Jim D.
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Posts posted by Jim D.
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P.S. In my experience, you can't go wrong with @teonzo's suggestions (earlier in this thread). He does his research, and one of his specialties appears to be "unusual" pairings in confections (yes, I am counting olive oil as unusual). Most of the recipes I found involve a regular cream ganache, with the addition of some olive oil.
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A quick Google search provides these links:
https://londoneats.wordpress.com/2010/05/11/chocolate-and-olive-oil-ganache/
http://bettysliu.com/2016/12/12/cardamom-persimmon-cookies-olive-oil-dark-chocolate-ganache/
https://www.thechocolatelife.com/community/forums/tech-help-tips-tricks-techniques/16735/how-does-one-make-a-creamy-ganache-with-coconut-oil [read the thread to get to the mention of olive oil]
A recipe (involving rosemary) is also in the aforementioned Curley book (page 68).
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23 minutes ago, curls said:
To clarify one point -- I am not removing the shells from the mold to test that they will release. I use clear polycarbonate molds & look at the bottom of the molds for indicators that the chocolates have contracted from the molds.
Thanks for clearing that up. I was having serious inferiority reactions. By the way, we all saw Melissa Coppel in Las Vegas show that her shells released perfectly from the mold before they were filled--and I happened to see some workshop participants testing more of them, and all released.
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8 hours ago, curls said:
@Jim D. I am puzzled by your summer chocolate making issues. I too am making chocolates in Virginia in a home kitchen with a home fridge (with glass shelves) and have thankfully not experienced the issues you are having with unmolding. I shall share my process in the hopes that it may help you with your troubleshooting.
It is not clear to me if you run your AC all summer or just while chocolate making -- I run the AC all summer at 73 F. If it looks like the chocolate is not setting up quickly enough, I lower the AC anywhere from 68 to 70 F. I put the molded chocolate shells in the fridge for ~10 minutes after they have started to crystallize. I check to see if the shells have released from the mold & only remove them from the fridge if 95%, or more, of the shells have released. I do not put filled & uncapped molds in the fridge -- I let them set up (usually overnight). They set up in the kitchen or my chocolate room in the basement. After I cap / close the molds, they spend ~10 minutes in the fridge and are unmolded. The difficult to unmold chocolates go back into the fridge for another 10 minutes (repeat fridge cycle as necessary).
I don't think that this is the cause of your problems but I should mention that I do not airbrush my molds with colored cocoa butter -- I think this is your preferred decoration method. Most of my chocolates are unadorned. The few that I decorate are either a swipe of colored cocoa butter, colored cocoa butter splatters, or transfer sheets.
Wishing you the best of luck in solving your summer chocolate issues. Hopefully you don't need to purchase a commercial cooling / refrigeration system.
During the summer I have the AC on most of the time but turn the temp down when I am preparing to make chocolates. As I said previously, I have the temp no higher than 70F and the relative humidity around 45%. I use the airbrush in the basement and have a window AC that I turn on when I'm doing this work, so the environment is about the same. Yes, I do decorate most of my molds. There is no question that adding colored cocoa butter adds a level of possible difficulty, but I do actually make sure the c.b. is in temper (if I heat it too much, I get the temp down, then add some EZtemper silk, and I test it every time, though I know most people don't).
So you try to get all the shells to release from the molds before filling them? I am impressed. I have tried that, but sometimes a shell will break, so I mostly gave up on that. Sometimes it is easy to tell that they are not stuck to the cavity wall. In general, I find that if one piece comes out of a mold satisfactorily, eventually they all will--though it may not be a pretty process.
All in all, we seem to follow mostly the same procedure, except that, like Kerry, I resort to the freezer for a few minutes if necessary. As I always say, chocolate is a mystery. For example, why will one chocolate release perfectly from the mold and the one next to it will be stuck?
I am concluding that the issue that prompted my original post arose from some shells that would not release from the mold, and when I put them back in the fridge repeatedly, they picked up humidity, thus no shine. Here is where one of those cooling cabinets made for chocolate, which supposedly recover quickly from humidity, might have come in handy.
Thanks for your response and your ideas.
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15 hours ago, pastrygirl said:
@Jim D. First, ugh. Can you charge these prospective customers enough to make it worth the frustration?
What are your overnight temps? I don't have AC so I just get up super early to beat the heat. Is humidity lower at a certain time of day? Despite our (in)famous Seattle rain, we have relatively dry summers, so I only worry about humidity when making macarons.
I would definitely try a fan or several. A large box fan at 70F might be better at blowing away that latent heat of crystallization and not adding humidity than a home fridge with no fan. Otherwise, how about putting a pizza stone in the fridge ahead of time to pre-chill - wouldn't that conduct heat away faster than just the air in the fridge?
Daytime temps would be unacceptable for working with chocolate, but I turn up the AC and, as I said, get the temp and humidity down to acceptable levels. I am convinced it is the period of refrigeration that is doing the damage, and thus it is the humidity, probably not the temp (Greweling recommends a chilling temp of 41F, and my fridge is set for 38F, so that isn't much of a difference). The Everlasting chocolate fridge looks like the best option (aside from the Irinox that Kerry mentioned, but that will be for my next life, when I run a chocolate factory), but delivery time is 60 days, so the point would be moot, at least until next summer. Meanwhile I'm going to get some more Moso dehumidifying bags and a little battery-operated fan for the fridge (there is one that gets some high marks on Amazon). For the full benefit of a chilled pizza stone, I wouldn't be able to put the molds on a rack and get circulation underneath, and as I said, I don't think the fridge temp is the issue. All this experimentation may be for nothing (especially considering that Greweling doesn't mention chilling the molds when the shells are first made), but we will see.
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1 hour ago, Kerry Beal said:
The Hilliard cabinets are essentially a box with doors, racks and an air conditioner in it. It's got lots of air circulation.
I'm not sure how this differs from the Irinox (or the Everlasting), though the Irinox seems much more advanced, with all sorts of controls. Do you know if the Hilliard has a specific humidity control? Their website doesn't give a lot of details. It seems odd to me that a cabinet specifically designed for chocolates would not go lower than 58F/14C.
What did you think of my theory that if the room holding the (regular) fridge has low RH, the fridge won't have such a difficult time adjusting to the adding of a mold of chocolate?
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38 minutes ago, Kerry Beal said:
This is making me think - Jim - do you have wire racks in your fridge or solid glass shelves?
I have solid glass shelves, but I add racks to get the chocolate molds off the surface.
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I usually suspend most chocolate production in the summer months, but it appears, from some new business prospects, that I may need to change that practice. In some recent summer attempts, chocolates have sometimes been difficult to get out of molds (I have eventually gotten all of them out, but it has not been a pretty process, and the surface of some of them is dull). Therefore I am examining my tempering and cooling procedures to determine if they can be improved, and any advice would be appreciated.
I work in a home kitchen, so there are some limitations. With air conditioning I can get the temp down below 70F/21C and the relative humidity down to the 40-45% range. In the first stage of making chocolates (forming the shells) I allow the molds to begin crystallizing at room temp, then put them in the fridge (just my regular fridge, set at 38F/3.3C, for 10-15 minutes or so; I allow for a longer period of time for the second stage, closing the chocolates. I place the trays on racks in the fridge so as to allow for air flow below them. In cooler and less humid months, this procedure has worked without too many problems, so I am looking to humidity as the culprit.
In the many eGullet threads on tempering I have seen a recommendation for adding a small fan to the refrigerator to help dispel latent heat, but have not tried that. I have read a lot on humidity in fridges and learned that whereas the RH is quite low as long as the door has been kept closed for a while, it rises quickly when one opens the door (as when putting a mold in), and it stays high for quite some time; testing with a hygrometer has mostly confirmed this fact. One would deduce from this observation that fridges are not the best way to cool molds, yet it is what virtually everyone on eG does. Peter Greweling, whom I think many of us take as an authority, does not (surprisingly) call for cooling the molds below room temp when making the shells and mentions cooling only after the capping stage--where he recommends 15 minutes in a fridge at about 41F/5C, specifying that the fridge "must not have high humidity."
All this (especially the humidity quote from Greweling) has led me to investigate cooling cabinets especially intended for chocolate-making, which is probably what Greweling has at his disposal. So far research has led to two options: Hilliard's (a U.S. company) and Everlasting (Italian, but the products are available in the U.S., though at 220V). When I asked Clay Gordon of the Chocolate Life site how these fridges differ from regular ones, he stated that they are specifically built to deal quickly with the humidity "hit" caused by opening the door. The Hilliard's cooler goes down only to 58F/14C (which does not sound low enough, but I have not checked with the company) and Everlasting to 35.6F/2C. The cost of both units is quite high, but I am just investigating at this point.
I am also trying to determine whether having the area around a regular fridge (in my case, the kitchen) at a low RH (40% or so) makes a difference in the fridge's "recovery time." It makes sense to me that it would help, but I am not a scientist. Clay recommended trying Moso charcoal bags to reduce the fridge's humidity.
And, as long as I'm trying to be comprehensive in this posting, I will add that, on a rainy day in the cooler months, high RH does not seem to affect the chocolates--though logic would dictate that it would.
Any thoughts would be most appreciated.
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8 hours ago, rarerollingobject said:
I'm very into improving my baking to make ingredients/flavours (the ginger, the pear) taste the most OF themselves that I possibly can without being overwhelming....
You express this much better (and more vividly) than I do, but that is more or less my goal in devising fruit fillings for chocolates, a substance, of course, that presents serious challenges since it overwhelms any flavors that are inclined to timidity. With some, like peach and blueberry, I have reluctantly given up the fight. With pear, however, I did not and found that making my own purée by simply reducing ripe pears and straining, then mixing in puréed dried pears made all the difference. I make pâte de fruit with it and add a layer of complementary almond filling flavored with poire Williams and a little more pear purée (idea courtesy of @Kerry Beal). I use the dried fruit addition in apricot and cherry pâte de fruit as well. Kate Weiser is a chocolatier who achieves remarkable flavors in her fruit fillings.
Thanks for your inspiration.
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12 minutes ago, pastryani said:
Couldn't you bypass the egg white step (fresh or powdered) and just stick with gelatin, or was there a reason to use egg whites?
When you use egg whites, you can beat them and the hot syrup together, then let them cool down to somewhere around 90F. At that point the gelatin can be mixed in, will still dissolve at that temp, and you have only a little more cooling to do before a safe temperature for piping is reached. There is no worrying about whether the gelatin is going to jell when the temp is still too high for the chocolate. When you use the just gelatin and syrup method, you can't wait for the syrup to cool down because it thickens too much to beat with the gelatin--or at least this has been my experience.
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I'll give using real egg white some consideration. I'm reluctant, but it would certainly make marshmallow fluff easier...and tastier.
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Good point, Kerry. The lower temp sounds as if it is what I am looking for (as it is really marshmallow fluff that I am trying to make, but without dried egg whites--I bought some highly recommended ones from Amazon, and they smell and taste "off" to an unacceptable degree).
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Having discovered that Greweling's recipe for pipeable marshmallows is meant for marshmallows piped onto parchment while the mixture is still hot, I am still working on pipeable marshmallows as a filling in a bonbon (the complication arises mostly from the fact that the temperature cannot be too high because the marshmallow will melt the chocolate shell). I'm making some progress, with a successful attempt yesterday. But I'm puzzled by the discrepancies I find in the temp to which the syrup is to be cooked. Greweling says 252F (250 in his at-home book), and he (and Wybauw) are the only sources I can find who take the syrup that high. Martha Stewart, Alton Brown, the Serious Eats site, Nightscotsman (who contributed the well-known recipe for strawberry marshmallows to eGullet), etc., call for somewhere in the 234-240 range. David Lebovitz is the only one I found who gets close to Greweling, calling for 245. If the soft-ball stage is the goal, then 252 seems quite high. In Part I of this marshmallow thread, someone is told pointedly that the 250 range is too high. For those who have made Greweling's marshmallows, did you have issues with his comparatively high temperature? For my goal, a lower temperature keeps the marshmallow softer (good for piping purposes) and also helps with the issue of getting the temp down to the 80-85 range quickly enough so that the gelatin does not have so much time to thicken and make piping impossible.
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27 minutes ago, pastrygirl said:
I'm more curious about silicon caramel molds. Jim, what did you find, and how much time will they save over individually cutting by hand?
The one I saw in use at Jinju Chocolates in Las Vegas was from Chef Rubber. They are on the pricey side (but isn't everything in the chocolate world?), but, more important, they weren't the right size for me--I like rectangles and those were either too small or much too large. The website says lots more sizes are coming soon, but when I asked, I was told to put in a request for a special project (we know what that probably means). So I did a search and found a mold closer to what I wanted on Bakedeco at a considerably lower price. It doesn't save time over pouring the caramel into a frame, but the caramels I finally made today (with the texture I was looking for) would have been horribly distorted by the time I finished cutting them (that may well be related to the one doing the cutting!). Needless to say, I would never cut them on my guitar, though some (braver) people do. The ones made in the mold and now dipped remained rectangular in shape through the whole process yet are soft in texture. I watched the process in Vegas, and it was obvious that, with practice, removing the perfectly shaped caramels is fast and easy. The Chef Rubber mold in use there made small rectangles, and I know you tend to prefer smaller chocolates, so it might be worth looking into (Bakedeco has a small cube as well as the rectangle).
On the caramel issue more generally, do you also find that a few degrees makes all the difference in the world? Do you have trouble achieving consistency from batch to batch?
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What is an example of a Maillard caramel? How does it differ in technique?
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Ruth,
I'm not entirely sure of the difference. Following Lebovitz's recipe, I made a caramel (he says cook it to 310F--which is a rather light caramel), then I added hot cream and cooked the mixture to the desired temperature. This is mostly the same as Notter's recipe and many others.
I am at an altitude of about 1400 feet. I checked the charts on that, and it should make only a little difference.
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I had decided to learn to make chewy caramels (to be dipped in chocolate) this summer and am looking for some insight from those who are more experienced. I know that it is the final temperature of the caramel that determines whether it will work or not. I used David Lebovitz's recipe, which calls for cooking the caramel to 260F/127C. I knew that was higher than anyone else recommends, but it's David Lebovitz, so who am I to doubt? After seeing Jin's silicone caramel mold at the eGullet workshop in Las Vegas in May, I found one (less expensive), so was using that to make nice neat pieces.
Attempt #1: I poured the 260F caramel (also tested in cold water to check the consistency) into the mold. When I removed the hardened pieces, "hardened" hardly begins to describe how firm they were--tooth-breakingly hard.
Attempt #2: I added a little skim milk and melted the pieces from the previous try. Meanwhile I had checked multiple recipes, including Peter Greweling's (239F/115C recommended) and Kerry Beal's (244 to 250F / 118 to 121C), and this time stopped at about 245F/118C. Better, but still too firm--and worse, stuck to my teeth.
Attempt #3: Again, melted down the caramel. This time went to about 240F/115.5C. I decided to add some cocoa butter to help firm up the finished product (an idea from Jean-Marie Auboine, also at the Vegas workshop). This try was much better, but the caramel was too soft to hold its shape after removal from the mold. And, quite unexpectedly to me, the bottoms of each piece stuck to the silicone mold. Who knew? So a quick online search revealed that oiling the silicone may be necessary.
Attempt #4: After the messy job of oiling the mold (using cooking spray and wiping most of it out), I began again. This time I went to about 242F/117C. These came out of the mold without sticking (though they had to be patted dry from the oil), and I just finished dipping them in dark chocolate, topped with some Himalayan salt I have been waiting to use for something.
In spite of this final success (at least it appears so at this point), I have to ask: Is making "stand-alone" caramels really this difficult? Do 2 degrees make that much difference? Of course, I realize that taking the temperature of a boiling liquid is a very iffy proposition--moving the Thermapen around the pot shows how the temp varies from place to place. And there is the residual heat once the pot is removed from the stove (I tried dipping it in cold water, but that cooled off the caramel too much to be poured into the mold). Testing by dropping some caramel in water seems inconclusive as the firm ball stage covers a range of temperatures, and meanwhile the caramel in the pot continues to cook, even if it's off the heat. At this time of year I have time to experiment, but in the midst of Christmas production, there can be no recooking of caramel three times and waiting for it to harden in order to determine if it is right for dipping.
I use Rose Levy Beranbaum's caramel pot. It's narrow enough that even a small batch is deep enough for a thermometer to register. But it's not a particularly heavy pot. Might that be an issue?
Any suggestions or insights?
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@pastrygirl I don't think it will be possible to get a look at the bakery for a while (the owner today mentioned end of July as the current goal--I don't think he is at the installing of display cases yet). We are going to meet as soon as the place is habitable. Wouldn't selling by the piece require a humidity-controlled cabinet? I don't know anything about bakery storage, but I don't imagine humidity is such a concern for bakers as it is for chocolatiers.
It's a little insulting that someone wanted to put your caramels in her own packaging. Even I would draw the line at that.
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32 minutes ago, Daniel D said:
For those of you wholesaling your wares or selling on consignment, do you need any special permit or license to do so? I was pondering this sales channel as well and want to make sure I know all the hoops that must be jumped through.
If you are in the U.S., it depends on which state you live in. It also depends on where you are making your product. As I understand it, very few states allow products made in home kitchens to be sold retail (or sold wholesale to be retailed by somebody else). You have to be in a professional kitchen that has been inspected. My state is an exception and I had my kitchen inspected (that is another saga for another day), so I am allowed to sell anywhere. I must include an ingredient list, which also states the net weight of the contents and, of course, an allergen list (the supervisor in my area said, "I know pinenuts are not actually nuts, but you have to list them"). I also had to provide a recipe for every single filling I sell. So-called "cottage food operations" are another matter--no inspection necessary but you have to include a notice that the product was made in a non-inspected kitchen and cannot sell it anywhere except from your home or at a farmers' market. Needless to say, there are also various approvals and licenses required by the city or county in which you operate. As you can see, I have done a lot of research on this topic.
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I have been selling my chocolates on a consignment basis in a couple of places in town. I provide boxes of 6 or 12 pieces sealed (not vacuumed) in individual bags and the seller refrigerates these. This means 6 or 12 pieces must be bought at a time. I provide a display card showing what the boxes contain and also a list of ingredients. In one case I provided an extra box opened to display what the sealed boxes look like; when a space is not air conditioned overnight, each night that display box must be refrigerated, at least in the summer.
I just learned that the owner of a French bakery about to open is interested in the chocolates. I am trying to get my thoughts together before contacting him. I can imagine that in a bakery situation, where customers are purchasing one item at a time, they might well expect the chocolates to be sold by the piece as well. If that is also the thinking of the baker, I can't imagine how this might work, though obviously there are many chocolate shops where individual pieces are displayed and sold, I assume in low-humidity cases of some sort. I can't see how this would work in the absence of such special display cases. Even if I found decent clear-top boxes holding perhaps 2 pieces, the humidity would almost certainly ruin them. Has anyone else had experience in a similar situation, and if so, how did you deal with it? Any thoughts will be appreciated.
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53 minutes ago, pastrygirl said:
Honey is not crucial to marshmallows.
I know, but I wanted to know if its invert-sugar properties are essential. Most recipes for marshmallows seem to include honey, though Melissa Coppel's includes neither honey nor invert sugar.
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Greweling uses honey in his marshmallow recipes. I thought the taste of honey overpowered other flavors (such as vanilla) and would like to omit it. Should I replace it with an equal amount of glucose (in addition to the glucose already called for), or is the invert-sugar effect of honey crucial to marshmallows? I should note that in his first book he includes invert sugar in addition to honey, but does not in his at-home volume.
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3 hours ago, pastryani said:
@Jim D. - my guess for the wires would be to oil them. I've tried cutting marshmallows both with an oiled and unoiled knife, and oiled is definitely the way to go (cleaner cuts, less stickiness).
I can corroborate what you advise. I oiled the wires yesterday and the marshmallow layer did not stick, but I recount the other issues in the Greweling thread.
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4 minutes ago, Tri2Cook said:
I may still invest in the second edition of the book at some point if I'm convinced there's good reason to but I managed to dig up the pipeable marshmallow recipe. It's not being piped in shells and doesn't say anything about a temp where it becomes to firm to pipe so I'm going to have to play with it to find out if it can still be piped once cool enough for shells.
I will be experimenting as well. Others have said (there is a thread on eGullet on pipeable marshmallow) that the secret is to stop beating the mixture sooner--though how one determines "sooner" remains a puzzle. It is a great temptation just to use marshmallow fluff from the grocery store (even Greweling calls for it in his at-home book). I have gotten the impression that in Greweling's second edition he calls for using egg whites in the pipeable marshmallow, but I would prefer not to use eggs.
Has L'Epicérie Closed?
in Kitchen Consumer
Posted
The website for L'Epicérie (the online ingredient supplier in Brooklyn, NY) has been closed for some weeks now, with a message that suggests something dire happened to the "damaged site" and saying "We'll be back soon." But for a business that I think sells only online, it would seem that a damaged site is a serious matter requiring immediate attention. Does anyone have any info on this? I depend on them for chocolate ingredients in fairly small quantities--something very difficult to find elsewhere, especially at what I consider L'Epicérie's quite reasonable prices.