tammylc

Vanessa, your chocolates are absolutely spectacular, as usual. I use those little purse boxes for Bayley's too - they are so cute!

Thanks for all the great suggestions on the Frangelico ones, which I'll totally keep in mind for the future. This was a one-time special order that's done now.

Thanks for the idea, Mark - I do want to play around with Gianduja - I love that stuff! In this case, I was aiming for some texture, but I'll definitely keep it in mind for future.

Here's my artsy "chocolates in sunshine" photo attempt. I had an order for 5 dozen chocolates for a 80th birthday party for an Italian man. His daughter asked me to create some chocolates based on Italian liqueurs. I ended up using Amaretto (purple), Frangelico (gold flecks) and Sambuca (yellow/red/orange). Production worked out really well, because I was able to piggyback a few other orders on that day. The biggest of which included 8 boxes of 4, which meant I needed a fourth flavor. In keeping with the liqueur theme, I made one of my favorite pieces, flavored with Patron XO Cafe, a coffee-infused tequila. That's the gold brushed Mayan embossed piece. I thought the Amaretto and Sambuca worked out really well, but I was a little disappointed with the Frangelico ones. I wanted to mix the textures up a bit, so I put some ground hazelnuts in, and while they're tasty, you can't really taste the Frangelico. You can feel the alcoholic heat on the finish, so I don't thing more is the answer. Our current working theory is that subtle flavors of the Frangelico are being hidden by the more overt flavors of the toasted hazelnuts. Live and learn!

Just thought I should report back. Things went really well with the pumas yesterday. Even thought it was 90 degrees here in MI! I just put all the chocolates in a cooler with ice packs and that was fine. Things were very busy for the first hour, with lots of people coming up to sample and chat and buy boxes, but then a huge rainstorm came through and that slowed down the arrival of new people, and made the overall attendance smaller than it might have been otherwise. The 250 puma bars lasted for about the first hour, and I saw lots of kids with chocolate smeared faces, although most of the adults seemed to holding on to theirs for later. The fresh mint was the big hit - "It tastes just like it came out of my garden!" - with multiple people dragging friends over to sample. The cardamom also got a lot of interest and appreciative "oooh" faces. From a sales perspective, I had about the best possible outcome, which is that I had exactly enough chocolates. Some of my pre-orders were from friends and family, and they all gave me the go-ahead to take their chocolates to the event so I'd have more to sell, and they'd wait for the second round. But as it turned out, after what I sold at the event I had just enough left between the boxes I'd prepared, leftover samples, and some puma seconds to fill all of those orders. On the one hand, it would have been great for me and the museum to get a whole lot of orders, but my schedule is crazy and I wasn't really looking forward to spending all of next weekend in the kitchen too. The worst possible outcome would have been being one or two boxes short and having to make tiny numbers of a whole bunch of different flavors. So I'm very pleased with the way it turned out. I handed out lots of flyers and business cards, had a few people sign up for my mailing list, and got my business name in front of a whole bunch of new faces. So I'm happy! This week I have to make 5 dozen chocolates for a special party order, but then after that I've got nothing on the calendar until fall unless I get more special orders. It's just too much a pain to deal with the heat, so I'm not planning to offer any chocolate sales. I might do some wrapped caramels or some other kind of confectionary, though.

I had no idea such a thing was even possible, but now that you mention it... Wow. That just improved my life immeasurably. Thanks Kerry!

Thanks Kerry! Unfortunately, with only 12 cavities and needing to let the ganache set before I back them off, there's only so quick the filled pumas can go, and it seems to be about 3 hours. Ugh! They are totally the limiting factor here - the other molded pieces I can make 32 and 40 at a time, so it's no trouble at all (relatively speaking) to whip up a batch of those.

I'm finally done with all the work for the whole puma event. It ended up being WAAAY more work than any of us bargained for. I had a huge problem with the filled pumas breaking on their way out of the molds, which meant that I spent a lot more time and resources on those than I expected. It wasn't until the very last round of 12 that I figured out that I was making the shells too thin - live and learn - I'll know for next time. The neighbor who I was doing this for spent three nights this week foil wrapping puma bars with her 13 year old daughter. Today I hired a friend to come over for about 6 hours to label and package everything. And I've lost track of the number of hours I personally spent. I'm afraid to crunch the numbers and see how this all turned out (I'm getting paid for the materials for the puma bars, but the labor is a donation). But in the end, I ended up making 257 of the puma bars, and I have 21 large boxes and 8 small boxes ready - some are pre-orders, the rest we're hoping will sell at the event itself. And if all those go, I'll be taking orders for later pickup. After working two weekends in a row on this project, I don't know whether to hope for lots of sales or not! Large boxes: All lined up: From L to R: cardamom, salty caramel, raspberry, fresh mint. And a truffle puma in the back. I'm thrilled with all my flavors. I've overcome the textural problems I was having, particularly with raspberry, and I'm really pleased with how they all turned out. I have about a dozen of each left that I'll take tomorrow and cut up for samples.

Thank you! Much appreciated.

All my colors are at my working kitchen, but I need to make up some labels ASAP. Can anyone who has a bottle of Chef Rubber Artisan colors handy please tell me what FD&C colors are listed on the ingredient list? Doesn't matter what color - the label is the same for all of them. Thanks!

I do my molds almost exactly the same way Kerry describes, and I've had great luck with it. I usually only chill them down for about 5 minutes the first time, and 15 the second. Now that I'm in a commercial kitchen, the fridge there has great circulation. And lots of room, which i love! I just put the filled molds on a cart then roll it into the walk-in.

Whole Foods or any other natural foods store should have containers of the "Just Fruits" or "Just Veggies" line of dehydrated fruits. They're pretty inexpensive, and certainly less hassle than dehydrating your own, I'd think. You need to get them really really dry to make them powder, and I don't know that a home dehydrator will be up to the challenge...

I wonder if you could make your own fruit powder by grinding dehydrated fruit in the food processor? You can get a ton of varieties these days, so this could be a huge boon for flavor development if it works!

Fascinating. I will have to give this a try. It never ceases to amaze me how many different methods people use for tempering chocolate. After all this puma bar craziness, I'm really wishing that my method was putting chocolate in a tempering machine and walking away. I am sooo tired of hand tempering. Here's hoping that the exposure I get from the puma event will help build my business to the point where I can justify/afford an X3210!

I second David J's suggestion of using an immersion blender to take care of any unmelted callets. Kerry - I thought that one needed to stir pretty much continuously after adding the seed, but I see you saying just to add the chocolate and wait? Can you talk a little bit more about that? My upper arm muscles would be ever so grateful... Also, can you comment on ideal temperature at which to add seed? I've been adding mine right away after reaching the top of the tempering curve, but in the Schotts book, he recommends waiting until the chocolate has cooled down to 110 before adding the seed. Thanks!

I have a cheap food mill, and I'm sure the seeds would go through it. I use a fine mesh strainer that has a double layer of mesh. Something like this: http://www.chefsresource.com/cia-5-mesh-strainer.html I have to use a spatula or a spoon and work the puree through the strainer, but it's not too bad. I don't feel like I leave a lot of pulp behind, and my puree is a great consistency.

Thanks Trishiad. Too late now, as I've already ordered the foil and started wrapping. I'll keep that in mind if there's a next time. It's not going too badly, and next weekend I'll be recruiting a bunch of friends for a wrapping party, should go pretty quickly that way! While my website got over 100 visits from the mailing going out on Friday, I didn't get a flood of orders. In fact, I didn't get any orders at all on Friday! A few have started trickling in over the weekend, though. On the one hand, that's a bummer, but on the other, I was worried about the possibility of getting more than I could handle, and I won't have to worry about that!

My 3-year old and I made our first trip to the Ann Arbor farmer's market today. In the height of the season last year we were visiting 2-3 markets a week, so it's nice to have it back in our routine. This early in the season, in Michigan, the market is still mostly flowers and herbs and things like that, rather than stuff to eat. But I was lucky enough to get two of the last few boxes of asparagus at the market. Plus some potatoes. Things I saw but didn't get included lots of eggs and lettuce. And some really giant jugs of maple syrup. Then I went inside the adjoining Kerrytown shops to the butcher for a nice local grass fed ribeye steak, and the fishmonger for some shrimp. We had a lovely dinner of grilled asparagus, steak and shrimp with oven fries. And a bottle of Carmeniere.

It is indeed a very cool job. Today the email about the fundraising sale will go out to the mailing list. I'm very curious to see what the orders for that end up looking like, so I know just how crazy my next two weeks is going to be! Oh, if anyone's curious, here's the special sale page on my website, complete with "add to cart" buttons for the very first time! I feel so modern.

Thanks, all! In order to stiffen the molds enough to work with, I had to put them on cardboard, which further dampens the vibrations. So then I took off the tray on top of the vibrating table and was using the cardboard directly on the vibrating portion, but then I have to hold it there and move it around. Perhaps next week I'll try leaving the table on, but pressing down on the mold as you suggest. The person I'm doing the work for is going to help me wrap, along with her 13-year old daughter. And I've got a couple of other offers for help. Hopefully at least one of us will have the knack!

One hundred puma bars down, another hundred to go... It turned out that I only got 2 molds of 6 cavities each, so I can only do a dozen at a time. I must have managed 10 turns yesterday, since I actually have 110 bars, and there were some that broke when I was getting them out of the molds. My shoulders hurt a lot today - the molds are much heavier than the polycarbonate molds I'm used to using! And a lot of the bars have defects - air bubbles, mostly so I have to decide how much of that I'm willing to accept and how many I think I need to redo. It's really hard to get all the air bubbles out with the silicone molds - they're not rigid, so you can't bang them around, and the material of the mold tends to absorb the vibrations from the vibrating table. Freshly tempered chocolate at the top of it's working temperature gives a pretty good result, but as soon as it starts to thicken, it gets much more problematic. But I did learn to compensate, as my end of the day results are better than my earlier attempts. Other learnings are that it's really important to work as cleanly as possible with the molds - any excess chocolate will flake when you're removing the chocolates, and fill your mold cavities with annoying little flakes of chocolate! But because you don't have to worry about scratches to the same extent as with a poly mold, I was able to use a brush to brush out the flakes between fills, and that worked quite well. This weekend I'll start the foil wrapping, and oh, won't *that* be fun...

Those look great! Congrats on a successful first attempt! I still have problems with feet on the bottoms of my chocolate, but it's getting better. Practice makes perfect. As for keeping the chocolate warm, before I got a melter I used a heating pad set on low. You put the heating pad in a larger bowl, then nest a smaller bowl filled with your chocolate inside of that one. It works quite well and improves your working time quite a bit. And you're right - it is totally addictive.

Thanks everyone. My friend went to Dukem, and had a great time. I appreciate the suggestions.

This post totally made me boggle, because a year ago I wasn't posting my pictures, because I didn't think I was good enough! ← I've been thinking about your comment (above). This is exactly the point. I remember when you were throwing tons of questions out for the pros, and look at where you are now. I also remember my earlier pastry pics and see how far I've come. EG is such an incredible resource - so much knowledge, and so many people willing to share. I love seeing less experienced or beginning folks post their creations and ask questions - that's what makes EG so strong and so much fun. ← I agree completely. I couldn't have done any of this without eGullet. Thanks everybody for continuing to be a source of support and information!

Thanks, Truffle Guy! I don't know any of the details of the mold making - my contact at the museum is doing that. I sent him links to Chef Rubber, but I think he's getting his silicone from another source, probably one that he uses for other projects. The test molds were just from some sort of rubber, not food safe. I've not done this before, but give me a few weeks and I'll be able to report back!