Jim D.

I just looked at my Notter lime recipe and see a note to myself to reduce the amount of cream to 80g as the final product was too thin. Otherwise I follow his recipe (except that I am using ordinary limes, not key limes). Last time I added a touch of green cocoa butter, which made the ganache say "lime" a little more. When I was testing it the first time, I made a batch and let it sit out while friends were coming by to taste it. It was on the counter for days, with no ill effects on the ganache (or on the people). So I don't think his recipe is faulty. Your photo does look like a shell that is too thin (in spite of the Callebaut chocolate). Is there any way the chocolate was heated above its ideal working temperature? That's all I can think of.

Here is some info on "Aw" from Keylink.org: Usually, the most important determinant of shelf life is the amount of ‘free’ or ‘available’ water (AW) in the ganache. If there is too much water, it can lead to separation of the fats and provide an environment for mould growth. Water Activity (AW) is defined as the vapour pressure of water divided by that of pure water at the same temperature. In effect, it is a measure of the ‘free’ or ‘un-bonded’ water in a food product. The closer the AW is to 1, the more liable the product is to bacterial, fungal or mould growth. Typical AW values are 0.99 for raw meats, 0.95 for bread, 0.85 for cheese, 0.6 for dried fruit and 0.3 for biscuits. Solid chocolate has a very low AW and is therefore microbiologically stable. Bacteria usually require an AW of above 0.9 and most moulds require an AW of above 0.8. An AW of below 0.6 would prevent any microbiological spoilage at all and this is what is required if you want a 12 month shelf life at room temperature for your ganaches. To lower AW, you need either to remove water, or bind it using agents such as sugars, or lower the temperature of the product. One common way of reducing the AW of your chocolate centres is to add sugars. There are many sugars that can be added and glucose and sorbitol are the most common. Each sugar has different characteristics and differing levels of sweetness, so you may need to use a combination of sugars to achieve the best overall results. For instance, sorbitol is very good at binding the water and it is only half as sweet as normal sugar (sucrose), but too much can have a laxative effect! --------------- I have some questions about how you created that beautiful top on the lime praline. So first you color the texture sheet with light green. Then you said you "polish the flat parts clean." By that, do you mean you rub off the color that is on the raised design of the sheet? How do you do that without taking off the green on the "floor" of the sheet? Finally, you say you "airbrush the second color." Assuming this refers to the yellow color, how do you airbrush that without getting the color onto the green as well? Forgive me if I am missing something obvious. I have made that lime recipe and love it. I have had a filling (it wasn't the lime) bleed through the sides, but I was using Valrhona's Opalys, which is less viscous than many white chocolates. I have used the Callebaut that you mentioned, and it is very viscous, so I agree that it is unlikely the sides would have been too thin. I'm not sure what could have caused the issue.

If the goal is to get the dark caramel into molds, then I would heat it just a little, cool it off to the right temp for piping (Greweling says 77 F., Notter gives a higher temp)--you don't want to melt the chocolate in the molds. I should give a disclaimer: there are many more knowledgeable people on this forum on the subject of caramel, so please take what I say as just suggestions. Everything I know about caramel is from Greweling and Notter--oh, I should add, also from sad experience. Greweling says (contrary to what seems rational) to cook caramel at a very high temp, to melt the sugar as fast as possible. It's scary, but it does speed things up a great deal. The trick is to take it off the heat a little before it's the color you want--easier said than done. I don't know why you got a thicker texture the second tme; it should end up the same regardless of how you cooked it. I would check Greweling's chart of what can go wrong with caramel. The final texture is governed by the temp to which you cook it once the cream has been added. I have had good luck with Notter's suggestion of 230 F.--it pipes easily into molds, firms up some, but stays soft enough to know you are eating caramel. William Curley (in Couture Chocolate) says to take the caramel off the heat as soon as you add the cream (in his delicious orange and balsamic caramel), but I found that resulted in a caramel that never firmed up and had to be cooked longer. By the way, note the photo accompanying the Greweling recipe you are using--the caramel is quite soft and flowing.

About the dark caramel: Recently I made a caramel that turned out darker than I had planned (the color change is very fast). I went ahead and put it in molds with a Valrhona really dark chocolate. I renamed these "burnt caramel" chocolates, and they were a big hit. If you really want them lighter, you can heat the caramel and add some warm cream. I have taken a caramel that was too fluid and recooked it, and it was fine. As there is no chocolate in Greweling's recipe, you don't have to worry about what would otherwise be a complicating factor. But before you "lighten them up," I would ask some people to try them. Burnt caramel is very popular. You could try it as a sauce over an apple dessert. There is a place in Cambridge, Mass., that makes a fantastic burnt caramel ice cream that is one of their biggest sellers.

I too am finally taking the airbrush plunge and plan to start out with the Badger 250. I'm finding confusing information on what comes with it. So a few questions: Do I need to purchase an adapter for use with a compressor? Is there a standard adapter I should look for? One place said the Badger came with an adapter, but it seemed to be referring to canned air. The jars with the basic model hold 3/4 oz., whereas the 250-4 jars hold 4 oz. I would be using one color to paint a couple of molds at a time. In practical terms, how far does 3/4 oz. of cocoa butter go? I'm assuming I should buy extra jars for the sake of convenience. As for a compressor, some posters have recommended the Badger 180-10 with a regulator, but that model has been replaced by the 180-15, and I can't find whether the psi can be regulated or not. I am also looking at the Iwata compressors; their "Studio Series" models say they come with all adapters, hoses, etc. It's all very confusing. Any recommendations? I won't be using the compressor all that often, but I don't want some noisy machine that will die on me after a short while. I notice that compressors have somewhat ominous ratings for use in their descriptions (such as "for occasional use" or "for use several times a month"). Doesn't inspire a lot of confidence. And someday I might want to upgrade the airbrush, so I wouldn't want a piece of junk for a compressor. And finally, a very practical, mundane question: As long as I am buying a compressor, I may as well get something that also inflates auto tires. Should I assume these machine will do that? Another adapter needed, I suppose. Any guidance in this process would be most appreciated.

Pastrygirl's suggestion, "Maybe you could create a special holiday collection with gianduja, butter ganache, caramels, and maybe some fondant or liqueur fillings" sounds like an excellent idea.

If you follow that link to the previous thread, on page 2 there is a photo from David J on how he freezes chocolates--individual chocolates in the vacuum bag. The only time I did it with finished chocolates, I left them in their gift boxes, put the boxes inside a plastic bag, sealed and vacuumed it. Once I removed the piece that collapsed from the vacuum, the people to whom I gave the chocolates loved them and, even after I told them they had been frozen, they could detect no difference. I doubt that Sees is going to reveal how they get that shelf life. Frankly I have not been impressed with their product. Perhaps their fillings don't contain really perishable ingredients. I doubt, for example, that they include raspberry purée in their chocolates; the water in it can cause problems (Wybauw includes the water content in his recipes). Like you, I make a coconut truffle. I use toasted coconut as a decoration, so since it's already dried out, further drying doesn't show. A 60-day shelf life is quite a goal. How will you know if they are still any good? You can't test one piece and just assume its neighbors are OK. Can you perhaps make chocolates more often and so solve the whole issue? I don't know if you are a hobbyist (as I am) or in business, but if it is the latter, you have liabilities to think about. You don't want to give "Death by Chocolate" a whole new meaning!

I'm no expert, but I'm thinking vacuum sealing and freezing is your only way to go. For what it's worth, I once received a box of Godiva chocolates that were falling apart, had bloom, tasted stale, had to be thrown out, so whatever they use, it doesn't always work. I just took a look online, and See's candy has this answer to the question How long will boxed chocolates last? "In other brands you'll find many boxed chocolates with "Best By" dates or "Expiration Dates" up to and exceeding one year from the date of production. These products typically have preservatives added, but will not retain their best flavor over that period. Most See's candies are expected to be sold and consumed within 60-120 days of production, when the candy is at its most robust flavor level. Candy not sold within our shelf-life guidelines is pulled from the shelves and not sold to customers. See's adds no preservatives to its products, assuring our customers the freshest products with the best flavor and ingredients in all our candy." How they get their product to last 120 days without preservatives, I don't understand. I looked (randomly) at a smaller chocolatier (Nicky Grant), and they refuse even to use invert sugar, glucose syrup, or Sorbitol in their product. As a result, their chocolates have a stated two-week shelf life. On their website, they say about the long-lasting products: "If you come across a box of chocolates that has a shelf life of 6 months then the flavour of the filling is likely to as far removed from itself as possible. There is a also a high chance that methods have been used with these chocolates to prevent migration of the filling outwards and into the chocolate coating usually by coating the inside of the outer chocolate shell with a sugar based product." I located the previous eGullet thread on storing and freezing chocolates. The first part of the posts are about storing blocks of chocolate, but later on, writers deal with individual pieces. It's very helpful. If you want info on vacuum sealers, there are also threads about that, and I am happy to report on how I reached a decision on the one I bought.

Gary, Where are you getting your recipes? If you are using Greweling, Notter, or Wybauw, they have sections on shelf life (Wybauw has a whole book on it). They don't use what we think of as preservatives, but there are ingredients such as invert sugar and alcohol that increase shelf life. As you probably already know, there are proportions in a ganache that take into account this factor. I have kept filled chocolates for about a month without any issues. I also purchased a vacuum sealing machine (Weston brand), which I use to freeze ganaches that I plan to use later. On occasion I have used it to freeze boxes of chocolates, which emerged many weeks later none the worse for wear that I could tell (the only incident was that one piece "imploded" from too great a vacuum, but I ate it myself and it tasted fine). There is a thread somewhere on this forum that deals with the procedures involved in freezing chocolates, even a picture with them individually vacuumed and frozen. Quite a few professionals have mentioned that they have no choice but to freeze for the big days in the year. And in another thread someone mentions that ganache can indeed mold. I enclose a little guide with the boxes I fill suggesting the chocolates be stored between 60 and 70 F. and be consumed within a couple of weeks; for storage for a longer time or at a higher temperature, I recommend refrigeration (I know it's not ideal, but it's better than having them mold). I use sheet pans with plastic covers (from Costco) for storage. It is recommended that chocolates be covered--though sometimes I think this is to make the chocolatier feel better, since nothing can really be airtight. But there is the sanitation issue, with insects, dust, etc..

Yes, I understand about the crystals that must be there. Today I used your technique (which is what I had been using before I decided to be more strict about tempering and testing the temper), and I don't know for sure how it will turn out, but the decorations are looking better. The red that did not look good yesterday turned out to be as bad as I thought. Even freezing would not make the stuff come out. Fortunately I did as I said and tried just one cavity, so I didn't lose a whole mold. Much hot water and "elbow grease" and soap later, the mold looks clean. So tomorrow I try again. As I cleaned out the red cocoa butter, I said to myself, "I'm thinking stamp collecting would have made a less stressful hobby in retirement."

I know your feeling. I just got an order from them after 3 1/2 weeks--and thought I was doing well. Unfortunately one of the molds was out of stock, so it's another 3-4 week wait. I have never seen their place, but I do wish they could find room to keep more of the Chocolate World molds in stock.

Thanks for that tip. Your assessment of the amount of swearing the washing process causes is quite accurate. I have found that with a few minutes in the freezer some stubborn chocolates will unmold, with no damage to the pieces that I can see.

Thanks for your reply. Have you ever had chocolates stick when there is cocoa butter in the mold? Are you saying you don't make a point of tempering the cocoa butter or that the procedure you follow does temper it? I know some experts say not to bother with tempering it; more (according to what I have seen on this and other forums) say it should be tempered. I'm just trying everything I can to avoid having more ruined pieces. With the mold I was working on today, the stuff in the molds does not look promising. So I am going to fill one cavity with chocolate and try to unmold it. If it doesn't work, I'll know to wash out the mold and start again rather than waste more chocolate and ganache and lose time.

I am posting under this old topic because I have a related question: I am trying to be "good" and really temper colored cocoa butter before using it in molds (having had some problems with unmolding and attempting to eliminate any issues I can). As seed, I have used both unmelted chunks of the cocoa butter from a previous tempering job and also used Cacao Barry's Mycryo (which is pure cocoa butter). As Kerry suggested earlier, I am using temperatures for dark chocolate. The problem is that the usual test for deciding if the cocoa butter/chocolate is tempered is not working--that is, a dab on a piece of parchment or waxed paper does not set up within a reasonable amount of time. Waiting a long time means the cocoa butter gets too cool and needs a bit of warming. Sometimes I just go ahead and use the cocoa butter. I previously used the method of mostly melting the cocoa butter, then removing it from the heat and stirring in the unmelted pieces in the same container as a kind of quick-tempering process. Usually I didn't bother to test. Any suggestions as to what I might be doing wrong that the test does not work?

Gary, In his The Art of the Chocolatier Ewald Notter has a recipe for spearmint pralines. He calls for infusing spearmint leaves in the cream and also adding white crème de menthe. According to Wikipedia, the liqueur is made from "dried peppermint or Corsican mint leaves," so I guess this ends up being a combination of spearmint and peppermint flavor.

So you didn't find that the dark chocolate overwhelmed the pumpkin flavor? That was my motive for switching to white.

Jenjcook, Today my original plan was to make Greweling's pumpkin caramel, but I was intrigued by the alternate pumpkin recipe you found. I looked at the original on the Food Network site and found quite a few reviews. A large number of them said the ganache was much too thin to use--it had the texture of pudding and never set up. There were too many such comments to ignore, so I looked at the proportions, and the recipe does call for a lot of liquid vs. chocolate. Did you make it as described, and did it pipe OK into shells? I didn't have enough ingredients to take too many risks, so I used Greweling's recipe but made changes to try to get the pumpkin flavor more prominent. I omitted the caramel (which tends to overwhelm the pumpkin), used brown sugar (like the Food Network recipe), and used white instead of dark chocolate (and substituted cocoa butter for some of the chocolate). I must say it turned out very well--good pumpkin flavor, not overwhelmed by chocolate, good consistency. The pumpkin pie spices are, I think, the key, and I did not hold back, also added some vanilla paste. I am not sure I am thrilled with the Food Network use of Grand Marnier. It's OK, but I don't think of orange when I think of a pumpkin pie. Next time I think I will use rum or the brandy Greweling calls for. Now I have to decide whether to pipe into white, milk (Greweling), or dark (Food Network). I'm leaning toward milk or white. I do have a concern about shelf life as I removed a lot of sugar when I substituted a little brown sugar for caramel. I would use some invert sugar if I understood enough of how its properties compare to those of sucrose.

I typed too fast when I was giving the preparation of the raspberry/strawberry filling and didn't get it exactly right. Let me try to clear it up. First, Kerry's original recipe which she kindly provided for me when I was looking for cream-type centers for chocolates: Raspberry Centers Source: me (250 servings) 333 grams raspberry puree300 grams 118 degree fondant½ teaspoon citric acid300 grams white chocolate30 grams butter1 ½ tablespoons kirsch1 tablespoon raspberry compound9 drops raspberry flavour (optional)1.Mix fondant with butter in food processor until smooth. Add melted white chocolate through feed tube, then add puree and flavouring compounds. 2.For molding, make sure that white chocolate is rather thick. Just cool long enough to set, don't let sit in fridge for any length of time or they will crack. ============ Following Greweling's ganache formula, there are 333 grams (the purée) + however many grams the kirsch and compound are, and 300 grams of chocolate. I understand that the sweetener (the fondant) and butter are not counted as liquefiers in the formula. So it is approximately 1 part liquefier to 1 part chocolate. I found that the ganache did not set up firm enough for my purposes, and I wanted to see if I could get a little more berry flavor. I recognized that the rule of proportions in a ganache make it tricky to increase the fruit purée and/or decrease the chocolate. In my experimentation I came up with 130 g. purée and 300 g. chocolate + 75 g. cocoa butter. That is a ratio of 1 part liquefier to somewhere between 2 and 2.5 parts chocolate. I had some trouble getting the food processor method of Kerry's to work for me, so I tried out Greweling's method for slabbed ganache (temper the chocolate, heat the liquefiers and add them to the chocolate). In actuality (contrary to what I wrote earlier) I added the butter at the end (as is usually done in ganaches). I made an error (not sure where I got the idea) that the liquefier and tempered chocolate had to be at the same temperature; instead Greweling says the liquefier should be at 105 F. I'm not sure if that makes such a difference, but I will definitely do it differently next time. Alleguede, I am not sure what you mean by "Never let your ganache process under 35 degrees or you will always have issues." Can you tell you why this would be the case?

I'm adding this question to a discussion I previously started about ganaches going wrong. Again it is an issue with white chocolate: Yesterday I made my version of Kerry Beal's strawberry/raspberry cream filling. I have had great success with it before. Kerry calls for putting fondant and butter in a food processor, then adding white chocolate, followed by flavorings (purée mostly). I substitute cocoa butter for some of the white chocolate called for to get a firmer product and to reduce the impact of taste of the the chocolate vs. the taste of the fruit. I temper the chocolate just to be surer of getting a firmer final product. So I had the chocolate at 84 F. and had the fondant and butter mixture at 84 F. When I mixed them, instead of getting a nice emulsion, I got separation (with a yellowish fluid and a whitish mass). I finally made it work by starting with a little heated cream and beating the mess into it little by little. But I am wondering what happened. Possibilities: I melted and tempered the cocoa butter together with the white chocolate. I have done this lots of times with no incident, but the yellowish fluid looked just like cocoa butter, so I am suspicious. Another possibility: The fondant-butter mixture was too thick to pour slowly into the chocolate, so it went in all at once. Is it possible this happened too quickly for the emulsion to form? Third possibility: I had a watery-looking raspberry purée, so boiled it until it was reduced into a quite thick mixture. Is it possible it was too thick so that I had too little liquid in my ganache? I don't think it's #3, but I could be wrong. Any insights would be appreciated.

Jenjcook, Thanks for all that information. Great ideas.

Jenjcook, So you have been doing this for only a few months. Now I am really impressed, not to mention a little embarrassed at my slow progress. Thanks for that list of your ganaches. I have seen some of them (or similar recipes) in books like Greweling's (the hazelnut honey, the pumpkin spice, and the eggnog), but many of them are quite unusual. How did you find the recipes, or did you invent some of them yourself? I have, for example, never heard of a cream cheese ganache. Thanks also for describing how you did the stripe. Very clever. I'll look online for that adhesive. There must be something similar about the callings of the doctor and the chocolatier. You're the second "chocolate doctor" on the forum. Will you be able to leave all this behind when your sabbatical ends?

Kerry, What I am about to say about your unmolding experience is NOT in any way an example of Schadenfreude because I am totally in sympathy with your pain. I just didn't think that sort of thing happened to someone with as much experience as you have had! I am convinced chocolate has a mind of its own, and the devil plays a role in there somewhere. Some chocolates will come out of a mold perfectly, the rest in that same mold are a mess. Some fall out so easily it's scary, others take pounding on the counter, chilling, freezing, etc. I haven't yet left mine in the car overnight, but may try that next. A few weeks ago I was trying Chef Rubber's glittery cocoa butters for the first time, went to all the trouble of actually tempering them (not just shaking in the bottle). Some pieces fell right out looking beautiful, others in the same mold left much of the color behind. I was so mad I tried it again, just with some leftover ganache I didn't care about. I threw it all together, didn't take pains with the temperature of the cocoa butter, even noticed I had not gotten every bit of the old color out of the mold. This time every single piece fell out of the mold in perfect condition. I gave them away to some men working in the yard, and they thought they had died and gone to heaven. Mostly I was angry.

Jenjcook, Very impressive display. And it was only about a month ago that you were learning how to make your own colored cocoa butter. Obviously you have been making chocolates longer than that. I would be interested in knowing what all the fillings are. If you don't mind telling, what is in the red velvet? And I would love to know how you made the shell with the single stripe--that is fantastic. There was a discussion of this decoration in an earlier thread, which I cannot locate right now, but I think the piece was made by Norman Love. If I recall correctly, nobody on the forum was able to duplicate that look.

With vacuum sealing, there is no moisture, no air, so product should remain as near to what it originally was as is humanly possible. I first used an inexpensive hand vacuum pump (from Ziploc, I think). Then I got more serious about it and bought a Weston vacuum sealer. Besides chocolate and ganache, I use it for meats and other foods. As I said before, I used it for storing chocolate in a wine refrigerator. It turned out that the fridge had a plastic sort of odor that I could not get rid of, and it was getting absorbed by the chocolate stored only in a Ziploc (or similar) bag. Once I started vacuum sealing the chocolate, however, the odor never got into the chocolate again.

The vacuum-sealing works. On a very humid day in the middle of the summer, when I removed some vacuum-sealed chocolate from my wine fridge, condensation formed immediately, but it was on the outside of the plastic bag in which the chocolate was being kept. I let it come to room temp, carefully wiped off the moisture, and the chocolate was fine. I'll be interested in the results of your experiment to see if skipping the fridge step makes a difference.