Jim D.

pjm333: Could you tell us what the squares on top of the pudding are and how they are made? Thanks.

With many thanks to those who gave advice on this project, here is the result. Not perfect, but I ran out of time before I could trim the tiles a little more (alas, the cake was not the same height all the way around). Scoring the tiles before they had totally dried and then using a heated knife for further trimming worked beautifully. Thanks again for the help.

This is an insight that I have been learning. Sometimes I give friends some "seconds," pieces that taste fine but that I would not feel confident putting in a box. Inevitably the recipients say, "What's wrong with them?"

Kerry, also helpful ideas. How thick should I try to get the tiles? I want to stand them up against the sides of the cake. In other words, is thinner or thicker easier to deal with?

Very helpful ideas. I'll give them a try. Thanks.

I am making Rose Levy Beranbaum's La Brioche cake. She calls for decorating the sides of the cake with chopped, toasted hazelnuts, which are fantastic. But one of the guests doesn't like nuts (you can't pick your relatives, I guess), so I came up with the idea of making thin rectangular pieces of chocolate spread on a transfer sheet. They will be placed against the butter cream frosting, each being approximately the width of the slices of the cake to be cut (so there is no need to cut through the chocolate when the cake is served). I experimented today, using Ewald Notter's directions in his book (he refers to the pieces as plaques). He says to use tempered chocolate, spread it on the transfer sheet, wait for it to set, then use an X-acto knife to cut it in pieces of the correct size. I left everything in place and cut through the transfer sheet and the chocolate and did not have any shattering. But after I removed the transfer sheet and tried to trim the pieces a bit, they shattered a lot. And there was some curling of the chocolate as it dried, which is worrisome. Any ideas on how to improve this process and guard against the curling and the shattering issues? Thanks for any help.

Here are the chocolates I made for Christmas this year. Where appropriate, the list includes the principal source of the recipe. First Row: (1) Piña Colada in white chocolate, (2) citrus cream (orange, lemon, lime) in white, (3) gingerbread in dark (Greweling), (4) mint cream in dark (Notter), (5) pumpkin cream in milk. Second Row: (1) layers of cinnamon and yuzu flavored with ginger in milk (Notter), (2) banana and passion fruit caramel in white (Wybauw), (3) raspberry coulis and orange-flavored dark ganache in dark (Notter), (4) layers of hazelnut praline and coffee ganache in milk (Shotts), (5) layers of soft caramel and coconut cream in dark (Curley). Third Row: (1) chocolate chip cookie in dark, (2) apricot ganache in white, (3) apple caramel in milk (eGullet's Tikidoc), (4) cherry kirsch in dark (Greweling).

As you said, in the yellow piece, it looks as if some of the colored cocoa butter you used to decorate got wiped away. I find that scraping makes a mess, pushing some cocoa butter into the cavities, from which it is very difficult to remove entirely. I now use paper towels to wipe away excess cocoa butter. I can fit a small piece of towel over my finger and avoid catching the c.b. I have also found that doing this while the c.b. is still a bit liquid makes it much easier.

A substantial number of eGullet members have asked for the Excel ganache spreadsheet developed by schneich (actually by an employee of his) and referred to at the beginning of this thread. I posted that I had the spreadsheet and would send it to anyone who PM'd me, and I have sent it to many. Now that I have a website, it seems sensible to post it there. Here is the link: http://www.jamesdutton.net/ganache.html

In Wybauw's Fine Chocolates 2 (which does contain a recipe for beer ganache), he writes (p. 49): "Unless mentioned otherwise, sorbitol is understood to be in powder form. If you wish to use liquid sorbitol, use 25% more than the indicated quantity. If sorbitol is mentioned in the recipe and is not available, you can leave it out without affecting the recipe. Shelf life will, however, be somewhat shortened." I bought powdered sorbitol from Chef Rubber; I'm sure it's available many other places. It is quite inexpensive.

I don't know which Wybauw book you are using. I have his Fine Chocolates 2, in which he states that sorbitol occurs in nature in fruits such as apples, pears, grapes, etc. He says that it is made commercially by the hydrogenation of glucose. As was previously pointed out by Kerry, sorbitol "prevents the premature drying out of the ganache" (Wybauw, p. 25). It is also well known for having "a powerful Aw-lowering effect" (that is, lowering the level of water activity in the ganache). Therefore, I think we would have to conclude that sorbitol is literally a preservative in that it helps preserve the ganache from spoiling. But then alcohol has the same water-activity-lowering effect, and I don't believe most would consider it necessary to mention alcohol as a preservative. I think that in general people think of preservatives as various chemicals added to food they buy in the grocery store that make the item last far longer than it ordinarily would. I am a little more concerned with sorbitol's undesirable effects on the human digestive system (see Wikipedia if you want to know the details), and although the tiny amount used in a ganache surely would not cause these effects, it is a little offputting (at least to me). I am reminded of the olestra-containing potato chips marketed back in the 1990s.

At the moment I'm not up to trying what you request, but I wanted to point out that Cook's Illustrated, after providing its own variation on the no-knead, cooked-in-a-pot bread (the variation being that the bread was formed in parchment, then the parchment + bread transferred to the hot pot), a few issues later had a note that experimentation revealed that preheating the pot did not make a difference. Having tried both, I'm not sure I agree, but the difference was minimal--and one feels much more secure not being inches away from a 450-degree pot. I must add that baking the loaf an hour and a half seems like a lot; the temp of my loaf reaches 200F. somewhere between 45 and 60 minutes.

I purchased stainless steel bars (I like the fact that they are heavy and stay in place), and at first I too was concerned about food safety. I scrubbed the bars and washed them thoroughly with soap and water. No dirt or metallic residue showed up. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, I just assumed they were probably as food safe as many other things we use in baking and cooking. Why would a cast-iron pan, for example, be safe for food? I may be naive about such matters, but wrapping the bars in plastic wrap or foil doesn't work, so it was either plunge ahead or give up the use of frames (the plastic fixed-size ones being much too expensive).

I did let the coconut stand overnight, and it appeared somewhat firm. When I started to cut it, however, I saw that it was still quite soft underneath the crust that had formed. I would love to see Greweling make this confection; the sample in his book is perfect. It does seem to me that getting the caramel just right is quite difficult.

I am responding to an older post (6 years!) as I know the forum doesn't like new threads started when there are old ones on the same topic. In any case I tried Greweling's cocomels today--without success. I cooked the caramel to the prescribed temp and also tested it, but it got too hard. I melted it down, added some cream, and got the temp more or less right as the caramel was firm but still pliable. The coconut mixture was sticky, but seemed OK. When I tried to cut the slab into bars, however, nothing went right. Oiling the knife (as recommended) did no good. The two layers got too distorted to look at all right. So I quickly decided to form a "patty" shape with the caramel (now with its chocolate foot) on the outside, the coconut on the inside. They looked OK (or so I thought). I dipped them in dark chocolate, and slowly but surely most of the patties developed pinholes through which droplets of either caramel or coconut were oozing. This got worse as I watched. The pieces were delicious (though quite sweet), but completely unpresentable. I quickly whipped up an alternate chocolate that includes both caramel and coconut, but molded so that I don't have to deal with shaping and dipping. What I am interested in getting some advice about is the fact that the pinholes developed. I am fairly certain the dipping chocolate was tempered properly. The interiors appeared to be covered completely. I know that coconut can interact with dark chocolate, but I understand that the reaction takes some time, whereas this happened immediately. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

I sometimes use Mycryo, and it works quite well. It does make me question (as I have written before) the great variation in the amount of seed recommended (all the way from Callebaut's 1% to others who specify as much as 1/3 of the total amount of chocolate used). Mycryo is very convenient if you need a specific amount of chocolate tempered, for example, for a slabbed ganache. When you use seed chocolate instead, you may need to take the extra step of weighing out the final amount of chocolate called for in the recipe. I find that Mycryo is sometimes difficult to dissolve completely as it is not supposed to be added until the chocolate is at a fairly low temp (in the case of dark, between 93 and 96 F.); an immersion blender is perfect for this task.

In the case of dark chocolate, warming helped earlier this week, but it's disturbing that I had just 6 molds to do and the thickening started after only a couple. In the case of white (the temperamental--to me--Opalys again), it can't be warmed as much, and it got close to the point of being just a blob with no room for ganache. I'm going to try keeping some chocolate out and warming it to melt all crystals, then cool to around 84-86 and add as the chocolate in the tempering machine gets low. This is an idea I have read a lot about on The Chocolate Life and from other sources as well. I have got to conquer this issue.

The amount of seed that is recommended varies hugely from one authority to another. Some say 1/3 of the total amount (which can be a lot), some say much less. As I am having overtempering problems as I use the chocolate, I am now leaning toward a fairly small amount of seed. Do you have any guidelines (for me and for the OP as well)? Like you, I always test before I start using. To the OP: I wouldn't recommend succumbing to the temptation of using candy melt/confectionary coating. The taste is hugely different.

Thanks for all the replies on washing down the caramel pot (or not). People certainly have many different approaches to making caramel. Tri2Cook, it sounds as if the cooking gods have been smiling down on you all these years. I can contribute one anecdote to your "cooking heresies that work" compilation: Once I got a few drops of water in melting chocolate, and it was fine. (Now I have put a curse on my future chocolatiering!) About caramel, I do find that if I want a lighter caramel (for example, one that won't overwhelm a delicate flavor such as apple), a wet approach is the only one that works for me.

I am interested in knowing whether people wash down the sides of the pot as the caramel cooks (regardless of whether it starts as wet or dry). I always do--just in case--but I have noticed that recipes in the books of major chocolate experts don't mention it. One time I didn't succeed, and the sugar hardened on the sides of the pot, and after I added the heated cream, it took so long to dissolve the sugar that the caramel got much too dark.

To the OP: If you have Andrew Shotts's Making Artisan Chocolates, he has a recipe that he calls "Red Rose," which calls for adding raspberry purée to dark chocolate, plus "2 to 4 drops culinary-grade rose petal oil or rose water." I've made it and it's delicious. I used rose water. Of course I was adding it to a chocolate ganache after the emulsion has been achieved. I don't what might happen if you added it to plain chocolate (it's possible, of course, as gfron1 wrote, to make a water ganache), but you might want to look for the oil to be safe. I did find that the rose water comes through even dark chocolate; it adds a mysterious taste that most people can't readily identify.

If I read correctly, the OP is talking about making the equivalent of Valrhona's Dulcey from scratch, not from white chocolate. Other posters have written about making caramelized white chocolate from already existing white chocolate. There are several recipes for the latter on the Web: There is this one from David Lebovitz, another from Joe Pastry (this recipe includes photos of the varying stages of caramelization), and yet another from Food52 (this recipe supposedly from Valrhona itself).

I should add to what I wrote previously that using Notter's method when you have two layers of ganache can make the layers uneven in height (because the foot takes up some of the space in the bottom layer). Therefore I bought bars 3/8" high for the bottom layer (still using 1/4" for the top layer), and the layers come out close to even. If you use Greweling's method, this is not an issue as the foot is added on top of the two layers.

I would be afraid of putting the guitar in the dishwasher. Aren't you concerned about breaking the wires, or am I too cautious? The thought of replacing a wire gives me nightmares.

I don't worry too much about the temp of the chocolate used for the foot. Recently I spread some dark chocolate, and the way it set up immediately with a nice gloss made me realize it was probably in temper. Sure enough, it cracked under nearly every piece--which is not always a tragedy since it will be covered when you dip, but it can cause an undesired lumpiness on the bottom. So now I do make sure the chocolate is well above the tempering temp. I wait until it dries and then spread the ganache, though I found the idea expressed by danield of spreading sooner intriguing. About the guitar: It is a bit faster than cutting with a knife, but the main advantage I have found is the perfect "squareness" of the pieces and their sharp edges, which I was never able to attain with a knife. They turn out much nicer after they are dipped than pieces cut by hand (at least by my hand). I must say, however, that breaking the wires frightens me (see Chocolot's comment above). A few days ago I made William Curley's coconut bars, which were rather sticky--and, more to the point, had toasted desiccated coconut that did not like the guitar wires. I got about halfway through the slab when I realized I was in trouble. Once I rescued the slab (a very messy story), I went back to my trusty knife--and spent a long time cleaning the wires. Lesson learned. If you are a professional, I think a guitar should be on your wish list. I am not a professional, so it was an extravagance for me. One additional reason I use Notter's spread-the-foot-first method: Putting a ganache down first means you have to trust that it will separate cleanly from the parchment/acetate beneath it. Some ganaches are quite sticky when they are first poured, so that has made me apprehensive and also made me glad there is a firm layer of chocolate beneath that ganache.