Jim D.

I was once again looking through the "Chocolates with that showroom finish" thread and came across some of your chocolates (page 19). If you have the time, could you let me know what molds you used for those? That would give me an idea of what I am looking for. Thanks.

I am in Staunton, Virginia (moved back to the family home after 50 years in Boston--so quite an adjustment). After renovating the house, I needed something to do, thus chocolate. Welcome Jim D.! Staunton seems like a wonderful area; I went to their Hot Glass Festival this year; great glassblowing studio and gallery. I was at that festival also, took some Boston visitors to it (one of them bought some beautiful and huge blown martini glasses). I hated this town when I was growing up; it has recently acquired cachet--there is even a chocolate shop here (is that the ultimate sign that a community has arrived?). Getting ingredients for cooking remains a challenge. Jim

I am in Staunton, Virginia (moved back to the family home after 50 years in Boston--so quite an adjustment). After renovating the house, I needed something to do, thus chocolate.

Thanks for that tip. I have enough trouble scraping molds clean, so I don't want to make the situation worse.

I have now looked through all the Tomric molds. The site doesn't say what kind of molds they are; I'm assuming polycarbonate. I am put off a bit by the statement (given for every mold I looked at) "call for availability 3-4 weeks"--so all their molds take that long to get? I am also assuming the last dimension given is the depth of the mold. The weight given really varies a lot, and in that case I am assuming "weight" is "capacity." Pastrygirl prefers molds with close to 15g capacity, but I didn't find a lot that were that large. Not to complain too much about these mold sites, but somebody should design a website that pictures each mold next to a recognizable object that will provide perspective on the mold's true size.

I guess I didn't notice that in using the word "form" J.B. Prince was providing the measurements of the individual cavity; It could, I think, be clearer--which dimension is which, for instance. I would find it more useful if vendors gave the volume of the individual cavities since that is what really matters.

I have just begun to make molded chocolates (and just joined this forum). The first batches turned out OK (not spectacular but OK). I have a few technique questions that I will post separately, but one of my concerns is very basic: the significant difference in size of the cavities in the molds I purchased. I got 6 polycarbonate molds from J.B. Prince. In the images online, all the resulting bonbons appear to be more or less the same size, but when the molds arrived, the cavities varied from a one-bite size to two (or more) bites. The small cavities are very difficult to work with and (in my opinion) don't hold enough filling (vs. chocolate shell). I notice that many people on this forum use molds with what appear to be larger cavities. Is there a site to purchase polycarb molds that provides dimensions or capacity of the cavities? This would seem to be a basic consideration since boxing chocolates with greatly varying sizes looks a bit odd. And the molds are too expensive for me to make any more mistakes. Any help would be appreciated.