Jim D.

The biggest problem I have had is with cocoa butter seeping under the tape. The weaker the adhesive, the more the seepage. Did this tape prevent that? There appear to be a few small places along the edge of the stripe where the underlying color comes through, but that may be just the photo.

After the countless threads on making stripes on shells--with no clear winner--is this the holy grail of striping?

Very attractive. What did you use for the masking for the stripe?

I know what you mean. I am on his list to be notified about developments but have heard nothing lately. It did sound good. He is a very confident man. Supposedly he used it exclusively in his shop during the 2017 Christmas season.

@Anonymous, I agree with most of what you initially wrote about learning to make chocolates. I also think using attractive packaging goes a long way toward getting one's product accepted and even valued. I noticed the difference once I bought custom packaging, developed a logo and started using it all the time. At least in the U.S. decorating chocolates has become the norm. "Too pretty to eat" is what one hears all the time. I myself think colored cocoa butter (especially white) has an offputting odor and taste, but so far not a single customer has ever mentioned it. I gather you are in the UK, so I am a bit surprised that you mention decorating. From anecdotal and video evidence, I had thought that in Europe decorating was unusual. I too think the Keylink videos are very helpful--and they are rarely mentioned in people's lists of how to learn the trade. In those videos the man who does the teaching (with the wonderful accent) does decorate chocolates, but they are rather subtle decorations compared, for example, to those done by someone like Salvatore Martone in Las Vegas or Norman Love in Florida (allegedly the one who started decorating chocolates). Like you, I have a Chocovision Rev2 machine, which I use for dipping chocolates and for very small batches, but upgrading to the Delta machine made all the difference in the world. I can get so many other things done while it is tempering away. There is a new tempering machine supposedly coming out this year from Choklat in Canada that will be more programmable and will not have the style of baffle other machines use (and therefore molds can be emptied into it without making a mess).

@Lisa Shock, Thanks for those tips. I do have the dough well chilled before placing it in the oven, and any time it softens during the whole process, I stop and refrigerate it. And, of course (!), I use scales to measure ingredients. The CI recipe for crust using vodka is quite moist; do you find that works for my issue? I do make a crust that goes a bit beyond being crumbly because I find the frustration of having a crust crack, develop holes, etc. when rolling it out to be too much to stand. The recipe (for a single crust) calls for 4 oz. AP flour, 1/2 tsp. salt, 2.5 oz. chilled butter, .5 oz. chilled shortening, and a maximum of 1/4 cup ice water. Since I almost always prebake crusts to help with the soggy bottom problem, the oven is at 425F when the crust goes in (Rose Levy Beranbaum's recommendation). I have the fat in small pieces in the freezer a short time before starting, mix the fat and flour in the food processor, then take the crumbs out and add the water with a fork in a large mixing bowl so that I can see how moist the dough is getting (it's amazing how the amount of water differs from one time to another).

@gulfporter, Don't know how I missed both of those products, but they look very promising. I guess plastic has come a long way. Thanks for the information.

I can make a pie crust with a decent taste and flakiness (a Julia Child recipe), but I have never been able to make any sort of decorative edge on it. I can flute it beautifully, but once it gets in that oven, it loses all definition. Unlike the person who started this thread, I would very much like to have suggestions.

My current method is to melt the chocolate in the microwave, then pour it into the Chocovision Delta tempering machine I use for large amounts. That pre-melting speeds things up a huge amount. A thin lip is definitely an asset for the bowl--a pouring rim would be another improvement; when I pour from the Corningware, the chocolate inevitably rolls down the outside of the bowl. I also melt additional chocolate overnight in a bread proofer at a temp where it is definitely not in temper to deal with the issue of over-crystallization as time goes on. For that, I use a gigantic SS bowl. Ladles are another issue I was going to post about at some point. I found that a metal one causes the chocolate to solidify on it much too fast, so I switched to a large plastic one, but the ones I have found are rather thick plastic and so make precise pouring quite difficult. So far I have not located a large, thin plastic ladle.

There is a lot of discussion of this issue on the internet. The consensus seems to be that rounded items (such as bowls) are safe, but things with edges (such as foil) are not. Moving forward with that assumption is more than I am willing to risk. There are some SS bowls with outer plastic coating that are advertised as microwave-safe, but the plastic would make them unsuitable for placing on a hot surface and the ones I saw are too small for my purposes. I did some more checking online and did manage to come across a set of large plastic bowls that would fit in my microwave and would, I think, be perfect for melting chocolate. Needless to say, they don't fit the criteria I gave earlier, but they will make melting chocolate much easier (a 2.5-quart Corningware bowl with 3 kilos of chocolate in it presents quite a challenge in getting it from a microwave located on a shelf at eye level to a counter without a huge mess).

Thanks for the Corelle idea. It would be great but would need to be larger than they seem to make.

In my chocolate work I often microwave chocolate to get it started melting, then place it on a heat source to continue the melting (I have a stainless steel slab placed on top of a pot of hot water--this eliminates the condensation occurring when using a normal double boiler). Since the microwave eliminates using stainless steel, I use some Corningware baking dishes, but they are quite heavy when filled with chocolate and thus not ideal--their thick edges are also terrible for pouring chocolate, which runs down the outside. The perfect solution would be a large lightweight bowl that is microwave safe but could also be placed on the heated SS slab. This might sound like a hopeless search, but recently I saw such a microwave-safe metal bowl. I asked the person who brought it to a potluck dinner where he got it, and he did not remember, and there were no identifying markings on it. Is anyone familiar with what I am describing?

Me too. A pot dedicated to this use would be great. The color doesn't matter to me at all. I would like to see photos of the bottom of the bread and of the crumb.

@tikidoc: That sounds very successful. I'll be interested in whether there is any leaking. I just looked at my notes from Jean-Marie's caramel, and the unusual ingredients I mentioned earlier were isomalt (for shelf life, he said), sorbitol, baking soda, and lecithin. This is the recipe for hazelnut-vanilla caramels included in our workshop packets, or are you referring to a different recipe?

This is late, but there is a useful eGullet discussion of the different types of coconut oil.

Greweling calls for leaving the leaves in the ganache, but the flavor still is rather subdued. I add more mint to get a stronger flavor. I think you are correct in adding one drop of oil at a time because it could easily overwhelm the lemon. It's a great ganache that contrasts nicely with the dark chocolate. To call attention to the mint, I usually decorate this with a single drop of white chocolate tinted green with a little green cocoa butter (as in the photo earlier in this thread)--the one occasion I used the lemon peel called for, it became much too dry in a short time. I also leave in some of the lemon zest to pump up the lemon taste.

I'll be interested in how those turn out. I have experimented with "stand-alone" caramels, but the results have been too varied (often too firm to eat or too soft to cut) for me to make them part of a real production. I tried the addition of Jean-Marie's cocoa butter to a caramel that I needed to be firmer than it was, and it worked. Of course in his recipe he had all sorts of additions that are not customary in a caramel. I have also had issues with greasy caramel. One rescue that often works is to stir the finished caramel over cold water until the butter that has separated out can be mixed back in. A more drastic method (which I had to use in a banana-passion fruit caramel) was to put a little of the finished caramel in a food processor, add some rum (which worked with this recipe), then add in the rest of the caramel a bit at a time. Very messy, but really worked. I would like to understand why the fat sometimes separated from a caramel but have not found an explanation so far.

I used the recipe that I posted on eGullet. It's basically the eGullet strawberry marshmallow recipe (this time without the strawberry purée). I discovered that if you beat marshmallow at a really high speed, it cools down to a pipeable temperature while it still has a pipeable texture, then I work really fast. After all that experimentation and work, however, today I got a comment from someone who said she really enjoyed the peanut butter part of the bonbon but the marshmallow was nothing to write home about. Oh well, being kept humble is good for us (or so I am told).

I was thinking of you when I made the caramel again (I think we keep that Vermont apple cider mill in business by buying their jelly). This time I made 84 pieces, and not a single one leaked. I cooked the caramel to a higher temp (about 240F) than I do other caramels. I heated the tops slightly before pouring on the chocolate to close them. I left the finished pieces sitting upside down for a day (on the questionable theory that more time would help the caramel set), then left them right side up to test them. One or more of those ideas may have worked--or it may just have been that the caramel gods gave me a good day.

Now that there are a few minutes to relax, here is a photo of the Christmas 2017 selection (there were two assortments of 12 each, with some overlap): 1st row: walnut caramel, fig with port & anise, dark chocolate with absinthe, marshmallow & peanut butter gianduja, cherry pâte de fruit & pistachio gianduja. 2nd row: banana & passion fruit caramel, spiced pumpkin ganache, dark caramel with Maldon sea salt, hazelnut praline ganache, coffee ganache with cardamom. 3rd row: crème brûlée, apricot pâte de fruit & almond gianduja, cranberry ganache, layers of caramel, pecan gianduja & shortbread, apple caramel. 4th row: mango pâte de fruit & mango ganache, pear pâte de fruit & almond cream, black currant ganache & crispy hazelnut gianduja, gingerbread, lemon mint bar.

I found a piece with the shell made from dark chocolate. It was difficult to tell how deep the crack went, but I think I could see dark chocolate in the crack, meaning it went all the way through the cocoa butter decoration down to the couverture. I wonder if it's significant at all (reaching for straws here, when I know the final answer is going to be "who knows why things happen to chocolate?"), but both cracked shells held pâte de fruit as the bottom layer of the finished piece. In one case it was quite firm, in the other, it was softer, so that probably is not a factor.

@dhardy123, very nice assortment, beautiful decoration. How did you do the decoration on the raspberry orange? Were the decorations done with your new Grex airbrush? How is that going?

The shells weren't all that thin. I was using white chocolate that was crystallizing as fast as I could deal with that issue. And these are new molds that are shallower than I am used to. I was dealing with the fact that shells made in shallow cavities want to come out of the mold prematurely. I had to watch them very carefully to make sure they were still in place and level, so they definitely weren't sticking. With other molds (especially domes. which tend to stick for me) I have had the problem you describe when banging them on the counter.

That's a good idea. I didn't check, but I will next time.

Yes, they did. In the case of the Easter eggs I referred to, some had hairline cracks when they came out of the molds, some appeared to develop them later.