongly prefer orders of a minimum of 3 molds. The cost per mold is $21 plus shipping (which will be the least expensive rate for U.S. Priority Mail). Payment will be via Paypal. For any questions or orders, please use the eGullet personal messaging system (click on my name).