tammylc

David J, you're amazing! The six sided die I'd want to duplicate has numbers on it rather than pips (like the d4), so that would help with the protrusion problem. How feasible do you think it would be to make a mold with multiple cavities, so I could cast a few pieces at a time? Obviously I'd need multiple originals, but we have bags and bags of dice here, so that's totally do-able.

Okay - what's the best way to clean polycarbonate chocolate molds? I'm totally paranoid about scratching them. What's safe to use? How can I get rid of this fine layer of cocoa butter that seems to adhere like glue?

So, I'm going to call the inspector tomorrow and put off my inspection until the week of the 19th. I'll be in Chicago through Wednesday, and just won't have time to get all my stuff together in time for an inspection on Thursday. I don't want to mess it up and fail, cause that would suck. Better to take a little more time and get everything all set. I did some pricing and time calculations off of my Valentine's Day production, to help me figure out my margins, etc. Things I learned: - I've seen people warn newbie chocolatiers here to be sure to take into account packaging costs in your pricing, and that's no joke! For 420 pieces, my food costs were $107, and my packaging costs were about $50 - nearly a third of my overall costs! - There was huge variability in my per piece costs. Food costs per piece ranged from 16 cents to 44 cents. - I spent about 24 hours on production, spread out over 4 days. I need to figure out how I'm going to compress that when I actually get out and start using rented space. I think I'll be more efficient, because when I have five or fifteen minutes to wait for something to happen I won't be checking email, I'll be washing dishes, etc. But it took more time than I expected. Partly, I think, because I had such a variety of different kinds of fillings - various flavors of regular ganache are much faster to create than more complex fillings, and I need to think about the balance of those in any particular collection. And now I have to assemble a shopping list of things I need to buy - little pieces of equipment etc that I've been using at home and need to get an extra copy of to keep at the kitchen.

Thanks Kerry!

My Valentine's Day collection: Caramel geodesic domes, passionfruit red/pink swirl domes, hazelnut praline speckled pyramids, and strawberry-balsamic with silver hearts. I made about 420 pieces. While I was working, I had a friend come over to take some pictures. She's been studying photography for a while now and offered to come and take some pictures for me to use for my advertising materials and website. You can see some of her excellent pictures on her blog: Kitchen Chick. I can't wait until I get the CD - we had a lot of fun coming up with cool photo ideas (spoonfuls of caramel, mounds of hazelnuts), but I was too busy to pay much attention to what she was doing, so the actual pictures will be a surprise for me.

I've already had some informal testing, in that a couple of my neighbors/customers are still eating chocolates that I made for Halloween, with no ill effects or apparent mold, etc. The only change has been some drying out, but that's to be expected.

Good question... it's still not nearly as efficient as a guitar cutter, because you could only do one piece at a time, and you'd still have to measure by hand. Not sure if it would be any better than just using a chef's knife.

I know Ohio has some sort of "cottage industry" law that allows small amounts of food to be produced at home for sale. For farmer's markets, etc. But I don't live in Ohio (although it's only 30 minutes away) so I don't know all the details.

Michigan's laws are nearly the same. I believe you can have a kitchen in a private residence certified, but it has to meet all the requirements of a commercial kitchen in terms of venting and sanitation, dishwashing, etc, and there are specific requirements about it not being open to the rest of the house, etc. Not an option for my house, so I haven't looked into it much.

I don't think a water activity test will actually be required for me to get a license. I think it was just something she was concerned about and strongly recommending. This same inspector just made the front page of the local newspaper for citing a local chocolate shop that had a dish of candy conversation hearts out for people to sample from.

I've been posting about this is various different threads, but I thought I'd consolidate. I finally got the call from the inspector today to schedule a time to come out and look at the kitchen I'm going to use so I can get my food establishment license. (My god, this would all be so much easier if I lived in Ohio!) Anyway, she went on at some length about the need to get my recipes tested for water activity to make sure bacterial growth isn't a problem. I know there are some good books with detailed information on water activity, shelf life etc. Does anyone have any recommendations? Ideally something cheaper than Wybauw, but if that really is the best, then I'll have to suck up and pay the big bucks. This isn't something I need to do before the inspection, but I expect it's something she's going to bug me about later. mrose - did you have to do any sort of testing or demonstration that your recipes were safe? Other things I need to get in order for the inspection: - be able to demonstrate that I know how to properly use the dishwashing/sanitizing setup - have the equipment I'm going to use there (I need to find out if they have a food processor for me to use, or if I'm going to have to provide one) - show that there is designated off-floor storage for my equipment and ingredients on site - have a sample ingredient label showing what's in the chocolates I'm out of town at the beginning of next week, so it'll be Thursday or Friday before all this happens. Hopefully it will go smoothly and I'll be in business!

Vanessa, I just got a couple pounds of the 41% Orinoco in my big Chocosphere order (43 lbs of chocolate - woot!). I personally really dislike the E. Guittard 38% milk chocolate, but I liked this one better. I'm still not in love with it, but that's probably just my dark chocolate bias showing.

Cutting ganache cubes... duh. Trishiad - you're a genius! It's definitely worth a try! Although I expect I'm *really* going to wish I had a guitar cutter. And I may just try making my own mold for the pyramids - the actual shape of the die is not a standard pyramid anyway. I figured a regular pyramid would be good enough, but maybe I can just use this as an excuse to try out something new...

I've got this wacky idea about making chocolate "dice" to sell at a game convention. Role-playing gamers use all kinds of unusual shaped dice, one of which looks a lot like the geodesic dome mold. Which got me thinking about painting little numbers on the faces of pieces from that mold. These dice are usually sold in sets, so I thought it would be even better if I could do up a couple of other shapes. Most of the shapes would require a two piece mold and would need to be custom made, but I figured I could pretty easily do the pyramid shaped one and the standard six sided cube. Except I can't find either mold in any of the usual places. All the pyramid molds I'm seeing are ridged or patterned in some way, and I need smooth ones. And I can't find a cube/square at all. Any sources/ideas? I've looked through the threads on making my own molds using silicone, and that might be a possibility. Anybody have any experiences to share with doing filled chocolate pieces in silicone molds?

Thanks for the great tip, Alana! That makes a lot of sense...

In a couple of instances, I was over aggressive in trimming "feet" off the dipped caramels, and that caused the leaking. But I think generally it happens in areas where the chocolate is a little too thin - so maybe we just need to be more careful to get a nice even coating? Kerry can probably weigh in with a more experienced answer...

A bunch of experimentation with mold decoration, some of which turned out better than others (although I have to say that even the not-so-pretty ones look better in reality than in the photo). I can see that this airbrush thing has great potential... And that I need to buy more colors of cocoa butter. Tis the season for red and pink, but I'm going to be sick to death of those colors by the time I'm done!

John, that reminds me. Elsewhere, you suggested using a small *food-safe* foam paint roller for putting the foot on ganache slabs. Any suggestions on how one would know that such a thing is food-safe? It's not something they're usually advertising on items in the paint section...

Thanks Vanessa - I was looking around eBay to see what they had, but I wasn't sure what capacity I needed. A small one like that is fine, then? It looks to be only 1/20 horsepower. Is there an upper limit on horsepower?

If the propellant that comes with the airbrush isn't food safe, what are you supposed to use with it? Is there another brand that is safe?

Here's some of what I've been working on last night and this afternoon: We're going to the anniversary party for our community tonight, so I used it as an excuse to try out three recipes from Carole Bloom's book, Truffles, Candies, and Confections. At the bottom are Espresso Caramels, in both wrapped and chocolate covered versions. To the left, wrapped and chocolate dipped versions of the Honey Nut Caramels. To the right and in the middle (with the chopped nuts on top) is a slightly overcooked Hazelnut Butter Crunch. It's definitely edible, but darker than I would have preferred. The caramels are both good, but the honey nut is the best. Here's what the caramels look like inside: The other thing I've been doing this afternoon is playing around with my newest acquisition - a Badger 250 airbrush. But I need to finish filling and capping the mold, so no pictures until tomorrow.

Looks like a really helpful website. Thanks for the link! I've gotten used to cooking for 40-60 twice a month and am pretty good at making quantity estimates, but I forwarded it to the community email list, as it's clear that there are some cooks in our community who are less good at figuring out how much food to serve!

I didn't refrigerate them between applying the cocoa butter and pouring the shells. I was doing a really quick rush job on them however - I was just playing around with the colors and some lingering bits of ganache I had in the fridge. I had friends over and wanted to send them home with chocolates, so I didn't give the fillings much time to dry before I backed them - probably only an hour or so. I wonder if that's where the moisture's coming from, after the fact. Especially since they were in a sealed container, so if there was some evaporation it would have nowhere to go... The shells were very thin, so I could believe that there could be significant evaporation. Does that sound plausible?

Thanks David. I have yet to invest in an airbrush, but it is next on my list. Now that I've worked with them once, I think I'll be able to better get the effect I'm looking for, but an airbrush is an excellent idea. Question for folks about colored cocoa butter - the cocoa butter on my chocolates seems to have gotten kind of tacky. The color comes off on fingers, or rubs off on the inside of the box. Is this normal, or a sign that there's something amiss with my application?

As much as I loved Marcel and thought that Ilan was a complete and utter weenie, as soon as the judges started talking about "giving it to the one that was most ready right now" I knew it had to go to Ilan. Now, whether or not that should have been the deciding criteria is debatable, but Ilan definitely has more of the skills that would be needed to be a "top chef." Top Chef of a totally derivative restaurant, probably, but Marcel does need to get more comfortable in his own skin before he's ready for that role.