Jim D.

Thanks for that information. I don't see any reason why my Grex airbrush (or any airbrush, for that matter) can't do the same. I have a pressure regulator installed between the hose from the compressor and the airbrush itself, so changing the pressure is easy. I will have to try again. I tried the spraying with a wooden stick or spatula between the brush and the mold to create splatter, but it is erratic (I have seen it done successfully in person, so I know it's just a matter of technique). I think the drop-cocoa-butter-from-the-bottle-and-spray-it-into-the-mold technique would be something that would take (for me) a lot of practice. Sad to confess, but the best I have done so far has been with a toothbrush.

I just read through this entire thread. You said you got an HVLP paint gun and also mentioned at one point that you had ordered an airbrush, but never said what brand it was. I bring this up because I am wondering whether you used the HVLP gun or the airbrush for the splatter. I have seen the Fuji in action, and it does splatter quite well. But most (if not all) paint guns have a rather large container for the paint. The ones I have seen would take a great deal of cocoa butter just to have enough to cover the bottom of the container. That is what kept me from buying one. So if you used the paint gun for the splatter, could you describe what amount of c.b. you used for the job? If you used an airbrush, I would love to know how you made it splatter. I am finding with my new Grex gravity-feed airbrush, I am using much more c.b. than I did with the siphon-style Paasche airbrush I used formerly. I can't quite imagine using a paint gun for just a few molds, considering how much c.b. it requires and how difficult it must be to clean out the container.

How did you get the nice even splatter on those molds?

Thanks, @paulraphael, for the link to the very helpful article. @Pastrypastmidnight, I don't know where you live, so can't say much about where to buy chocolate. My impression, though I don't know for sure, is that the manufacturers don't sell directly to customers. In the U.S., Chocosphere has an extraordinary selection; they sell both retail as well as wholesale to businesses (that's where I got the prices I mentioned). They also repackage many chocolates so as to sell them in smaller quantities. If you are a business, you have many other options for wholesale purchases, but these are often regional companies that sometimes require large purchases.

If El Rey Icoa is the chocolate I think it is, then I tasted it and hated it, so you will have to take the rest of what I write in that light. I tend not to like whites that try for a chocolatey taste because I think they taste like washed-out milk chocolate. Obviously a "favorite" white chocolate is a matter of very personal taste. My favorite white, without any question, is Valrhona Opalys; second choice is probably Cacao Barry Zephyr. Both are less sweet than many other whites. Besides the usual dairy and vanilla flavors one expects, it seems to me (again, very personal taste) that Opalys has a hint of something citrus. I know this is unlikely to be true, but whatever it is, I think it gives Opalys a taste beyond just cocoa butter + dairy (the norm). I use Opalys for molding and for making ganaches. As for how it handles, well, that is a different story. It is very challenging to use for molding. After it is in temper, it starts off rather thin. You have to look carefully at any shells to make sure they are not too thin (and sometimes fill them again). After about the fourth or fifth mold, however, Opalys thickens rather suddenly. The clue is that after scraping the top of the mold, the edges of some cavities fall inward, forming a too-thick shell. To make sure I wasn't just incompetent, I took some Opalys to the 2017 chocolate workshop, and Kerry Beal tempered it. It behaved exactly the same way, and was so thick at the end that it was almost solidified (I suspect those standing around must have thought I was insane to use such a chocolate). Previously Kerry had asked the people at Valrhona about my difficulties with Opalys, and, to my relief, they confirmed that it could be a problematic product. But the good news is that Opalys can be tamed: If I am doing more than 4-5 molds, I have a second amount set aside, initially raised to a high enough temperature that it cannot be in temper and then held around 90F. When the over-crystallizing begins, I stop and pour in some of the extra Opalys; if I have been successful, the chocolate returns to a usable state. Why go through all this? Because I think it tastes that good (for a white chocolate, of course). If you think Icoa is expensive, however, then I'm afraid you will find Opalys astronomical (about $72 for 3-kilo bag wholesale, about $96 retail). As for Cacao Barry's Zephyr, it costs about $83 for 5 kilos (dramatically lower, I would say), and I think it tastes almost as good as Opalys. I have tasted some other whites, including new ones Valrhona has released, but did not care for any of them. I thought the Callebaut W2 was much too sweet. Probably more information than you wanted, but finding a good white has been a goal of mine.

I just made some of Kerry's strawberry butter cream. I sometimes make raspberry. In both of those I substitute some plain cocoa butter for part of the white chocolate, allowing more fruit flavor to come through. When making a non-fruit one, I have found that it takes too much whiskey to give any flavor, so use dark rum. I also make a creme brûlée filling, adding a layer of crushed caramel below the vanilla-flavored butter cream--for reasons that mostly escape me, people love it. So I use Kerry's basic recipe rather often. The problem is getting enough flavor without making the filling too thin to set up.

No, I haven't used fruit powder. Might make a difference. By the way, I find that even vanilla fades somewhat--even though I use a lot of it to mask the unpleasant flavor of the gelatin. Another possibility is to add concentrated flavoring. Amoretti has some natural ones. I have tasted the pineapple and mango, and they are delicious and powerful. As for blueberry, after making my own purée and concentrating it to make a ganache for chocolates, I eventually gave up because the flavor was too muted to be recognizable.

Beautiful job of making and dipping the marshmallows. I have had the same experience with the flavored marshmallows. The strawberry ones (nightscotsman's recipe) retained a little strawberry flavor, but only a little. Passion fruit ones (I think of passion fruit as a very assertive flavor that overpowers almost anything else) lost all taste of the fruit after a few days.

Chocosphere has Abinao in 1 and 3 Kg bags. In looking for it, I see that they now have the new Valrhona "Inspirations" that you pointed out a while back.

Another try proved more successful (one on the left, stripe left clear; on the right; red cocoa butter, which unfortunately does not show up well in a photo): The photo shows more imperfections than there actually are, so I think these would be usable. The difference between these tries and the preceding one was that I did not let the c.b. dry completely, just until it was set and no longer runny. The problem is with doing these in any substantial numbers. I would have to airbrush one mold (tape in place), wait just the right amount of time for the c.b. to begin to crystallize, remove the tape, then do the same with the next mold. If others have had success with letting the c.b. dry completely before removing the tape, I would love to hear about it and know what you did differently.

I should name this post "Defeated by Stripes" because that's how I feel. I bought the tape that @tikidoc used. I thought the fact that it appears to be plastic and not paper would make a difference (and it did for her). But I used a brush to apply color to a mold (ignore the feathery part at the edges--I didn't care about covering the entire mold). I applied the cocoa butter somewhat more thickly (but not a lot) than I usually do because I wanted to simulate airbrushing--where the thickness is difficult to control. I let the cocoa butter dry (as would happen in an airbrushing situation, where going from one mold to another gives the c.b. time to crystallize). You can see that the stripe is not what one might call a success: As is obvious, when I removed the tape, the flaking was very bad.

I very much liked the Harvest Purple in theory (the idea of a Victorian "dusty" purple color appealed to me), but I gave up on it because, once applied, it looked too much like milk chocolate. And what's the point of that? So the only purple I use is Purple Rhodolite (from the "Jewel" collection). It shows as purple (well, somewhat) even when applied to dark chocolate, and I use it for my plum and my fig fillings, as well as on Easter eggs--where I mostly abandon the idea of matching the color to what's inside.

Yes, I have a dark and a light purple. I will give the dark one a try. Thanks for the idea.

Before I waste a lot of colored cocoa butter experimenting, does anyone know what I can mix to get a dark/navy blue? I have on hand (all Chef Rubber named colors) turquoise, teal, Mediterranean blue, and black onyx. It's too late for me to order one of their darker blue colors.

I believe she said previously that she has the spray booth in her basement.

Excuse my ignorance (and all the questions), but is the piece with the white frame the home air filter you mentioned? What is the crisscrossed item outside the booth? And is the fan directly next to the outside of the booth? How quickly does the filter get completely covered with cocoa butter and need to be replaced?

I should add that the molds you used could not have been easy to tape. I will be using a demisphere, which is much more open and allows for more "finger space" to do the taping. I once used the blue painter's tape just as an experiment, and it allowed a lot of bleeding, but I was using a regular dome. By the way, do you allow the chocolate to dry totally before removing the tape or do it sooner?

That's the same tape that I just purchased. I'm anxious to try it (as @tikidoc found it really worked--without seepage, I gather), but I'm sorry to hear that it didn't work all that well for you. In the middle of Easter production I don't have time for fuzzy stripes, but your experience tells me that I need to find more time for experimenting!

@minas6907, very nice, especially considering that you are a beginner with spraying. Your stripes are very clean--something I have not succeeded in getting--yet. What tape did you use? Usually the cocoa butter manages to seep under the tape and ruin the effect.

L'Epicérie has amazing prices. I have had to pay much more for the same items bought elsewhere (and, as I mentioned, usually in much larger quantities). Somewhere on their website there is a history of the company. The founder set out to provide exactly what they did: to offer small quantities of quality ingredients for lower prices. Where else could one buy a single kilo of Cacao Barry hazelnut praline paste, regardless of the price?

@Pastrypastmidnight I'm sorry about your experience. Before I comment further, you can try Chef Rubber for the pectin in small quantities (there are many other places as well). I had written a long statement on my experience with L'Epicérie but decided not to post it. I have had such good experience with the company in the past, but there is no question that something has changed. During the time they were closed I found other vendors for the products I needed, but no one I have found provides such small quantities of high-quality pastry items (I had to buy such a large container of fondant from another vendor that I was forced to buy lots of smaller containers to be able to store it in my space). Here is what I wrote originally: It is good that andiesenji had a positive experience with the "reconstituted" L'Epicérie. I wish I could report the same, but cannot do so. I ordered two kilos of hazelnut paste and one of the Agrimontana pistachio paste (which, I am learning, is available almost nowhere these days). In about a week a box came from Saint-Germain at a Warwick, Rhode Island, address (that was also the company name used by UPS in their notification). The box was completely soaked in hazelnut paste, as was the packing material. I quickly realized that one container of paste had a large crack in it, and all the contents had leaked out. The other container was OK. There was no pistachio paste. I immediately phoned the RI number, but there was no answer, so I left a message about the issues. When I did not hear back, I emailed the company (there is a statement on the website that a customer has 24 hours to report a damaged shipment, and I have once before missed the deadline, with unpleasant consequences--but that was my fault). About two days later, I phoned again (no answer) and sent an email, this time saying that my next step would be to contact UPS and/or request my credit card company do a "chargeback" to get me a refund. This time I got an email reply, saying they were working as fast as they could to resolve the issue. The person also explained that nothing has changed about L'Epicérie except they have a new warehouse and share it with an import company named Saint-Germain. When I got the next UPS notice and saw the package weighed 4 pounds, I knew it could not possibly contain both the replacement hazelnut and the pistachio. Sure enough, it contained one undamaged kilo of hazelnut, no mention of the pistachio. So I emailed again, heard nothing for several days, then an automated message saying there was a refund to my credit card and the pistachio was out of stock. I had said I was willing to wait for it, but that was ignored. I know this is very detailed, but I wanted to explain my ambivalence about future orders. Yes, accidents can happen in shipments, and yes, finally the issues were (mostly) resolved, but it should not take what it did on my part.

I followed that advice from you (posted previously) and added it with the butter (which I added after the caramel had finished cooking).

I used liquid lecithin. Puzzled by the foaming that took place (I thought baking soda added to caramel might do that).

I'm glad you brought up lecithin. I tried that last time, using a very tiny amount (I was more or less following the amount specified in the recipe Auboine gave us in Vegas). It caused the caramel to foam up--the bubbles never went away and it was a total mess. Obviously I did something wrong, as it did not help with emulsification.

No, I haven't, but will give that a try. Thanks for the idea. I don't know if it makes a difference, but I am making caramel to be piped. I take it to around 236F or a little higher (to help keep it from leaking from the shell after capping); I always test by putting some in cold water. I wouldn't think the temp would make a difference, as stand-alone caramels require an even higher temp.