Jim D.

I was thinking of using white chocolate. Today I tried a Greweling recipe for pear ganache (had a container of pear purée and a bottle of pear eau-de-vie); the chocolate was milk. There was absolutely no hint of a pear flavor in the final product. I will give it a try with white choc.--I didn't buy the purée and the brandy to have them disappear. How do you think this would work with fondant?

I am fairly new to chocolate work and have been spending a lot of time looking at possible fillings. I have Greweling's Chocolates and Confections, Shotts's Making Artisan Chocolates, and Notter's The Art of the Chocolatier, have made a list of all the fillings that seem interesting, and have now experimented with some of them. Obviously ganache is the standard type of filling, and some of the options have been delicious (Greweling's pumpkin caramel is the winner so far). But I am feeling some limitations of the medium--the chocolate, especially if it is milk or dark, tends to overwhelm the flavoring. Notter's "Tropical" praline, for example, has banana, passion fruit, mango, lime and lemon juice, but the combination of milk and dark chocolate (in my opinion) nearly overwhelms all those tropical flavors. Tasters didn't know there was banana until I told them. I found a banana/caramel recipe from the Callebaut site (from a link from this forum) that uses white chocolate, and that works better to let the flavors through (I added a few drops of lemon juice to counteract some of the sweetness). So, as far as I can tell, there are two "vehicles" for praline flavor--ganache and fondant--and the authors I have consulted so far don't give a lot of space to fondant. I made it once years ago, and my memory is that it is very, very sweet. So does it make a good filling for chocolates? Can practically any flavor be added? My impression of regular (non-gourmet) chocolates that people buy in boxes (such as Godiva) is that they use a lot of fondant; they are often a color other than chocolate and I can't think of any other way that type of filling is made. I'm not entirely sure what my question is, except to ask whether I am correct in assuming that the choices for fillings are ganache and fondant (maybe caramel is a third?). Do many people on this forum use fondant for this purpose?

Thanks very much for that information. You do appear to know just about everything--at least in the realm of chocolate! I do plan to get both a regular dome and a flattened one. It appears that the simpler molds are much better for decorating than the otherwise more interesting ones. Jim

Thanks for that info. The problem is that when I contacted Tomric today with a rather long list of the molds in which I am interested, they did not have a single one of them in stock. Unfortunately I need these for Christmas, so their 3-4 week delivery time won't work. Among other molds, I am looking for a simple dome, and it's surprising how difficult it is to find. Prince doesn't carry one at all (just a flattened dome). I found one at Chef Rubber, but they don't say if their molds are polycarbonate or not, so I have inquired about that. Jim

I was concerned about how to tell the difference in the types of molds carried by Tomric, but I just learned from Lois in their office that all the ones with an "I" in the item number are imported polycarbonate ones. So they have a huge selection. The 3-4 week availability applies to the molds they don't happen to have in stock, so they really shouldn't say all the molds take that long to arrive. But it is a big advantage that they provide the volume/weight of the individual cavity, something that J.B. Prince does not. Thank you for your help in this process. Jim

Kerry, In trying to determine the size of molds I want, I was browsing through the "Chocolates with that showroom finish" thread and came across some of your chocolates (page 14). 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 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.