Jim D.

I was going to say that if you are using raw flour, there is the issue of taste. I assume the filling is sticking together with butter or something similar? There might be the issue of having a filling that is too dry, taste-wise, and there is the consideration that ganaches dry out as they sit. But if this turns out as well as your cinnamon bun recipe (which I use frequently), then I will have to beg for the recipe.

The brownie idea sounds interesting. I don't think there should be an issue with using flour. If there is one, there are certainly a lot of chocolatiers using some form of cookies in their bonbons who would be in trouble. In fact, there is one of them located just down the street from you (more or less), Kalle Jungstedt, who uses cookie layers a lot. Of his tiramisù's savoiardi layer, he writes: "the cookie base is water free with months of shelf life."

Following Kerry's diagnosis and suggestions: I would, in the future, definitely make the hazelnut paste alone, then mix it with chocolate, heat the mixture, then temper it (preferably over cocoa butter silk if you have it, by stirring over cold water, or by tabling the whole mass). The heat resulting from processing plus the initial heat of the hazelnuts is probably taking the chocolate way out of temper. Peter Greweling writes: "Because gianduja is a fat system, and not an emulsion, there is no danger of separation." It would appear you have proved Professor Greweling wrong! But his diagnosis and remedies for "overly viscous" gianduja may prove helpful: The cause of this situation, he writes, is "excessive processing, resulting in heat damage" or "insufficient cocoa butter in chocolate." His remedy for the first issue is "Do not process gianduja in the machine excessively after the chocolate is added" and, for the second, "Use chocolate with sufficient cocoa butter content." If you take Kerry's suggestion and tackle a small quantity of your "split gianduja" at a time, you might have success. If you put a little melted cocoa butter or tasteless oil in the processor, then add the defective gianduja a little at a time through the feed tube, the two fats (chocolate and hazelnuts) might come together once again. Other than that, the only step I can think of is to make this into a kind of ganache, adding a little liquid, and see if an emulsion will form. The resulting mixture will be more perishable than gianduja. But if this issue occurs again, adding cocoa butter (whether by using a chocolate with higher cocoa butter content or by adding plain melted cocoa butter) sounds like the best idea. What brand of chocolate did you use?

Beautiful display and interesting flavors. And you do come up with unusual ingredients. Who knew a variety of black peppercorns comes from Cambodia? I am struck by your success with Earl Grey and kids. I don't make it often because most people don't seem to like it. I experimented last time with adding some bergamot flavoring, and it was more successful. Did you use the same mold for both boxes? The ones in the top box appear to be "flattened domes," but that could just be the angle.

If you husband is upset now, tell him to wait until you start doing this fulltime. A clean kitchen will be the exception rather than the rule. That is, unless he wants to build you a chocolate kitchen.

This separation has happened to me as I was first making the caramel, but you would have to melt it enough (regardless of the temp) to use an immersion blender (I am not referring to a stand blender). If you keep the blade below the level of the caramel, bubbles can be kept at a minimum. Obviously if your caramel is on the firm side, you would need a strong blender.

I have had butter separate from caramel. If you think of caramel as an emulsion (fat in the butter with water in the caramel), then it makes sense. I use an immersion blender to force the butter back into emulsion since sometimes stirring is not enough.

You won't get any complaints about over-complexity from me (I make chocolates--complexity is a given and obsessive attention to detail is a requirement). One issue: Cling wrap (at least in the U.S.) is not considered oven-safe. Some experts say a low temp is OK, but that wouldn't work for pie crust. Rose Levy Beranbaum says to use parchment, maintaining that foil doesn't let air through and creates a cardboard crust. I've never been sure I agree with her, but I do use parchment with dried beans. Unfortunately parchment doesn't fit tightly against a crust. Another problem I have is that fussing with the crust too much (to get it into the cracks and crevices) causes it to soften (I make a mostly butter crust with just a little shortening to make it pliable--Julia Child recipe). In any event, I will use your directions to work on my crust, and I thank you for them very much. Your creations are impressive.

When chocolate is overheated in the microwave, you will know it. It usually has a terrible smell and little bits of burned chocolate in it. And, as a side note, this can happen more easily than you might think. I use very short intervals of microwaving at the beginning of the process. I have had melted chocolate that looks like your photo. Often it just goes away during the process of tempering. In a few extreme cases, I used an immersion blender on it, and the chocolate smoothed out quickly. Just be sure to keep the blender blade immersed in the chocolate to avoid air bubbles.

Excellent idea. I have a filling based on dates and will try it with Amarula. I might try it with figs as well.

Some of my assortment for Christmas 2023. There are 24 different fillings, with an emphasis on those that attempt to imitate the taste and texture of various desserts (baklava, tiramisù, apple crisp, pecan pie, bananas Foster, cinnamon bun). My favorite new ingredient to play with was Amarula cream liqueur. It is similar to Bailey's Irish Cream but has other nuances of flavor. I immediately thought of pairing it with coffee, but that turned out to be more difficult than I anticipated. Amarula has a taste that seems assertive but was easily overpowered by chocolate and coffee. It is, on the other hand, great for sipping.

The tart looks delicious. I am quite impressed with the perfection of your crust. How do you get that ultra-smooth exterior? and keep it from slumping down in the tart pan as it bakes? If you have posted about this previously, please just point me to the post.

Your packages turned out quite well and are very attractive. As long as your production remains small, you are all set. I don't imagine you would happily contemplate making 500 of these items.

I always love your down-to-earth approach to all things food! As far as I know the history of decorating chocolates with colored cocoa butter, we have Norman Love to thank (!) for the idea. When my sister brought me boxes of various European chocolates from her travels, there was nary a decoration in the whole lot--perhaps a curlicue of contrasting chocolate or a single nut, but no garish colors. Alas, the idea of decorated bonbons has caught on in the U.S. (and now other places as well, even the Canary Islands--as evidenced by one eG member). I remember that another eG member, who lives in Italy, asked me in some detail about the selling of chocolates in the U.S. and was quite surprised at the price some chocolatiers charge for their decorated bonbons. To paraphrase: he thought Italians would never pay that for a chocolate--and added that they would not be favorably impressed by the decoration. We live in an "artisanal" age, and people will indeed pay more for chocolates that are "too pretty to eat." I have not yet had the nerve to try to sell undecorated chocolates, but it would be an interesting experiment. Every time I have a substantial number of decorated bonbons come out of the mold with severe damage, I am tempted to try the experiment.

Somewhere on eGullet I posted on this subject. I too found the (premixed) colored cocoa butter I use to have an unpleasant odor and taste. Since then either I have gotten accustomed to the smell/taste or I have begun using a fresher product. I still find that white cocoa butter has a smell, as do other colors that use a lot of white, but it doesn't seem as obnoxious. I eventually concluded that fresh cocoa butter is essential. I now use Cacao Barry, and when I open a new tub, I get a very faint odor of chocolate, but nothing terrible. Mixed colored cocoa butter definitely gets an odor as it ages. In spite of the issues, I have never found that the odor/taste carried over to a finished bonbon. Chocolate used for the shell and the filling used inside appear to overwhelm anything unpleasant. I have never had a customer mention the issue.

Pouring fondant can be found in small (and very inexpensive) quantities at L'Epicérie--a wonderful source for many things in the pastry realm. In fact, the business was created to provide small quantities to small producers.

@AlaMoi, I can't answer all your vanilla questions, but I can tell you that $10 per bean is quite high. I get my supply from Slofood Group. I like their Madagascar beans the best, but they have many other varieties. I have been very satisfied with the freshness. They have 25 Madagascar beans for $24 and offer many other price points.

The cream cheese contains water, so the strawberries probably won't stay crunchy. There is a wall between ganaches/caramels and giandujas (and similar water-free fillings), meaning that if there is any water in an ingredient, anything crunchy won't stay that way. Some recipes from professional chefs call for including nuts in a ganache (Peter Greweling has a recipe like that); the whole hazelnut he uses remains crunchy for a while but eventually becomes soft--or as soft as a hazelnut can get.

As I mentioned in our phone call, you married well!

Good to see you on eGullet. From our phone conversation I know you have already been down many of the rabbit holes on this forum, so it's too late to warn you about that pitfall. Using freeze-dried eggnog sounds like an interesting possibility. I'm currently swamped with Thanksgiving and Christmas chocolates and so don't have time to experiment, but I would like to do so after December 25. After the post quoted above, I took a couple of Kalle Jungstedt's online courses, and he has a section on cookie layers. Many people call them praliné layers, but they don't have to contain nuts. So when I needed a crème brûlée bonbon for an October wedding (in my area October now sometimes seems like August), I tried Jungstedt's idea. I had some of the ground caramel in the freezer. I mixed that with melted white chocolate and cocoa butter plus a little feuilletine, then piped that on top of the vanilla ganache. It worked surprisingly well--the caramel bits maintained some of their crunch and did not have a chance to clump together, and the "mouth impression" of the layer was close to the caramel crunch of the original dessert. The layer, however, ends up on the bottom, rather than the top, of the bonbon. Aside from that minor issue, the layer doesn't have the close approximation to a crème brûlée caramel layer that the ground caramel alone does.

@Kerry Beal@pastrygirl I got back to the Wybauw pear and almond ganache discussed a few days ago. You will recall that I had already enrobed it in dark chocolate when I noticed something like syrup leaking out. I experimented with melting down 50g of the enrobed pieces and adding 10g of melted cocoa butter (the idea was to add cocoa butter to balance the sugar but not add flavor that would cover up the delicate pear). It turned out that 10g was far too much--the ganache improved in texture but was far too solid. Therefore (I guessed) I was on the right track, but the dark chocolate used for enrobing might be enough to eliminate the stickiness. So today I melted down all the enrobed pieces. The resulting ganache was very fluid, but a sample left in the fridge for a few minutes showed that it would eventually be OK. I had every chocolatier's dream-come-true: a ganache easily pipeable that eventually crystallizes (and yes, the Aw is OK--0.68). I was even able to use the confectionery funnel (one of my best purchases) to deposit the ganache into shells. It worked, so I thank both of you for your suggestions. I will, however, make a note in the recipe NOT to try enrobing it again. Never tempt the chocolate gods to strike the same recipe twice.

I don't know of any solution to problem #1. You might try Cacao Barry's Zephyr white chocolate; it's less sweet. Or if money were no object, Valrhona's Opalys, even less sweet. But all whites are sweeter than most people would like. The more acidic the fruit filling is, the less sweet the shell will seem--think lemon, lime, unsweetened passion fruit, kalamansi, yuzu.

@Kerry Beal, do you have any ideas as to why the ganache turned syrupy and leaky and refused to dry out properly?

Do you know someone who could arrange it? It might be worth it. I believe today is an appropriate day for such adventures.

Another day in this saga. The test pieces still looked fine today, whereas the squares awaiting enrobing still were sticky to the touch. With this conflicting evidence, I decided to forge ahead. I got all 120 pieces dipped without major incident. They didn't stick to the dipping fork. I let them crystallize for a while, then began removing them from parchment to put them in boxes for Christmas freezing. They still looked OK. Then I noticed some shiny spots on the parchment, and these began to increase. Whatever the syrupy component in the ganache may be, it was determined to leak out of the shells. The squares (minus their decorative almond) are now sealed in bags awaiting further attempts at salvage. It is quite discouraging--not just because I have one less finished Christmas item but mainly because I have absolutely no idea what went wrong. And, alas, Chef Jean-Pierre is not reachable...by any method I am aware of. One small consolation: the ganache is quite delicious.