Jim D.

Andrea, Opalys is so expensive (and a kilo is the smallest amount for sale) that I can send you a sample of it if you want. Just PM me your address. Jim

I too am a great fan of Felchlin and use their Maracaibo dark and Maracaibo Criolait milk--though Felchlin does not make the easiest chocolate to deal with (for me at least, it over-crystallizes too quickly). And I have tried Edelweiss in the hope that it would taste as good as Valrhona's Opalys white and be easier to deal with. In seeking such a chocolate, I also tried Soie Blanche. To refresh my memory, I just went to my stash and ate a piece of Edelweiss. My goal in selecting a white chocolate is locating one that does not taste too much of cocoa butter (which I think by itself has a very unpleasant taste). Many people say they look for a white that is not too sweet, but in my opinion, that is a hopeless search--they are all sweet. Of the three whites mentioned, I must say (I hope this does not offend you) I did not care for Soie Blanche; to my taste, it is too close to plain cocoa butter. Edelweiss is the second best I have tried, and it is much easier than Opalys to work with--it does not over-crystallize easily--in fact, it is almost too thin and I have had to pour some shells twice to get satisfactory coverage. However, I think taste is primary, and--again, this is just my opinion--Opalys is by far the best-tasting white I have had. Edelweiss still tastes too much of cocoa butter, but in Opalys there is very little of that (I can almost taste a little citrus in it, but am not really sure what the flavor comes from). Probably more information than you wanted, but so many people hate white chocolate that I have spent some time reading others' opinions and tasting as many as I was able to get. I have tried to talk one well-known online chocolate supplier into putting together packages of samples for potential customers to taste (a half-dozen whites, for example), but so far without success.

Thanks for that suggestion. In your first coating, is the filling completely covered in chocolate or does it show through in spots?

I have a somewhat specialized question on dipping chocolates. In dipping truffles, I first pre-coat the ganache by rolling it in chocolate in a gloved hand. When I place it on parchment, it develops a flat side where it sits. When I do the second dipping, I have learned that I have to track where that flat side is so that I place the completed truffle on the bottom it developed earlier or it ends up with another bottom plus one side that is now "tell-tale" flat. It is quite difficult to watch where the initial flat side is as the truffle tumbles in the chocolate. This is a relatively minor matter, but it would be nice to have truffles that have only one bottom--the one that develops from their final resting place. The last time I tried rolling the truffle on the parchment after the first coating so that the bottom would not be so obvious. This helped in a few cases, but most often it merely made a mess of the first coating. With only one set of hands, it is quite difficult to keep rolling the truffles on the parchment and, at the same time, continue coating more in my hand. Is there a technique I have not heard about for avoiding the "two flat sides" issue with truffles? Any help will be appreciated.

Thanks for that suggestion. I could use a Thermapen to check the temp without stirring. Another interesting development: As I was cleaning the pot from the separated batch, I saw the butter now solidified. I mixed it into the remaining butterscotch, and it mixed quite well. So I will try browning the butter, letting it solidify, then adding it after the caramel has been totally cooked. I hate to abandon that wonderful taste/smell of browned butter.

I will chime in with my support for using parchment. One pizza disaster led me to convert: One New Year's Eve I let people put on their own toppings, and of course they overdid it. The weight of the toppings and the time it had taken to load up the pie meant the pizza would no longer slide off the peel (even though it had lots of cornmeal). I had to cut it in half and get the halves on a cookie sheet. It was a total mess--and with all the guests standing around waiting expectantly for their pizza. (Some time later I learned that I could have folded the pizza in half and called it a calzone.) Ever since I have done what Weinoo recommends. After 4-5 minutes the crust has set enough, and I yank the parchment out of the oven. You do lose some oven heat, but the crust still gets crispy and browns nicely--and the stress factor is nearly gone.

I have used the above description to attempt a butterscotch filling for chocolates. Once it has succeeded, but twice the butter has separated from the caramel, and I would be grateful for any advice on conquering this problem. The overall goal is to make a caramel that is lighter in color than the ones I usually make and that has a pronounced butter flavor. This is the recipe I am using (it is based also on the quantities in the recipe from Lebowits, above in this thread): Combine 90g of cream and a scraped vanilla bean in a small pot and heat. In a larger pot, heat 60g of butter until it just begins to brown. Then add 120g of light brown sugar, 30g of glucose, and 2 tsp. of lemon juice. Cook until the sugar is completely dissolved and the mixture has an intense aroma (as described in the quote above). Strain out the vanilla bean, then carefully add the hot cream to the mixture. Cook to about 235F/113C (I aim for slightly beyond the soft ball stage). Cool and then pipe into molds. On two occasions, as the mixture cools (I stir it occasionally in order to obtain an accurate temperature reading), the butter has slowly but surely separated into a little pool in the pot. Stirring has not brought it back, nor has use of an immersion blender (which gets more difficult to use as the caramel firms up). In a production situation, where I was somewhat desperate, I put the caramel in a sieve and let the butter drain off and was able to use the mixture without further problems (no separation of butter once the butterscotch was in the mold). I really like this filling, especially in combination with another layer of pecan gianduja and crushed feuilletine, and don't want to abandon it, but I can't have a filling that is unreliable. I can't believe the problem is too much butter. William Curley's recipe for orange balsamic caramel, using roughly equivalent amounts, calls for 100g of butter (added after the caramel has been taken off the heat), and I have never had separation problems with it. The only unusual thing I do differently from a regular caramel is to cook the butter first. Any advice would be appreciated.

I have always thought he means a commercially made product. In the books I have I don't think he provides a recipe. Some recipes (Andrew Shotts has one) do call for making hazelnut praline paste at home, but most experts say that, at least with hazelnuts, it is impossible to make a really smooth praline at home. I should add "unless you have a stone-type grinder," as I believe Kerry Beal has. L'Epicérie in New York carries two kinds of praline, one that is more coarse (with bits of hazelnut in it) and another (from Cacao Barry) that is perfectly smooth.

Although I am sure you are correct about hazelnuts and gianduja from a traditional point of view, Peter Greweling (in Chocolates and Confections) refers to gianduja made with almonds as well as the version with hazelnuts and writes of it being commercially made with both nuts (though I have never seen almond gianduja for sale). He has a recipe called "Trifection" that has one layer of white chocolate almond gianduja, another of milk chocolate almond gianduja, and the third of dark chocolate hazelnut gianduja.

As I said before, every recipe I have seen that calls for added cocoa butter says to melt it separately and add it after the cream+chocolate emulsion has been formed. Actually most of the recipes that do have added cocoa butter are ones that are fruit-flavored and use white chocolate. I have always assumed the reason was that the cocoa butter gives more "body" to the ganache without adding more chocolate so as to let the fruit flavor shine through. You could try leaving it out of your recipe and increase the amount of chocolate accordingly. Another idea: Grainy ganache can result from having the liquid significantly cooler than the chocolate (so that the latter does not get melted properly). I have just about given up on the "pour hot liquid over solid chocolate and stir like mad" method, and instead I melt the chocolate (at least partially) and get it and the liquid at more or less the same temp before mixing them, but you don't want the liquid cooler. Even so, I would think that heating up the ganache gently would take care of the graininess. I would also get a properly sized container and make enough ganache so that an immersion blender can be used successfully. It is your friend. Just some thoughts on the mysteries of ganache.

I don't think this could be the problem, but I have never seen a ganache recipe call for heating cocoa butter with the cream. You may be getting the cocoa butter too warm at that early stage, and then you are mixing that (perhaps unemulsified) mixture into chocolate (more fat, needing more emulsification). All recipes I have seen that call for adding cocoa butter say to add it after you have formed the emulsion with cream and chocolate; if that initial emulsion has formed successfully, adding some more fat should not be a problem. If you are getting separation of the fat, you could try adding drops of skim milk with an immersion blender to bring the emulsion back (to give credit where it's due, I think I got that idea from Kerry Beal). I don't want to jinx my future efforts, but I will say that I have never had this method fail--even with Valrhona's temperamental Opalys white chocolate.

From Food Network here is a Tennessee Banana-Black Walnut Cake with Caramel Frosting that looks good, and for those who hate black walnuts, the banana should divert some attention away from the strong taste a bit. Once in my workplace I had a very disturbed fellow worker come in after Christmas carrying an opened package of black walnuts. "We ruined our dinner with these rancid, moldy nuts; the cake was a disaster." I took a small taste and informed him, "That's the way they are supposed to taste." As I assume you know, cracking them and picking out the nuts, while avoiding the inclusion of pieces of the shell, is a daunting job, not for the faint of heart.

gfron1, So what's under those beautiful domes?

Kerry, Thanks for that advice. I should add that by today (one day after making the meltaways) the texture in the piping bag is fine. I'll try the ice water along with more patience--and the next time I will be able to use the EZTemper, which I saw (from the 2015 conference) makes a difference.

I finally got around to trying meltaways. I followed Greweling's instructions but was puzzled at the results. After mixing the coconut oil and the melted chocolate, I expected some thickening, but there was absolutely none. I tempered by stirring for a long time (there was no way I could keep the stuff on a marble slab), still no thickening. So I heated it back up to an appropriate temperature and added 1% of Mycryo, stirred like mad, still only slight thickening. The plan was to pipe this into shells, but I need to put "pipe" in quotation marks since I could have just poured it. I refrigerated the mold, and after several hours, the meltaways looked better, and they came out of the mold (well, most of them). But the mix left in the piping bag was still completely liquid. I must have done something wrong--it's not a good sign when the only way a ganache is satisfactory is when it is refrigerated. The taste and texture of the meltaways is good enough to make it worth pursuing to get this right. Since then, I have done some more reading on eGullet and see that the initial very liquid state is not unusual, but other people seem to have success getting it to crystallize enough to cut on a guitar. I should add that when I made the meltaways, I had not yet received my EZTemper machine, so that was not an option. I would appreciate any guidance on where I went astray--or was it simply that I did not give the crystallizing enough time?

About freezing ganache leftovers: If you wrap it really well, it will be fine for weeks. Greweling points out that the "shelf-life clock effectively stops when the confections are frozen" (he is speaking of completely made chocolates, not just ganache, but his statement should apply to ganaches as well). If you take the extra step of vacuum-sealing it first, it will last even longer. I do this all the time. It's good to have a decent vacuum sealer in any case, and when things are vacuum-sealed, they don't pick up odors from other frozen items or acquire that freezer taste. I would not use the microwave to soften ganache--too much danger of overdoing it. I move mine from freezer to fridge a day ahead (it's been frozen still in its piping bag), then bring it to room temp, remove it from the bag, cut it into chunks, put them in a bowl over warm water, stirring frequently until it melts (to prevent separation) and using an immersion blender if it isn't entirely smooth. After that, it's as good as new. It's great to have around if, for example, you get a surprise dinner invitation--nothing like lining a few cavities with chocolate and filling with leftover mint ganache as a last-minute gift of after-dinner mints. One time I was making chocolates for serving at a benefit dinner, and I used up all the leftover ganaches in the freezer. If you weigh the ganache and compare the figure to the weight of the original amount you made, you can get a feel for approximately how many cavities it will fill. In the case of the benefit, it didn't matter how many pieces of each flavor I had as they were all put on plates and passed around. People loved the variety.

I too have had occasional troubles with caramel breaking, but I am speaking of caramel without chocolate. Last time I tried every trick in the book, and finally gave up and put it all in a sieve. The separated butter dripped out, and the caramel was completely usable. There's no ready explanation. William Curley's wonderful orange balsamic caramel calls for a huge amount of butter at the end, and I have never had it break. With the batch described earlier, there was relatively little butter. But since you are making a caramel with chocolate, there is always the increased danger of having it separate. My experience follows what Chocolot said, "too much fat." You could try the trick of slowly mixing in (with immersion blender) some skim milk or even water to bring back the emulsion. You might also try not using the "pour hot caramel over chocolate" method but instead melting the chocolate and getting it and the caramel to approximately the same temperature, then mixing them with an immersion blender. This avoids the shock to the chocolate, and it's what I do with any ganache involving white chocolate, which seems easily "shockable."

As I am about to join the ranks of EZTemper folks, I need to ask what percentage of silk you add (above, Kerry suggested 0.5%, but I had thought 1% was the norm, as it is with Mycryo). I have a Chocovision Delta (and a Rev2 for small batches). From the EZ instructions, I will need to reprogram the Delta to account for adding the silk at a somewhat higher temp than when using already-tempered choc. as seed. Chocovision says to add the seed when the choc. has just melted, then let the seed melt as the choc. cools down to the temper point. This will require some adjustment (I have become convinced that leaving the seed in all that time helps create over-tempered choc. and have started waiting for the temp to drop to around 95F/35C before I drop in the seed).

Darienne, You have convinced me to try this recipe. I don't know which type of apple I will use (I agree with you about Delicious, but I find that Granny Smith are often tasteless), but it is the height of apple season here in Virginia, so I will have a wide selection. One question: Have you ever made it without the xanthan gum? If so, how much of a problem is the iciness?

I know that you have followed Ruben Porto's method in the past and have liked the results. For those who haven't read about it, it is based on rather exact proportions of cream and milk (skim, no less) and even has variations depending on how much butterfat one's cream contains (good luck discovering that detail for U.S. supermarket cream). I am curious as to how your all-cream product differs. Have you provided the recipe in this thread?

Rajoress, Nice job with the peppermint patties. How did you form the ridge on top of each piece? And what did you use for a filling? Sorry to hear about the Boston heatwave. I used to live there, and people elsewhere don't realize how brutal the summers can sometimes be--though it doesn't usually last very long. Jim

I have finally tried Ruben Porto's method for making ice cream at home as well as his recipe for lemon curd ice cream. I was skeptical of the degree of detail, but I followed his instructions as closely as possible--no substitutions, no shortcuts. I used the Cuisinart ICE-30BC. First, I purchased a Thermoworks thermometer with probe and clip to hold the thermometer to the side of the pan (unlike the Thermapen, it doesn't keep shutting off at inopportune times). I weighed everything and mixed exactly as Ruben specifies, although I did have to use an immersion blender to get the milk powder to dissolve, but the resulting foam disappeared quickly in the heating process. I heated and stirred the mix for 25 minutes as specified. I managed to keep the temp within a degree or so of the recommended temp by moving the pan on and off the heat slightly. It did not look as if much evaporation had taken place, but when I weighed the pan + mix, the weight was quite close to the target. About 5 minutes more cooking, and it was there. I had the ice bath ready, cooled the mix down quickly, and put it in the fridge. Then I went through a similar (but much quicker) procedure for the lemon curd. A comment on the look of both: They do not thicken much at all (as one expects, for example, crème anglaise to do). Just a suggestion about the recipe: it might be helpful to tell this to the cook, as one is tempted to make the mix thicken. But, it turns out, both mix and lemon curd thicken quite a lot as they cool. Overnight I got the freezer down as low as it would go (-8 F/-22 C) Several hours before churning in the Cuisinart, I used the "power freeze" mode of my Samsung to lower the temp to approximately -13F/-25C. The power freezer function turns itself off after 2.5 hours, so it couldn't be left on overnight. I didn't keep track, but churning took around 25 minutes. I did my best to hold the dasher against the side of the bowl as Ruben specifies. It wasn't really possible to eliminate all the buildup on the side, but I think I did minimize it. The problem is that the bowl was so cold that it started freezing the mix the second I poured it in, so by the time I had put the mix container down, there was already a thin layer on the sides. Aware of Ruben's cautions about taking too much time to get the finished ice cream into the freezer, I hurried as much as I could. I decided to leave the thin layer of frozen mix on the side of the Cuisinart bowl rather than spend time scraping every bit of it; there wasn't a lot, so it was not as serious a loss of quantity as it might sound. I kept the power freeze going until I was fairly certain the ice cream had hardened. Now for the results: It was by far the best ice cream I have ever made (in maybe 20 uses of the Cuisinart). It has a creaminess I have rarely experienced in ice cream. And the flavor and texture added by using lemon curd (as opposed to flavoring the mix with lemon juice and zest) are amazing. The finished product does soften rather quickly once out of the freezer, but once this fact is known, it can be taken into account in the future. I was apprehensive about using skim milk powder as I do not like the smell of dried milk at all, but there was no taste of it in the finished product. I didn't know the fat content of the cream I used because, as is the case with most U.S. cream, it is not stated on the container, so I went with Ruben's minimum fat content recipe. Would I use the recipe again? Definitely. It is a lot of work compared to the usual process and requires attention to detail that only an obsessive person would actually enjoy. For anyone who cooks regularly, however, the extended heating time for the mix does not seem onerous (not much worse than making some caramels). I want to try vanilla ice cream so that I can try to determine whether it is just the basic recipe and method that make the product so good--or perhaps the addition of lemon curd contributed a great deal to the extraordinary mouthfeel. I think in future tries I will be much more relaxed since I know that (1) keeping the temp of the mix for 25-30 minutes is not as difficult as it sounds, (2) getting the freezer down to a low temp is actually possible, (3) moving the ice cream from dasher/bowl to the freezer in a timely way can be accomplished fairly easily. A few final suggestions for the recipe: It might be useful to state that about 8 large lemons were required to get the amounts called for, and it would help to list the ingredients in the order in which they are used. But these are minor matters. It is a great recipe, and I thank Ruben for it.

I thought you lived in ultra-sophisticated Seattle!

Thanks for that. I knew the info had to be available somewhere. Is that for refrigerating or for freezing them?

I am seeking lidded storage boxes for chocolates and came upon this thread. I found some Rubbermaid food boxes that are the right size, but they seem very expensive (around $45 for a 12" x 18" box with lid). Cambro boxes are more reasonably priced, but I find the available materials quite confusing. As a poster suggested above, the Camwear GripLids sound perfect for chocolate storage, and they come in the right size (around $17 for each lid + the cost of the box). My problem is that I cannot find (on the Cambro site or on Webstaurant.com) which box one is supposed to buy to go with the lid. Does the lid fit any of the Cambro boxes of the appropriate size? In addition, if anyone has experience with the GripLids, I would appreciate hearing about that.