
Bentley
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Everything posted by Bentley
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This is interesting. I have never heard of cocoa butter used in marshmallow. Do you have a recipe you can share?
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Here's my first go-round with my new EZTemper. The chocolate tempered beautifully, but I still have trouble working with the colored cocoa butter. I rarely get it just right so that the bonbons fall right out of the mold. Had to throw these in the freezer for a few to get some to pop out. Anyways, thanks to everyone who helped with my cheesecake bonbon recipe. I was able to work from the various recipes people pointed me to and come up with something that I think worked pretty well. These are a white chocolate cheesecake ganache with blueberry (blue) and strawberry (red) jam. I might tweak the recipe just a bit, but I think they came out pretty darn tasty.
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EZtemper - The Help You Need to Achieve Perfectly Tempered Chocolate FAST!
Bentley replied to a topic in Pastry & Baking
First time using my EZtemper today. The sample on the left is chocolate melted to about 38C then cooled to 33.5C with no silk added. It's mottled and never really set after 20 minutes. The second sample is the same chocolate 2 minutes later after adding the silk. It's perfectly smooth and glossy and set right away. Very happy! I still made a mess - cuz that's what I do with chocolate - but it was great not having to table the chocolate to temper it. -
EZtemper - The Help You Need to Achieve Perfectly Tempered Chocolate FAST!
Bentley replied to a topic in Pastry & Baking
Got my EZtemper up and running with a couple canisters of silk. Going to try making some chocolates tomorrow. I did have a couple questions: Is it ok if there is a small amount of liquid cocoa butter on top of the silk? It doesn't seem excessive at all and stirs back in, but I just want to make sure I don't have to turn down the temp. Also, how long can silk stay in the machine? I don't produce a lot of chocolates so the two canisters of silk will last a long time. Does it go bad? Does it need to be stirred every so often? -
No hurry. If you wouldn't mind sending it to me whenever you get a chance, I'd love to give it a try.
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These will be pretty much for immediate consumption. I don't sell anything at this point. If I do start selling, I would definitely want to get an AW meter. I know that Norman Love sells a strawberry cheesecake bonbon that is described as rich New York style cheesecake topped with strawberry jam in a white chocolate shell. All of his chocolates have a shelf life of 21 days. So it is definitely doable.
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I had a request to do a cheesecake bonbon, and I have found a few different ways of doing it. One recipe is basically a cheesecake recipe thinned out with cream - but no chocolate. I saw a Melissa Coppel recipe where she does a cheesecake mousse using gelatin - also no chocolate. Another option is a essentially a cream cheese ganache - basically cream cheese, glucose, sugar, vanilla, butter and white chocolate. The cheesecake filling would be be layered with a fruit jelly so I don't need to incorporate it . How are you guys doing cheesecake bonbons? Other than caramels, all my fillings have chocolate inside, so I'm leaning that way, but I am curious what others are doing.
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EZtemper - The Help You Need to Achieve Perfectly Tempered Chocolate FAST!
Bentley replied to a topic in Pastry & Baking
My EZTemper arrived 2 days before I thought it would!!! It's all plugged in, loaded with cocoa butter and now I wait! -
I don't see it often, but I am seeing it here and there. I figure it's either small shops with a small-batch artisanal focus or larger shops that have interns or similar junior staff. Melissa Coppel's work is quite meticulous and does seem to be extremely tedious and time-consuming. Kate Weiser's painting seems to be sort of the opposite of meticulous. A lot of splatter, flickers and similar techniques that don't require a lot of time or precision. Not much that requires going cavity by cavity other than simple brush strokes. Very different styles - both with beautiful results.
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I also am still searching for the perfect tape. On this bonbon, because the line is a splatter pattern, it didn't really matter if a little white seeped in. I also did another one with a solid gold line across a black background, and that one doesn't looks as nice because a little black seeped in and ruined the effect of the solid line. sorry...didn't notice the second part of your post. The mold is from Pavoni. It's a 10gr round puck. Not too difficult to tape but it does take time to do a whole mold. I don't really see how chocolatiers are using this technique in production quantities. It just takes too much time.
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EZtemper - The Help You Need to Achieve Perfectly Tempered Chocolate FAST!
Bentley replied to a topic in Pastry & Baking
If I have a ganache recipe that calls for a quantity of cocoa butter (for textural reasons), can I just add the specified quantity of silk? Will that also temper the ganache? It's usually around significantly more than 1%. -
Mask with tape, spray white, remove tape, splatter green, quick shot of white behind it. The technique was loosely based on that black and gold bonbon someone posted in the "How to recreate these chocolates" thread.
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Based on the postal tracking, this should be the last batch of chocolates I make before my EZ Temper arrives. These are a white chocolate coconut lime ganache in a dark chocolate shell.
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Not to sidetrack, but there is a wonderful documentary called Kings of Pastry about one chefs attempt to earn the MOF title. It follows Jacquy Pfeiffer of the French Pastry School of Chicago over the course of a couple of years as he prepares for and competes in the event.
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EZtemper - The Help You Need to Achieve Perfectly Tempered Chocolate FAST!
Bentley replied to a topic in Pastry & Baking
OK I think I am going to get an EZtemper as a gift to myself. My wife won't let me put a bank of Selmi machines in the kitchen, so this maybe the next best thing. I think I would do a lot more chocolate work if I didn't have to spend so much time tempering chocolate. I always put off making chocolates because I have to temper chocolate for the shell, then temper a different chocolate for the filling, then retemper the first chocolate for capping. So much time just spent pushing chocolate around the marble. Not to mention the mess I alsways seem to make putting it back in the bowl. -
Found this video on Instagram from Susanna Yoon of Stick with Me Sweets. This is the holy grail of marshmallow to me. It pipes in easily, pretty much self-levels then sets up like a marshmallow. Of course there is no hint as to how she makes it. Here is how it sets up (it's the one of the bottom left): If you aren't familiar with her, check out her Instagram. She is truly a master - her ganaches are perfect - shiny and smooth. The insides of her bonbons are just perfection to look at. And I have never seen anyone work so cleanly and precisely. Plus she is a jedi-level master at piping.
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I found an old Melissa Coppel recipe - not sure I am allowed to publish it. It has a yogurt flavored marshmallow that is piped into a milk chocolate shell. It creates a syrup at 110C added to a meringue with gelatin, whipped until fluffy then piped into the shells. She also has on her website a recipe for lime sour cream marshmallows which are also piped into shells . That one takes the syrup to 121C. I wonder if the higher temp is required because a small amount of lime juice is added after the marshmallow is whipped. That recipe also uses a cookie layer.
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Someone mentioned marshmallow fluff - also called marshmallow cream - which is basically marshmallow without the gelatin. It doesn't have the same airy texture of a marshmallow, but it would definitely be easer to pipe and easier to work with in general. Might be a good substitute for marshamallows in molded bonbons. Might have to give it a try to see how the texture works in a chocolate.
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I meant it is hard to get the right amount so that when you add the cookie on top it is at the perfect level for capping.
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That's the hard part- you have to pipe in the exact amount of marshmallow so that the cookie is level and leaves the perfect amount of room to back the mold. Too much and the cookie goes above the rim of the mold. Too little and the shell is too thick on the bottom. I do a bonbon that has a brownie layer and it is hard enough with ganache to get the level perfect. It must be 10 times harder with marshmallow.
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Glad to see I'm not the only one thinking about this. I found a recipe in the magazine Journal Chocolat that had an egg-free marshmallow that was piped into drops on a tray then placed into the chocolate shell when fully set. After having the recipe translated from Swedish, I tried it this weekend. The recipe said to let the marshmallow cool to 30-35C before spooning into a piping bag. It was a far too set-up and sticky to work with before it even got below 40C. It was a sticky mess and I could barely pipe it, much less get anything close to consistent sized drops. I ended up just piping long ropes then cutting it into pieces small enough to place in the shell. Even that was difficult because it was tough to get consistent sized pieces. Some ended up being too big for the shell, some really small. What I really want is to find out how to pipe the marshmallow into the shell like the pic above where the layer is level enough to pipe a ganache over it or to place a layer of sable or similar over it. I will continue to report my findings.
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Dredging up and older topic...I found this picture and it is similar to what I am trying to accomplish. This one is particularly interesting because it appears the marshmallow layer is leveled out, as if it was fairly fluid when put in the shell.
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Have to agree wth @pastrygirl. Looks to me like they taped of the center line, splattered black then removed the tape and sprayed gold. Not sure if it's backed in white or not.
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Found this on a recent insta-excursion: They mention a "chocolate flour mixture" - is that cocoa powder or cocoa powder mixed with flour (though I have no idea what purpose that would serve)? Luster dust mixed with cocoa powder? Would dry luster dust create that coating or is it something else?
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This one is called Caramel Cookie Monster - A layer of cookie butter milk chocolate ganache with crunchy cookie bits topped with a Tahitian vanilla caramel.