Jim D.
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Posts posted by Jim D.
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I finally got around to making marshmallow (Greweling's recipe). The plan is to spread a layer of it in a frame, top it with a layer of lime ganache, and dip the finished pieces in dark chocolate. The marshmallow seems to be OK, though a little rubbery after one day. I had trouble spreading it evenly in the frame, so am thinking I may have overcooked the mixture. Greweling says to cut marshmallows on a guitar, but I have doubts about the success. I didn't want to endanger wires on the guitar, so I took a separate piece of the wire and tried to pass it through a cube of marshmallow. The wire mashed the square (which mostly rebounded, but the cut is certainly not clean). In a two-layer marshmallow piece, Greweling calls for spreading the foot on the ganache, not on the marshmallow layer. I am seeking advice on whether it is worth it to try to use the guitar or just give up and use an oiled knife. Perhaps the guitar wires should be oiled?
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On 6/2/2017 at 10:51 AM, pastrygirl said:
I've been working with Jennine - jTaberski@tomric dot com. Tell her Andrea at Dolcetta sent you.
Thanks for the tip, which has paid off. Jennine answered my email immediately and referred me to Sean Tucci, who handles custom molds at Tomric. Today (just one day later) I got a quote from him (appreciably less than the other company, which never returned my call).
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1 hour ago, Tri2Cook said:
I'd agree 100% with that. At the very least, to get started and see if it works for you or you like messing with it. They're not too expensive and do the job just fine for most pastry work not requiring fine detail. I have over 12 years on mine with no issues and no temptation to upgrade to something more fancy. The biggest issue with the Wagner is making sure you use something, even just a cardboard box, as a spray booth because the overspray isn't horrible but isn't entirely insignificant either. I generally set the sprayer in container of hot-ish water so that it's container is mostly submerged while I'm melting chocolate and cocoa butter for spaying. Then I just put the filled sprayer back in the hot water whenever I'm not spraying to keep things flowing nicely.A little off the topic, but you mentioned your Paasche airbrush in another thread. So you use the Wagner just for pastry work?
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I am in a minority here, but I actually make sure my cocoa butter is in temper. I know that many experts say to put the bottle in the microwave, melt it a bit, shake it, then assume that the act of spraying it from a gun will temper it, but I don't know of any method of proving that theory (how exactly would you check the temperature--or crystallization state, to be more precise--of cocoa butter as it lands on a mold?). I've used that "don't verify, just spray" method, and sometimes the molds are fine, other times not. Since I started actually testing the c.b., I have had far fewer problems with release from molds. My method: I heat the c.b. in the microwave to somewhere beyond 90F/32C. Using a Thermapen to stir it, I let the temp fall to around 92F/33.3C (putting the bottle in a cold water bath if necessary), then add a dab of cocoa butter silk (from the EZtemper), stir it, then when it's around 90F/32C, I test it in the usual way. Some c.b. takes longer to set than others (red seems to be especially stubborn), but after the silk has been added, in my experience the c.b. has always been in temper. Then I put it on the heat a little to raise the temp to the top of the range (just before Type V crystals melt), then rush to attach the bottle to my Paasche airbrush and start spraying. I use a heat gun (far more than is pleasant) to keep the temp up, but I don't check it any more.
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7 minutes ago, Tri2Cook said:
Yeah, I've been using the same Wagner Power Painter for over 12 years now for pastry work (with zero problems so far) but I'd hate to have to fill that thing with colored cocoa butter. The price of that stuff makes me consider the possibility of just working in straight chocolate and living with the colors I can get from that. But then reality sets in and I realize that just wouldn't be as fun.
I've had many a day when I was close to putting a curse on Norman Love (widely credited with popularizing the decoration of chocolates with cocoa butter). Then I thought of moving to Europe, where bonbons are more traditional and simple in decoration.
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1 minute ago, Kerry Beal said:
I see it more for pastry.
I agree. With any siphon-type sprayer, the size of the container matters a lot. My little Paasche bottles don't need a lot of c.b. to reach the level of the siphon, but the HotChoc with its large container would take a huge amount--which, as you say, means a big project to clean it between colors. With gravity feed, the level of cocoa butter doesn't have to be so high. So, at the workshop, the Fuji (and whatever Lionel used)--which both had large containers--worked smoothly without a full supply of color.
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1 hour ago, ChristysConfections said:
Has anyone tried the Krea Swiss hotChoc? I know @markwightman was going to try it quite some time ago. It would be convenient to use something specifiy designed for use with cocoa butter/chocolate.
This sprayer sounds promising, but this quote from a Krea representative writing on The Chocolate Life forum is less promising:
QuoteIf your intention is spraying pure (colored) cocoa butter, then you are better using the air-brush. The hotCHOC will work (ideally with the R4 nozzle - see www.kreaswiss.com), but it will not get as fine a spray with such a low viscosity, thin material. Our electric spray guns atomize the pure liquid as such and pure, hot cocoa butter is just too thin and liquid to get your desired result. With an airbrush you obviously add air, i.e. to every butter fatter particle you add some additional 100 air particles on top, which means the particles get a wider spread.
In another thread on that same forum, however, others write of decorating bonbons with the sprayer. I wish we could hear from someone with a definitive answer. The Krea videos I have seen show it being used for the velvet effect on pastries and similar items and also for speckling bonbons--after they are out of the mold. Its container holds a lot of product, but then so do most spray guns that people use for chocolate mold decorating.
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3 hours ago, Tri2Cook said:
When I bought my Paasche, it came with 3 needles (.5, .8 and 1 mm according to their website). It came with the middle one installed and I haven't messed with it. Think I'll give the bigger one a try.I have a Paasche and use the largest needle. Which Paasche model are you using? I have issues with getting a steady spray of cocoa butter with it, so I can't imagine using a smaller size. But--assuming you are using it for cocoa butter--can you say a little about your experience using the middle size? Do you have to stop and heat the airbrush often? Do you get fairly full coverage of a mold, or does the cocoa butter come out in little dots (like a newspaper photo when examined closely)?
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7 hours ago, Kerry Beal said:
Cabrallon 6024
If that is the mold identified on Chocolat-Chocolat as ART6024, it is 29mm in diameter, so less than the CW 30mm one.
By the way, I learned that Mike has been gone from Micelli for several years, so I will be talking to John Micelli.
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I have the 15g and 18g domes. The latter are a little large, though they come in handy for Greweling's recipe where he calls for submerging a whole hazelnut in ganache. But it's the shape I am concerned about at this point. I know you have taken a Coppel class and probably saw her paint with a foam brush meticulous lines and other shapes in a demisphere (or hemisphere) mold; that's practically impossible to do in a dome. And airbrushing a dome usually means (for me) unsprayed areas and/or streaking of the cocoa butter. This tends not to happen so much in a half-sphere. I'll see how the estimates come in.
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9 minutes ago, pastrygirl said:
That sucks. Did you use the contact form on the website or just email?
I've been working with Jennine - jTaberski@tomric dot com. Tell her Andrea at Dolcetta sent you. It's a little frustrating to work through a rep rather than directly with the designer, but we are getting close - I'm awaiting a cavity sample of the latest version. And I don't know where I got that "less than $10", maybe for very thin molds but I'm going heavier gauge and buying less than 100 so mine will be closer to $15 each plus around $700 total tooling & die making expenses. This is for the cheaper thermoformed molds, not the injection molds that we are used to from Chocolate World etc.
I don't have the impression that you're doing very high volume so the overhead at tomric or micelli may be prohibitive if you only want 10 of something. Is there anyone in your area with a 3D printer that could help? Or experienced with silicone mold making? I met a soap maker at a holiday show who made all his own really detailed molds and does custom work, I'll see if I can find a name, might be worth contacting just to see your range of options.
Can I ask what you're hoping to
make?
Thanks for the reply and helpful suggestions. I have sent a quote request to Micelli. They are somewhat expensive ($4,250 for 100 custom molds)--but I say "somewhat" because that comes out to $42.50 per mold, which is not that much more than some vendors charge for stock molds. I do like the fact that--unlike any other custom manufacturer I have encountered--they actually provide an estimated price on their website. You are correct that my volume doesn't justify buying so many molds, but I am working on increasing sales and if these molds were to turn out as I imagine, they would become my go-to mold. Or perhaps I could sell some of the molds to others. The long version of the story: At the Vegas workshop in May, literally every chocolatier we encountered used demisphere molds, and after watching Jin, Melissa, and Lionel (who works with Jean-Marie Auboine) decorate demispheres, I fully understand why this is THE mold (at one point I was in JMA's "mold closet" and couldn't even count the demispheres). These molds make decorating with cocoa butter so much easier and more attractive (in both hand-decorating and spray- painting applications). The three of them used what appeared to be Chocolate World's #1217 (30mm in diameter) , and Melissa Coppel also used #2002 (39mm) for her more elaborate decorations. I produce larger chocolates than a 30mm demisphere makes (9 grams), but a 39mm one (19 grams) would be out of proportion to my other chocolates. Thus the quest for something in between (I'm thinking 34mm, which I'm estimating would be about 14 grams).
I will try Tomric once more. But I do not understand companies that do not respond to contact forms, emails, or phone calls--I tried all three--and am not sure what more I can do aside from flying to Buffalo and knocking down the door. I did get one reply to a contact form asking for more info, but when I provided that, I heard nothing more. In contrast, yesterday I contacted a thermoforming company about another project, had a response within an hour or so, and am well on the way to getting an estimate.
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I have seen this from @pastrygirl:
QuoteI've looked into custom molds through Tomric in NY and the polycarbonate is less than $10 per mold but the die tooling is $200-300 plus possibly some design time.
and am wondering if others have possible sources for custom molds (I have not had any success getting a response from Tomric on another custom project). Thanks for any help.
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42 minutes ago, Kerry Beal said:
chefsmartoneI'm using a rubber stamp modified to fit a wooden pole. The airbrush I use is a Grex S5 it has an opening of 0.5 mm that is ideal for colored cocoa butter spray.
So, Kerry, what is your thinking on that size? You and I both have the Paasche (with its needle of just over 1mm). That seems to me a big difference, but when I watched the Martone videos, he was getting Fuji-like spray from his Grex airbrush. Maybe, in this case, size doesn't matter?
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1 hour ago, leopardots said:
I just got a grex today, It seems ok but my room temperature is 26ºc and my coca didn't seem ti cling to the mould too well.
Salvatore Martone uses the grex
Yes, that is a warm temp for spraying. Which Grex do you have? I couldn't find any images of Martone using the Grex (now I realize that I should have eaten in Joel Robuchon's restaurant when I was in Vegas).
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Having recently seen the Fuji sprayer system (which uses a turbine rather than a compressor for air supply) in action at the chocolate workshop in Las Vegas and decided it would be overkill for my somewhat limited production (and very large for my limited space) but remaining dissatisfied with my Paasche siphon-feed airbrush, I continue to look at other options. Today on Chef Rubber I came across the Grex LVLP spray gun, which uses (I think) a standard compressor (I already have an Iwata SmartJet Pro compressor). According to Kerry Beal, the Fuji system used at the workshop had a 0.8 needle; the Grex as sold by Chef Rubber has a 1.4mm needle (up to 1.8 is available from Grex)--but I am not sure these sizes are comparable as the systems are different. My current Paasche has the HN-5 needle, which is 1.067mm, so I am concerned about going to a smaller size needle.
The Grex system appears to be less cumbersome than the Fuji, and supposedly an LVLP gun has less overspray than the more common HVLP. The specs on Chef Rubber say that it "accepts colored cocoa butter, chocolate, glaze, egg wash" and, like the Fuji, has a "pattern shape adjustment knob," which I assume means it can do speckling (at which the Fuji is very good--it earned oohs and ahhs at the workshop). I like the fact that Grex targets its products to food decoration as well as to painting (there are quite a few relevant videos on its website).
Is anyone familiar with the Grex spray gun?
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2 minutes ago, Tri2Cook said:
I've wanted to ask this same question but I've avoided it because I more than half suspected that knowing the answer would result in having to buy another book.I felt exactly the same way. But today I saw that pipeable marshmallow is included in the 2nd edition, and that is something I am looking for. I'm just not sure that justifies another $50 chocolate book.
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Does anyone know the ways in which the first and second editions of Greweling's Chocolates and Confections differ? And for those who has seen both, is purchasing the second one useful? I have encountered one example on eGullet in a reference to pipeable marshmallow being included in the 2nd edition.
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1 hour ago, Smithy said:
Are these mostly intended as decor for cakes or other pastries? If not, how would the curlicues be used? I'm thinking of the curled ribbons that seem to be alternating stripes of chocolate and clear (3rd photo above this post) as well as the chocolate coils (and green ones) immediately above this picture. For that matter, what happens to the marbled chocolate? It all looks delightful, but doesn't seem like something that would go atop a bite-sized confection.
Jin makes most of those to be used as decorations on desserts, especially at the big hotels in Las Vegas. She spoke at some length on the difficulties of transporting them from her place to, for instance, the Bellagio. The marble/wood grain piece was a transfer sheet that she made. I agree that the grain is probably too large for the pattern to show up on a bonbon, but it was quite beautiful and I plan to try to make the grain "finer" so as to be usable as a transfer sheet for chocolates. If anyone remembers the eGullet thread on achieving a marbled look by pouring chocolates of different colors from a bowl into molds (which took incredible coordination and a large amount of chocolate), this is a much easier way of achieving something similar.
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@Daniel D I don't know the brand name. The product is sold in small bottles (I assume from larger containers imported from France) by La Cuisine, and most of the ones I have tried I like very much (apple, pear, apricot). I heard of the place in Rose Levy Beranbaum's Cake Bible, where she writes of the apricot essence from this shop, and I then discovered the other flavors they carry. According to Rose (and who would question her?), they are "steam-distilled."
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I have discovered that, when sprayed on, red cocoa butter does not show up as expected on dark chocolate. If you finger-paint red (and thus get a thicker coat), it is closer to looking red. The only solution I have found for the spray-painting issue is to add a layer of white on top of the red; then the red looks right. Learning about how the various colors behave has been a challenge. White and yellow (contrary to expectations) are closer to opaque, whereas dark green and red get muddied. Orange works well, as do light green and light blue.
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45 minutes ago, Merry Berry said:
I wonder...if they do not have some kind of flexible template on the stick or something and then they spray around it, picking it up, moving to the next cavity....
That sounds logical, given the slightly "fuzzy" edges of the stripes. Tape would ideally give a sharp edge, and I have seen examples on eGullet that achieved that effect. When I experimented with painter's tape (just to see what would happen), cocoa butter seeped under the edges of the tape, so that could also explain the edges in the example.
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I could well be wrong, but my guess is that this is another example (a dazzling one) of someone using tape to mask off sections of the cavity and then spraying in stages. Achieving stripes has been a frequent question on eGullet. I recall that Pastrygirl recently used painter's tape to get a stripe on an egg. At least two other contributors said they had found tape certified to be food-safe (one of them, @Dallas, stated: "I use a low tack, paper material tape...its kind of like masking tape, but has a very low tack (no residue) and uses either an acrylic or epoxy type of adhesive, which is suitable for direct or indirect food contact." But he never posted the name of that tape.) I found a promising tape at a Michael's craft store, but it wouldn't stick to polycarbonate. No matter what tool you use, it's very labor-intensive work (to state the obvious).
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Ruth,
I don't know whether you need a head count of those wishing to attend the Thursday dinner at Lotus of Siam, but if you do, I would like to be included.
When you have time: As I know of at least one additional workshop participant since the most recent list, it would be useful to have an updated list.
Thanks,
Jim D.
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@Patrick S, I had exactly the same experience with the magic cake. Everything happened as it was supposed to, but all I could think of after eating it was "This is what magic tastes like?" I love custard, but did not find this cake appealing. I always wonder what I did wrong when so many people rave about something (such as this cake), but your experience appears to confirm mine.
Would you mind if I sent you a PM about your macro lens? I have had no success with mine--people on eGullet get better photos with their smartphones than I do with my $$ lens.
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Cooking with "Chocolates and Confections" by Peter Greweling (Part 2)
in Pastry & Baking
Posted · Edited by Jim D. (log)
I didn't get a response to my question under the marshmallow topic, so I'll try again in the Greweling discussion. I have more info since completing his marshmallow recipe.
I'm making a variation on the "Hot Chocolate" two-layer marshmallow recipe. I made his marshmallow recipe and spread it (with considerable difficulty) in a frame. I think I either overcooked the syrup or overbeat the marshmallow mixture. Then, for the second layer, instead of his chocolate ganache, I made a lime one (the idea of combining marshmallow and lime comes from Melissa Coppel). The lime recipe (from Ewald Notter) never really sets up firmly enough, so for dipping I added some white chocolate and cocoa butter, and it was better, but still rather soft. I let the lime set for more than a day, then applied a foot to the ganache, and cut the slab on a guitar (with the wires lightly oiled, marshmallow layer on top). It cut better than I anticipated, but I could tell the pieces were "melting" into each other. I chilled it and then tried to separate the pieces, but had to use an oiled knife. In some pieces the lime layer has separated from the marshmallow. They look OK (but not great) and are rather rough around the edges. I can see that whereas I could dip them, they would not look great.
The taste of marshmallow and lime is delicious together, but what could be done to improve the situation? The marshmallow was rather firm, so if I made it more pliable, then I am sure it would never cut on a guitar and the pieces would certainly flow back together once the wires had passed through. Just as obvious (from Greweling's photo and photos on eGullet from those who have made the Hot Chocolate recipe), the recipe as written does work.
I'm thinking of translating the recipe into a molded piece, with pipeable marshmallow (undercooked and underbeaten) and a layer of lime ganache on top, but I hate to admit defeat. Any ideas are welcome.