tammylc

I think this analysis is spot on. And moreover, I think it relates to a lot more on the net than food blogging. Specialization, not generalization, seems to be one of the earmarks of success in the Internet age. Specialization positions you (rightly or wrongly) as an authority amidst a see of non-specific commentary. I started a foodblog last summer, as a place to aggregate the wide variety of writing about food I was doing. I have an online journal, and this was meant to be distinct from that. As others have described, I had a lot of enthusiasm at the beginning (aiming for a post every day) and that has diminished in time as my energy has been going to other pursuits. I still update a couple/few times a week, but, ironically, the biggest difference is that it's gotten more journal-like. When I started, I was creating content for the blog, now I'm mostly only posting in response to things that happen. Hopefully I'll find the time again to give it some attention. In the meantime, I'm always interested and intrigued to see what google keywords drive people to my blog, and happy when I see someone asking question that I know I've just provided an answer to.

That plastic wrap tip is brilliant. I only have a 3kg melter, so I'm a total slob with it since the size of the bowl is smaller than the molds. My cleanup is about to get a whole lot easier.

I'll let you know, as I have exactly that experiment planned for this week.

What kind of glue did you use to attach it to the tray?

Here's a powdered color set from pastrychef.com http://www.pastrychef.com/Catalog/powder_c...set_3754142.htm If you do a google search for "powdered food coloring" you'll find lots of other sources.

The problem I see with aluminum (and I have used it!) is that it tends to shift when you pour in something as heavy as caramel. You might want to consider paying the extra for the heavier stainless. ← You said it shifts with caramel - have you used for ganache, and did that work okay? I'm thinking I could get some of the more inexpensive aluminum ones for ganache frames, where I want a variety of depths, and one set of stainless steel to use for caramel, etc.

Thanks for the compliment! You're all very kind. I've looked at Sweet Packaging before, and they definitely have some good choices. I'm still at the phase of balancing cash flow with saving money by ordering in volume, and haven't wanted to invest in a lot of one style of box until I was sure of what I wanted. But I need to request some samples from them so I can start making a decision.

Although I will definitely be using them for some things. I'm using the clear purse boxes (http://www.bayleysboxes.com/purse%20box.html) for my "just eggs" box, and since I'm hoping to get into doing chocolate tastings, etc for bridal showers and the like, it would be a great takeaway box for something like that. I'm considering the small petal box (http://www.bayleysboxes.com/petal%20box.html) for Mother's Day. (It will fit 5 pieces, so I'd obviously need a bigger box as well, but it would be nice for the small box.) This is my first time being really precise about what's included in the boxes. In the past, I've let people endlessly customize - here's the flavors, here's the sizes, tell me what you want in the box. This time I decided to simplify. I'll certainly let people make substitutions, but I'm encouraging them down one path to simplify labeling and packaging. We'll have to see how well it works...

Thanks - I hope other people like my Easter boxes as much as you two do!

Couple of exciting (and related) pieces of news! An author acquaintance of mine was arranging with a local bookstore to do a reading, and pitched them on the idea of doing a chocolate tasting in conjunction with it. They really liked the idea, so I'll be doing a tasting there on May 11. It's an unpaid gig for me, but a good opportunity to market both the tasting sides and chocolates sides of my biz. AND... in order to build some excitement leading up to the tasting, they want to start selling my chocolate in their store! They've been doing a "roaring trade" in bar chocolates, and think it would be great to highlight a local chocolatier. So starting Monday (or whenever I can get them chocolates to start selling), I'll have my first retail location. I'll be starting with a just a few boxes, as I have no idea what to expect for volume. The following week I'll bring in some of my Easter boxes, and I'm really hoping those will move well. I've been doing a lot of exploring packaging options lately. Up until now, I've been using boxes with clear vinyl tops for my larger boxes, but just paper for the small boxes. But I think I'll do better capturing the impulse buyers at both the bookstore and the kitchen I work out of if I have something that I can sell for ~$5, which necessitates getting some clear small packaging. I found somethings that I really like at Bayley's Boxes, and have just ordered a few more samples. Unfortunately, most of the boxes they sell that work well for me are pretty small - I still need to find some good options for larger boxes. And they have some beautiful papers that I'd love to be able to use, but for retail sales I need for people to be able to see the chocolates - all the time I spend decorating is my selling point, after all. It would be different if I had my own retail location where people could see what's in the box.

I've tried coloring cocoa butter with oil candy colors, and it works, but you end up with something that's pretty translucent. For deeper colors, you can use powdered colors instead. However, people report that it can be hard to get the powdered colors adequately blended. I've bought an assortment of colored cocoa butters from Chef Rubber and have had pretty good luck mixing them, at least to create lighter colors - I haven't tried mixing to create a new color yet.

"Hot" cinnamon flavor comes from cinnamon oil, whereas the sweet cinnamon flavor comes from the whole bark, either in sticks or powder, so it may just be an issue of the concentration of flavor to just those that are carried in the oil. Or maybe a different variety of the plant is used to produce the oil vs the powder?

If you do get a quote, please let me know - I'd definitely be interested. I just called a metal place near me, but he doesn't have what I need in stock, although it could be ordered. The price he gave me off the top of his head seemed quite high, though, so I'd be interested in seeing what you get quoted.

I agree. I love the combination of measurements and the percentages. It had me practicing my long unused algebra skills this weekend. I was developing a ganache formulation using his guidelines. I knew what volume I wanted to end up with to get the thickness I was looking for in the size frame I was using, so then I had to figure out how much of each ingredient to use based on his theory of ganache creation. I always loved algebra, so I found this strangely fun.

I'd really like to see their survey instrument, because I don't think they're measuring what they're saying they're measuring. A couple pertinent quotes from the article: Culinary activities are pretty broadly defined, and it's doing them while traveling that counts, not doing the traveling because of the culinary activity. Lots of people travel to Florida. If you stop at a roadside market while you're in Florida, are you then a culinary traveler? I'd be interested in seeing how the location percentages compare to leisure travel in general.

For these, I'm just doing a dark chocolate with dark chocolate ganache and a milk chocolate with milk chocolate ganache. I'll be packaging one bunny in a box with the transfer sheet printed eggs that I showed in the "Confections" thread, and those will be raspberry and cardamom. I've also got a peanut butter piece planned, which might just be a third egg shape with a different transfer pattern, or might be a molded piece. I haven't decided yet.

I'll definitely do that next time - it'll make production much easier for me anyway, since long wait times are a problem for me. By the time I figured this out on Friday, I was way too tired to do anything but crash, and then by the time I got to them on Saturday, they were decidedly drier than I would have preferred (I did cover them with saran, but not well enough). Live and learn - luckily these aren't for anyone in particular, just testing.

Thanks, Kerry. Here's the mold (I got mine from Tomric, but this is from Chocolat-Chocolat: http://www.chocolat-chocolat.com/c228679p16408169.2.html). The cavities are 58x36x23 mm.

I spent today playing around with transfer sheets, both some I tried to make myself and some that I purchased. You can tell the difference in the picture above by looking for the ones that look good (purchased) versus the ones that don't (mine). But, experience is what you get when you don't get what you want, and I learned a lot that will hopefully improve my next attempts. Or, I may have just learned that I'm better off buying them rather than attempting be creative! (With the sort of weird looking pink ones, I was aiming for multicolored speckles, but just got a pinkish blur. Next time I'll try slightly more cocoa butter flow through the airbrush to get bigger spots, and doing some focused areas of color that overlap at their edges. For the striped ones, I think the cocoa butter I painted on was just too thick. My next plan is to use some straight edges to get better lines, and maybe use the airbrush instead of a paintbrush for thin but consistent coverage. Oh, and I need to be cleaner about dropping the transfer sheet straight down from the top - I had a tendency to catch the bottom first, which created a little lip and ruined the egg shape. I also tried out my truffle bunny mold. Isn't he cute?

Isn't it lovely? I got it from Design & Realisation in Montreal. I also ordered this one: http://www.dr.ca/MouldsUtensilsChocolate/P...s/11_Bonbon.jpg. And there are a bunch more neat molds on their website. Thanks, Kerry!

What width should the stainless steel be for caramel rulers?

This thread deserves a bump - it's been a great resource for me, and I'm sure we'll all still got more to say... As for my attempts at the showroom finish, I'm all hooked up now, with a compressor and an airbrush and a few colors of cocoa butter and some acetate and some brushes. Been playing around with what I can do with all of it - tomorrow I'll be testing out some homemade transfer sheets. But... what I really want to know is how people think they got the effect you can see in this picture: http://www.dr.ca/MouldsUtensilsChocolate/P...s/10_Bonbon.jpg I just got this mold in the mail today, and want to try experimenting with it. Is it just airbrushed with the color on the one side?

I haven't made any actual recipes from the book yet, but I did use his slab ganache technique and explanation of ratios to reformulate two flavors I'm working on for Easter, cardamom and raspberry. I used my new cutter from Tomric to cut all the ganache into little egg shapes, thinking I'd need to leave them out to dry overnight before dipping tomorrow. However, the book seems to indicate that he dips the pieces immediately after cutting. Any thoughts on this? Is it because he's using a fairly stiff ganache to start with?

I made my first recipe from the book last night, although it hardly counts. I was testing out a bunch of different peanut butter formulations, so I tried the peanut butter guanduja (which is in the book in the section on jellies, as it goes with a raspberry jelly layer in the book). Anyway, as I said - hardly counts, as it was just 2 parts milk chocolate to 1 part peanut butter. Tasty, though, and great texture. I ended up opting for a different kind of preparation, but I'm sure I'll end up using this one later. Today I'm planning to try following his slab ganache technique to the letter, in the hopes that it will help me with some texture problems I've been having. He's very strong on the use of tempered chocolate in ganache, which is a conversation we've had in other places on the forum. Previous discussions have mostly been around its effect on shelf life and water activity, but Grewling claims that it's essential for proper texture and crystal formation in the finished ganache. Any thoughts? I've got a little too much to do today already, but sometime I'd like to make two batches side by side - one tempered, one not - and see if I can tell the difference.

Nowhere near that hard, in my experience. Unless things have changed, the reservation book opens on the first of the month for the month two months out. So, if you want to eat there in May, the reservation book for whole month should already be open.