Bentley

The last of the summer flavors......Pink Lemonade. White chocolate lemon ganache with a fresh strawberry compote.

Today, I tried a recipe based on one from Melissa Coppel. She has a bonbon with a creme fraiche ganache paired with what she calls a guava compote. It's a jellied fruit puree that she pipes into molded shells. I used the same recipe but with strawberry puree. The recipe is: 300g Strawberry puree 70g Water 25g sugar 6g Pectin NH 100g Sugar 3g Citric acid powder Rather than specific temps, she instructs to bring the mixture to a "strong boil for 1 minute" after adding the pectin. I found that I need to cook it longer to get the right consistency. After 1 min. it was a soupy mess that didn't set at all. I needed to go for about 4-5 minutes. The temp ended up being less than 200F, so there's definitely more water than in a traditional PDF. I will say, I used regular Apple Pectin because I don't have Pectin NH, so that could account for the difference. After cooling, I blitzed the mixture with a small amount of corn syrup to get a nice paste. It reminded me of the picture of Kate Weiser's piping bags of PDF - fluid and shiny. When I piped it, it very slowly spread out - not totally flat, but whatever small peaks remained, I was able to flatten with the tip of a small spoon. I then covered it with a ganache and capped.

So Jim, how did you end up doing the Pate de Fruit in the molded chocolate? I remember having a discussion about the difficulties.

Thanks for the ideas. Worldwide chocolate looks to have some good coupons, although they are out of stock on a couple things i need. I'll keep an eye on them. I also like you they sell .5 oz trial packs of a lot of different kinds of chocolates. Pastry Chef Central looks promising as well, especially if I can use ground shipping. Qzina is priced about 20% higher than everyone else (at least for consumer retail pricing).

Perfect molds for that bonbon . Beautiful work.

Where are the warm weather folks buying their chocolate??? I'm in SW Florida. My last order of about 12Kg of chocolate from Chocosphere cost about $70 to ship because it had to be packed in insulated boxes and shipped next day air. Now I'm looking to order about 20kg. Chocosphere doesn't have what I need in stock, and I'm getting shipping quotes from $150 to $170 and about $330 of chocolate. I'm not a professional kitchen or retail shop, just a home chocolatier that makes a lot of chocolates - so I don't think I can buy form a lot of the wholesaler/food supplier places. Is there any where I can buy Cacao Barry or Guittard without getting killed?

Looks beautiful. How do you get your gianduja so smooth? Mine,which I process in a cuisinart, is always grainier.

It doesn't have to be a molded bonbon. But I know that it can be done, because I've seen chocolate shops on the web offer a molded smores bonbon with marshmallow and some kind of graham cracker layer. So it's more of a learning thing - to figure out how its done for my own knowledge. I am constantly perusing my favorite chocolate shops and asking myself "How did they do that?" Sometimes they'll tell me, other times they won't. But I like to try to figure things out just to add to my knowledge.

Shiny! How do you temper the colored cocoa butter? Is it the same 1% seed. Do you add it to the bottle or do take out the CCB that you will need and just add it to that?

Thanks @pastrygirl for reporting back. Kate Weiser once said she cleans her molds with 91% isopropyl alcohol and cotton squares before every use...... When I went to a class at Norman Love, they said they rarely wash the molds and simply polish them with dry cotton balls before each use. Both shops use a lot of molds from Chocolate World in Belgium and both have extremely shiny chocolates, so I guess there is more than one way to skin that particular cat. As for crispy layers, I wonder if it would help to airbrush in a thin layer of plain cocoa butter on top of the ganache before adding the crispy layer. Do you think that would preserve the crispiness longer? I'm playing around with how to incorporate a graham cracker layer in my smores bonbon. Also interesting about her use of egg. Does she measure the aW or her creations or does she just not worry about since she isn't selling them? Stick With Me Sweets has a meringue layer in their Kalamansi Meringue Pie bonbon. She also uses marshamallow in her Speculoos Smore bonbon. Not sure if she is using fresh eggs or powdered. But clearly, it can be done in commercial production.

I noticed that Kate Weiser added the following bon bon to her fall collection: Quince Manchego made with salted cracker ganache, Manchego and quince paste.

@pastrygirl Lucky you! Perhaps you could also inquire why she uses isomalt in her marshmallow recipe. I've never seen another marshallow recipe that uses it. I am also curious if the egg used in the marshmallows diminishes the shelf life. I see a lot of recipes that use egg white powder or no egg at all - I wonder if those are better for molded chocolates.

I saw that on her feed. I have emailed her previously with other questions about her pieces but she has never responded. She either doesn't like to share her techniques or more likely is extremely busy.

I am curious why she uses isomalt. I've seen a ton of marshmallow recipes, and hers is the only one that uses it. Most use just sugar and glucose.

Do tell more about this....

I would appreciate it if you could review your materials and share any tips that you are willing to reveal.

Looks gorgeous....Can you describe the technique a little bit?

I'd like to do a smores flavor and a few other uses of marshmallows in some molded chocolates. Can anyone give me some guidance on preparing marshmallows so that I can pipie them into the molds? I see a problem similar to the PDFs....by the time they are cool enough to put in the chocolate shells, they are too firm to pipe. Anyone have any tips, pointers, suggestions, etc.?

The last couple of batches I've made have also been sticking in the mold quite a bit. I'm thinking its related to the temperature/humidity (summer in SW Florida) and/or the temper of the cocoa butter. The airbrush shouldn't need that much pressure. 30PSI is more than enough. I'm usually turning the pressure down. I've seen some videos on Instagram from Stick With Me Sweets where she gently flips the mold over and all the bon bons happily fall out in perfect uniform lines like little chocolate soldiers. There must be some secret....

I guess I'm the only one posting in this thread anymore Here's the latest: German chocolate Bon Bon. Coconut pecan caramel and milk chocolate ganache.

This weekend's project: Cherries and Grapes - Fresh cherries infused with Cabernet Sauvignon paired with a Valrhona 70% dark chocolate ganache.

The latest creation is a PB&J Bon bon. It's a milk chocolate peanut butter ganache with crunchy peanut brittle and a 4 berry jelly shelled in milk chocolate.

I make a bananas foster bonbon, which uses a banana flavored caramel. I found the key was to puree the banana to a very smooth consistency and then add the banana at the very end of the cooking process, once you've removed the pan from the heat. It takes a lot more banana than you'd think because the fruit does not have an intense flavor naturally. You can start with your basic caramel recipe then determine how much banana puree you want to use. If you are going to do a puree with rum or other liquid, you can account for that by cooking to a slightly higher temperature to remove other water. It will take experimentation to see what works with the amount of liquid you are adding.

Been working on this recipe for a while and finally got it right. The birthday cake bonbon. White chocolate birthday cake ganache with a layer of vanilla buttercream.

This is standard operating procedure for me. If I'm adding liquid to the sugar - cream, fruit puree, etc, - I heat it before adding it.