tammylc

This is what Grewling calls a butter ganache. For flavoring, a lot of his recipes have you mix jam into the butter before adding the chocolate. Or honey or another liquid sweetener, and then fruit puree.

They do smoke their own. I drive past every day while going to work, and the smell most mornings is utterly divine. Their motto is "really good American food" and they've got regional specialties from all over the country on the menu, including a cheese list with all kinds of great American cheeses. They pay a lot of attention to quality of ingredients and it shows. While a southerner would probably find some chinks in the armor of authenticity for some of the food items, on the whole they do that region of the country justice, i think. You can even order a shot of pot liquor! (I think it's a 50 cent side item or something like that...) I'd say it meets your criteria of a really good restaurant that's priced somewhat high. And they do have excellent but not formal. Customer satisfaction is extremely high on their agenda. Nearly every meal includes a little taste of something from the kitchen - a sampler of pimento cheese (mmm) with dinner or donut holes at brunch. They have a full bar, lots of food and beer choices, and an excellent and extensive list of classic cocktails made with real fruit juices, etc.

i asked this very question upthread, and the general consensus was that a gram for gram substitution was fine. You could probably use a little less, really, because light corn syrup contains water, which would just boil off in the process of getting your sugar syrup to temperature.

Chris, that's what I thought too. I made the Lemon Logs and they used white chocolate, butter, fondant, and lemon juice/zest.I was curious if butter ganache and butter cream were actually the same thing, and it sounds like they are. I prefer the term butter ganache though, because butter cream makes me think of cheap boxed chocolates. The lemon logs that I made had much better texture and flavor than what I typically think of as butter cream…I guess that’s what fresh, quality ingredients will do for you. ← Not all of Grewling's butter ganaches use fondant. Some use jam, others honey, etc. The raspberry butter ganache i make doesn't have any extra sweetener at all.

The nuts were still nice and crunchy last night, so the experiment seems to have been successful. I'll be using them for an event on the weekend, so we'll see how they stand up after a few days.

The new gourmet grocery here has an entire See's candy counter. After hearing quite a lot about See's here and there on eGullet, I figured I should find out what all the fuss was about. So far I've tried three flavors (there's always a sample tray out), and all of the were described as buttercreams (Bordeaux, pineapple, and lemon, for anyone who's curious). While much sweeter than anything I put in my chocolates, they were quite tasty, and now I'm wondering just what the heck a buttercream filling is in the context of chocolate? I have some (limited) familiarity with buttercream frosting for a cake, but this seems different. Thanks!

I got the idea of coating with cocoa butter from David J, who reports that it's what Wybauw recommends doing with pop rocks before putting them into ganache. I'll be cutting and dipping my bars tonight. Last time, they'd started going soggy by 24 hours, so I should be able to tell by then if it made any difference at all, and i'll report back.

Love the pictorial as always, Chris! Thanks. Here's my theory on the frame size... Grewling calls for 12 inch long bars, right? So he's not actually making a 12x12 square out of them, because he's having to overlap the corners by whatever the width of the bar is. Say a half inch. So you're really looking at something like an 11.5 or 11 inch square. Which would explain why a half batch doesn't fit an 8x9 inch frame.

Thanks, Kerry. That's basically what I did - tossed them well while warm, then spread out on a silpat to cool. Now we'll see if it makes a difference. What can you tell me about gum arabic coating?

In one of the candy bars I'm working on, I found that my nice crunchy toasted almonds got soft by the next day, presumably from moisture migration. I want to try coating them in cocoa butter to help prevent that. Has anyone done this? Should I do it when the nuts are warm, or after they've cooled to room temperature? Any tips regarding ratio of cocoa butter to nuts, or mixing technique? Thanks!

The problem with the Roadhouse is that it's priced like a special occasion restaurant, but has the ambience and food and niche of being neighborhood restaurant. The food quality and preparation is top notch, though - I have no doubt that their $26-$30 specials are going to be great, but if I'm paying that much for dinner, I'm going somewhere else. The burgers and sandwiches are pretty reasonable, as is the daily blue plate special. So we manage to treat it as our neighborhood restaurant by choosing carefully and just ignoring huge swaths of the menu.

Vanessa, is this a new festival, or a regular thing? Because if it's a recurring thing, you could ask the organizers about sales volumes - they might know, or be able to refer you to one of the other chocolatiers to get some ideas.

I made another batch of my coffee nougat yesterday, and this time whipped it for a lot less time. The texture is much more nougaty now, but it's also exhibiting a lot of flow. Between the time i cut the pieces and dipped them, they got about 1/4 bigger, which means they expanded past their pre-bottoming and thus i'm having leakage problems on the bottoms. And then there was the bending. I'm trying to do a 4-inch long bar. That was no problem with my airier, stiffer nougat. But with the weight of the caramel layer and the chocolate, these were bending so much they were impossible to dip (i was using just a single fork, maybe i need to try the double method that David J mentioned). I ended up just cutting the bars in half and dipping them as two two-inch pieces. (Sugargirl - is that why you do your orange one as a two piece bar?) So, i'm wondering if there's a happy middle ground, where i can whip a little longer and get something more dippable. That will be my next experiment. i'm also considering putting the caramel on the bottom rather than the top, since i think the weight of the caramel on top was part of the problem. Thoughts?

Do you remember your formula, Pringle007? I made some over the weekend with reduced strawberry puree, strawberry powder, and some natural strawberry flavor i found. Still nowhere near the intensity i'm looking for. At this point I think I'm going to try rose with the pomegranate instead, and work on the strawberry later. I need to get my flavors finalized soon.

I do try keep things "natural" and avoid things like compounds. And my volume isn't such to make Amoretti sizes cost effective for me. I was just thinking about syrup myself, and will probably look and see what's available to me. I'd definitely consider using jams/jellies - can you talk to me about how you've worked with the ones that have chunks of fruit? Do you mix it up in a food processor first to distribute it better? Grewling has a ton of recipes that use jam (mostly butter ganaches) so I'd have a good starting point for a recipe. I'm going to try the strawberry powder idea too. Thanks!

Ronnie, can you please add a +1 probable (on the wait list) to me for Thursday's dinner?

Strawberries are tricky. My husband - an avowed strawberry lover - always laments the ease of finding raspberry flavored chocolate. In my one venture into strawberry before I did a strawberry pate-de-fruit paired with a balsamic ganache, and that worked well. But this time I'm looking to make a white chocolate + strawberry + rose combo for a truffle center. I did a test batch last night using strawberry puree, and there's a hint of strawberry flavor, but not a lot. I did not, however, concentrate my puree a la Grewling, so I expect that will help some. Any other hints for imparting strong strawberry flavor? With raspberry you've got Chambord, orange you've got Grand Marnier, but there aren't any strawberry liqueurs like those, at least that I know of. There's eau de vie, but it's pricey and only available in large bottles. Eagerly looking for tips!

Whee! I'm totally jumping up and down with excitement right now. A few weeks ago I went to a vendor showcase and ended up talking to the chef and general manager of a destination restaurant here in Michigan. They really liked what they were tasting and seeing, and we exchanged some emails. They asked me for some pricing on chocolates for an upcoming wine dinner, and today we sealed the deal and I got the order for 7 dozen chocolates. The restaurant is Evans Street Station, and it's exactly the sort of restaurant I would most want to have my chocolates being served at. As it happens, I already had a reservation there for this weekend even before I got the email from them about the dinner, so I'll be hand delivering the chocolates on Friday when I go there to eat. It's a really exciting next step for me!

Between this and Kerry's response in the Confectionary 101 thread, I think I've definitely been overbeating. I've been treating it more like marshmallow and letting it get good and aerated. Clearly more experimentation is in order.

i'm not using the peanut butter for mine, but adding 2 tsp of espresso powder into the egg whites before whipping.

I've made this twice now. On the first day it's very chewy. By the second day the texture gets short and airy. Which is interesting, but it seems like it stops being nougat-y - I'm thinking I'd like something that stayed a little chewier. Am I possibly overbeating? Anyone have a recipe for something that's more like a Milky Way consistency?

You could always bring along books (like Grewling) that indicate that letting things set at room temperature is standard of practice for chocolate making. Unless they tell you in advance that you should plan for production, I would get around the issue completely by having no production supplies there. Or at least none of the perishables, like cream. You're just getting the space certified for your use.

Do you know for sure they're going to want to see you prepare a recipe? I was not required to do that for my health department inspection. It was just about ensuring that the equipment was at the proper temperature, and that my food was stored correctly, things like that. We talked about my recipes and discussed water activity and shelf life, but I didn't have to demonstrate.

I use a 3kg melter and fill my molds completely. I wrap the body of the melter in plastic wrap for easy cleanup. When I'm draining my molds, I hold them at a 45 degree angle over the bowl and scrape and tap, then put them on a rack to finish draining. With a little bit of practice, I've learned to do this without much mess - you might try giving that a try! That said, I borrowed David J's 6kg melter for my Easter production, and it was great to not have to worry about it! (Although my body memory was so ingrained, I found myself using my usual technique half the time anyway.)

Those look gorgeous! Nice work!