Jim D.

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.

Frankly I don't think taking the ganache from freezer directly to heat will make a difference, but since I do have the time to plan in advance, I'm not willing to experiment and risk a problem. I was just following the analogy of what people advise when moving frozen (finished) chocolates from freezer to eating. About butter ganaches: I get the feeling (not more than that) that the emulsion is more fragile. As I wrote earlier, I did freeze and reheat Greweling's eggnog ganache. It became more liquid than I remembered, but in the end did firm up fine. But I thought there must be a reason when recipe writers say butter should be very soft (not melted) when it is added to ganache. The sight of a separated ganache is not pretty.

Thanks for those insights. I was wondering if there were not more thoughts on this issue, which those in business must at least think about quite often. From your use of "we" I am guessing you are in business. I followed the same plan--moving the ganache from the freezer to the fridge then to room temp. In heating it, mostly I didn't take it much above temps in the 80s F. I even had some leftover raspberry pate de fruit and some dulce de leche both of which reheated without any discernible issues. I think I will not freeze butter ganaches in the future as it is difficult to tell what is going to happen to butter once it melts. What are your thoughts on freezing bulk chocolate? I don't have an adequate storage space in the warm weather. Last year I bought a little wine fridge with a charcoal bag to absorb moisture, but I wasn't happy with that arrangement as there was definitely moisture collecting on the plastic in which the chocolate was wrapped. I didn't have any issues with the chocolate itself, but I am thinking of vacuum-packing it and freezing it next summer.

Stephanie, I hope that if you end up purchasing this guitar, you will post your reaction to it here. I for one would be very interested in knowing how you like it.

I'm leaving in the molds until I am ready to fill them. I think they would be too fragile to remove, and then you would have to deal with how to fill and cap them. I completely understand your mold supply issue; I experience the same thing.

I have forgotten who on this forum said it, but that person said he or she makes shells weeks in advance with no adverse effect. I keep them for perhaps two weeks at the most. I have never detected any difference. I'm glad to hear that freezing ganache works for you. From the beginning of my chocolate making, I could not bring myself to throw out (or eat) a delicious bit of ganache, so I froze the remnants. They have come in handy many times when I had a last-minute invitation to a dinner and was able to bring along some delicious sweets.

I have made 12 different ganaches for each of the last two charity events for which I have provided chocolates, and to make handling this work possible (I am doing this alone), I made the ganaches several weeks in advance, then vacuum-packed and froze them. A couple of weeks before the event, I make the shells; then the final week I thaw the ganaches, heat them enough to melt the chocolate, and pipe them into the shells. This system works well, and--for the most part--I detect no difference in the state of the fillings. I don't make fillings such as caramel in advance as I am not sure how they would fare under melting, and I decided against trying the system with butter ganaches. But I forgot that last decision recently and made Greweling's eggnog butter ganache in advance, and when I melted it, it got a little thinner than I remember it being when it was first made. Although it did eventually firm up just fine, I think I detected a little graininess to the texture. This has led me to question my early-ganache system, and so I am posting this issue to see if others have opinions on whether freezing ganaches in advance is a bad practice. I should add that I know making the ganache just before it is used would be preferable, but I can't think of a schedule that would allow me to get all the fillings done. The advantage of my system is that I can take my time making the ganaches and don't have to do all that measuring of tiny amounts of glucose, orange peel, peppermint oil, pectin, etc., in the face of a deadline. Having the time also means I can see whether the ganache is going to firm up sufficiently, and as there is always the possibility of failure with a ganache, I would have time to make it again. And a final consideration is shelf life: If I make the ganaches just before using them, it stretches the whole process out so much that I would be concerned with the chocolates made the first week. I know someone will say "just don't make so many different fillings." But that was not an option in these cases. I would appreciate any thoughts on this timing issue and related considerations. Jim

Minas, Your work is beautiful. Do I recall correctly that you are fairly new to experimenting with sweets? I am impressed. I have a question that is not directly related to the confections themselves: Your photography is extraordinary. I just got a so-called macro lens for my Nikon digital camera to take closeups of chocolates for creating a guide that I include with each box, but I do not get the clear results that you do. Most of mine are either not close enough or turn out blurry in spite of the camera's autofocus. Do you mind telling a little about how you take the photos and what lens you use? Jim