tammylc

Yeah, I saw those linked in another thread. They are also really expensive and beyond the realm of my little start up budget. Maybe someday, if the reviews come back positive. Has anyone tried one yet?

That's true - I have been forgetting about cutters, and that would certainly be faster and more consistent than cutting by hand. I'll have to go take at look at Tomric myself. I saw a set of chocolate cutters on JB Prince recently, but they were v. spendy.

Those are some gorgeous pieces on the Christopher Elbow site! I'm going to have to go read through the "showroom finish" thread again to try to figure out how he did some of them!

Thanks Truffle Guy, for that very interesting analysis on the different methods. As I move out of my home and into a commercial kitchen - and hopefully increase my volume - these considerations will become really key for me. So I really appreciate your thoughtful comments on the merits of enrobed vs molded etc. For me, without a guitar cutter or enrobing machine, adding some molded pieces seems to be the best next step for me to ease some of my production challenges. Although as you say - it does introduce new ones, and if I get to the point where I need to do much higher production numbers, the time spent polishing and decorating molds will overcome some of my other time savings!

When I started making chocolates, I did exclusively hand rolled and dipped truffles. As my volume increased, that's been harder to do. I was working from home, and will soon be working in a commercial kitchen, so having the space and time to let trays and trays of centers dry out became a real challenge! I've added some molded chocolates into the mix, on the theory that it will let me speed up some of the process. Although as Truffle Guy says in his first post, polishing and hand decorating molds takes a lot of time too. My truffles are attractive, but definitely "homemade" looking. When I started thinking about offering molded bonbons in addition or instead, I was worried that they would look too machine made or too much like ye old box of chocolates. So I've been concentrating on using colored cocoa butters, luster dusts, etc to add a handcrafted touch. So far people seem to really like the new snazzier look, but as David J says, the variations are fairly limited. Without a guitar cutter, cutting squares for enrobed ganache centers is a time consuming, imprecise and tedious task. I'm hoping David J's plans for an inexpensive guitar cutter work out, because then I could totally see moving back in the direction of more enrobing and less molding. (Especially once I raise enough capital to afford one of these!)

For frosting, what about just a basic one? Whip butter and confectioners sugar with a bit of milk and splash of vanilla - ta-da! Very easy, top with sprinkles, and you're done. Growing up in Canada, that was the only kind of frosting I knew existed, so I bet it will be a nice familiar flavor for your group.

Truffles that are about 1" diameter work well in a #8 cup & molded chocolates try a #5 cup. Here is a good source Cybercakes Mark ← Thanks, Mark. My truffles are closer to 3/4" diameter, so I was using #4 cups for those. But they don't fit the molded chocolates very well, so I'll pick up some #5 for this next round.

Stunning and gorgeous as usual, Vanessa! What size paper cups are you using?

great job tammy! i think you'll find that you can't really get too dark a pink by mixing red with white. i thought i could and it sort of ends up a muddled color that you won't like too much. maybe you'll have better luck that i did. how are you enjoying your melter? I like it. Still getting the hang of using it, but it's definitely nice to be able to do other things while my chocolate is melting! Sad to hear that about the colors. I hope I can manage to tone it down just a little bit without getting too muddled.

Hey Tammy , how it is going with the kitchen and the business.Let me know how are you liking it , making chocolates in a different kitchen and with the limited time.That is my biggest worry .Its almost worth to turn my basement into a lab ← I'm still waiting to get all of my paperwork in order. I have my DBA and my sales tax license. I've filed for my food establishment license, and am planning to call today to see what the status is on that. I have an estimate for insurance, but I need to talk to them about it, because I don't think it's quite what I need. My first time using the kitchen will be either this coming weekend or the next one, assuming I get the paperwork in line. I've been doing a lot of thinking about how best to maximize my time there. The place I'm using is having a big anniversary party for their customers later in February, and has invited me to attend and hand out some chocolates. They're including me in their newsletter and everything. Should be a good advertising opportunity. Now I just need to get my flyers and business cards made by then! Oh, and I got my first order from someone who isn't either a friend/ neighbor/ coworker or a direct friend of a friend/ neighbor/ coworker. I made up the gift baskets for a science fiction convention I was helping to run last week, and included a little box with each of my four Valentine's Day chocolates. One of the guests took it home and gave it to a friend of there, who found my website and ordered 3 boxes of 12 to be shipped to her siblings. So that was really exciting!

Tonight was experiment night for me. I got to try out my new Mol d'Art melter, and some colored cocoa butters I ordered. It's not the best picture, but I was amazed at how intense the colors are - last time I did this I was using colored white chocolate. The straight cocoa butter behaved differently in the mold, it was thicker and stayed more in one place. I wasn't thrilled with the results - the red is so dark that it mostly blends into the chocolate, and looks like blood where it doesn't! And the white is rather garish as well. So I need to play with my technique some. This was done using a brush, but I'm thinking a finger smear would be better at giving me the look I want (the opposite was true with the colored chocolate). And next time I'll mix some of the white into the red to get a dark pink, which I think will show up better. But they are really glossy and shiny, and the colored cocoa butter was really easy to use.

Since I'm using a rented kitchen, I'm not sure I'll be able to set it up the night before, but I'll definitely consider it in my scheduling - not sure how they'd feel about having it unattended, even at such a low heat. But I'll definitely keep that in mind for when I'm just messing around at home!

Thanks Kerry. I guessed that that was the case, and my test temperatures at the various settings proved the guess. My first trial run went pretty well. The first time around I tried doing what you and Vanessa had talked about - doing a partial melt then stirring the leftovers in. But I didn't get a good temper - maybe not enough fresh chocolate in the mix. So I turned the heat back up, and reseeded, and that time got temper. I was only working with a couple pounds of chocolate - I can see that if I'm going to fill up the whole thing, it's going to take a LONG time to melt. Sometimes that might work with my timeline, but I can see that there will be days when I'll need to melt in a double boiler and just use this for holding it at the working temperature. And I'm in love with using a heat gun (hair dryer for me, actually) for giving it that little bit of a hit. This was my first time trying it and it worked so well!

I have been a subscriber in the past, and just haven't gotten around to re-upping my subscription. I had noticed that chicken teriyaki recipe and pondered it in the past - it does look good, doesn't it? I'll have to revisit. Thanks.

Okay, Mol D'Art people - talk to me about this dial. Is the little tiny divot at the top supposed to be what I check the temperature against? Is it weird that the light didn't come on until I was well up into the numbers on the dial, and that the dial turns past where the numbers finish? Any suggested methods of checking the calibration?

I got my melter yesterday, but haven't had a chance to try it yet. Turns out that it is actually a Mol D'Art melter! The eBay listing said it was a Felchlin melter, but the box says Mol D'Art, and it's just got a sticker on it to brand it for Felchlin. I'm thinking that was a lucky thing for me, since it probably didn't attract as much notice on eBay that way, so I was able to get it for the minimum bid. Anyway, I'm hoping to get a chance to try it out later today.

Pork's fine around here. I'd have to come up with a vegetarian alternative, but I could figure that out. And then there are the spice wimps... I've had pozole once or twice and adored it, so this is a very good idea. I'd have to try making a homesize batch first for sure, since I don't have a good feel for it. Do you have a recipe to share?

I'm also interested in experimenting with transfer sheets next. It's too bad they come in such large quantities. I remember reading in some eGullet thread about an idea to set up a transfer sheet swap - did that ever happen? Is anyone interested in getting one going?

Anna, I have a favorite saying for just these moments - "experience is what you get when you don't get what you want." How did you do the decoration for the tear drop bonbons in the back? Was that a transfer sheet and magnetic mold?

Lasagna seems like such a good idea, and many a cohousing cook has fallen into that trap. But unless the head cook wants to do a lot of work themselves, it doesn't work with the time constrains (ie. only getting assistant cooks at 4 pm). Many, many times I have seen lasagna come out underdone because people just haven't figured the math out - it should stand for 30 minutes before serving and has to cook for 1.5 hours (especially with multiple pans in the same oven), which means you have to basically have it ready to go in the oven before assistant cooks arrive. I just don't want to do that much work! I've done pasta meals before (and other people do them quite regularly), but it might be time to rotate that back in. I do a nice pasta with spicy Italian sausage that I haven't cooked in a long time. Other people do standard spaghetti with garlic bread really frequently - probably 3 or 4 times a month - so if I'm going to do it, I like to be something a little unusual. Pasta can be tricky too, because of the burner issue. We have 6 burners, but they're too close together, which means you can't boil water for pasta and have sauce on the stove. I've solved that problem in the past by letting the pasta sauce simmer in the oven. Workable, just requires a little extra planning! I feel like I'm shooting everybody's ideas down, and that's totally not my intention! I really appreciate all the input! You've all inspired me to drag some old meals out from retirement, which is probably better than coming up with something totally new, since this way I'll already have some idea of how much stuff to buy!

My neighbor Tim (the one I talk about above, who did the Peace Corp gig in Senegal) makes it quite regularly, so I haven't tread there. I did, however, point him towards that cookoff thread, and he said that he'd picked up a few ideas for next time.

As with the taco meal snowangel asked about above, I mostly haven't done this because there are is another cook who does it quite regularly. He lived in Senegal as a Peace Corps volunteer for a few years, and makes various Senegalese stews once every month or two. He may have also done an Ethiopian meal - I can't remember - I know he cooks Ethiopian at home, I just don't remember if he's ever done it for common meal. I used to make a Moroccan Chick Pea and Carrot stew really regularly, but then it dropped out of my rotation. I was just thinking this morning about maybe adding it back in. Ethiopian is definitely at interesting idea, but one that will have to wait until I have some time to devote to thinking it out. Making all the injera would be quite the time consuming challenge - I wonder how much the local Ethiopian places would charge me to buy it from them? Do you have any favorite recipes to share? They should scale up easily.

I have not. But taco and burrito bars are regular staples of other cooks, and while I could potentially do some more interesting fillings than the run of the mill, it's just not seemed worth the effort.

Thanks Jim. I have made beef burgundy a couple times before, and it's been popular (I use the Cook's Illustrated recipe, and it's fabulous). But it has a couple strikes against it for common meal. One, I try to use "happy" meat, which makes it hard to do beef burgundy within the price parameters I'm working with (~$4/person). And two, I don't actually want to do nearly all the work the day before. I get two assistant cooks for 2 hours the day of, and I like to make good use of them. However, it is certainly the season for it - I'll have to go back and look at what I wrote last time I made it. See if it was a "never again" or not...

I have done a full-fledged Thanksgiving dinner twice now. People do roast chicken fairly regularly, but the problem is that we only have two standard ovens, so it's hard to cook all the chickens, and they don't tend to get nicely browned. I did a rotisserie chicken once, making side dishes and just buying the chickens already cooked. Everybody loves rotisserie chicken so that went over pretty well. (Hmmm, now that I'm thinking about it, maybe I'll just do that again on the 5th.) Another neighbor just recently did turkey breast for common meal. And Tofurkey for the vegetarians - yuck! Even most of the veggies didn't like it.