Bentley

I would start with the Greweling book that Kerry recommends. It has plenty of recipes, but it also goes through the theory of making ganache, which will help you develop your own recipes. That's where the fun is.

Got great shine on these but the colors came out much darker then expected. The flavor is strawberry cream in white chocolate with a dark chocolate shell. One end is green like the leaves on the top of a strawberry, but it came out very dark - and the red is a couple shades darker than I wanted. I guess I can make the colors lighter next time by adding a squeeze of white to the red and green cocoa butter. Still pretty. Still delicious. But not what I envisioned. I was trying to copy a design recently posted by Andrey Dubovik on his Instagram feed (andrey_dubovik). Back to the drawing board.

Great. It would be nice to get an answer right from the source. In the meantime, someone can post the next bonbon for discussion. I hope this thread will keep going so we can all learn some new techniques and have fun discussing chocolates! I've got a million I could post, but I am sure others have some good ones that they wonder about.

Interesting thoughts. I also tend to view it from the perspective of a commercial operator (which A519 is). Looking at it that way, I don't see how it is feasible to use tape for this process. It would take too much time to mask in any quantity. Plus, the way the edges look, I came to the opinion that it wasn't tape. I also thought about creating some kind of stamp or flexible stencil. My best guess right now is some kind of 5 spoke flexible thing on a stick that is sprayed or dipped in white then placed in the mold cavity and then turned a few degrees. IF you look closely at the white stripes, you can see some horizontal lines that suggest movement. Seems like a possible way to do it - I'm just not sure what to make the tool out of. @keychris when you say to spray the red, then apply white with a finger....do you let the red dry completely first or do you let the red and white mix to create the color variations?

A member recently posted a picture of a chocolate from Instagram and asked for tips on how to achieve the same look. I know I've made one or two similar posts before. It inspired me to create this thread. I always find beautiful chocolates on the web and wonder "how did they do that?" I'm sure I'm not the only one. The idea is that you can post a picture of a chocolate bonbon (with proper credit/citation in accordance with forum rules) and members can chime in with their ideas on how to recreate the look. I think it would be educational and a great way to get some inspiration to try some new techniques and ideas. I'll start - I've always been fascinated by this chocolatier's work. It's from Amanda Wright at A519 Chocolates: Link How would you go about doing this one to achieve those white lines and the beautiful variations in tone in the red?

Making macarons via the French method always has a random component to it in my view. Sometimes the stars just don't align and you can never figure out why a batch did something odd. COuld be the humidity in the air or the peculiarities of a batch of egg whites or inconsistency in the grind of the almond flour or variations in oven temperatures or over or under mixing....you get the idea. I switched to the Italian method (meringue made using a hot sugar syrup) and get much more consistent results. It is not any more difficult and is much more forgiving. The texture of the cookie is slightly cakier perhaps, but after a night in the fridge, it has the perfect moist chewiness that people expect.

For those that do big production runs, how do you keep your CC in temper during the painting process? If we're doing multiple trays of multiple bonbons, we might need 20 different colors over the course of a few hours. What do you use to keep your CCB at the proper temperature when you're working over a long period of time painting molds?

If it helps, here is my experience at a Norman Love class. He charged $90 per person. That included light appetizers and chocolates before the class. Each person left with about a pound of chocolates (1 mold worth of chocolates - don't remember the size of the molds - somewhere between 24 and 32 pieces). There were two instructors. Each person had their own mold. They provided a few tools for decorating with white cocoa butter (sponges, paintbrushes, etc) and also had black cocoa butter in an airbrush that people could take turns using. We were doing a cookies and cream bonbon so those are the only colors they had available. There were two large mol d'art melters with pre-tempered chocolate. There were a few ladles and a few scrapers. People took turns using them. The filling was made in bulk by the instructors (not pre-made but done in front of the class) and put in a large piping bag which was then passed around for people to fill their molds. As the filling crystalized in their walk-in fridges, they gave a tour of their facility. Then we came back, capped our bonbons, unmolded them and boxed them to take home. The whole class was about 3 hours.

Do you have a link to this instagram post? I'd love to check it out.

Kate Weiser once talked about how she costed out her chocolates. She would figure out how much of every ingredient went into a recipe and then calculate how much that ingredient cost. She said she would weigh an empty mold then weigh it again once she applied the colored cocoa butter. Then she would mold the shell and weigh it again to see how much chocolate was used. She would get the cost of a bon bon down to a pretty precise number. She did this for every recipe she sold. She also accounted for waste. It's a tedious process but one that is essential to pricing your product. No matter what the business, if you don't know your cost of goods, then pricing is guesswork.

"field research" is extremely important Thanks for the report. I've been meaning to order her chocolates. If you really want to bust your R&D budget, try Stick With Me Sweets. Around $3.60 each. But they do look amazing. BTW for those in the Dallas area, I saw on FB that Kate Weiser now offers bonbon making classes at her shop.

@Jim D. To do a splatter pattern with an airbrush, I find it useful to turn the air pressure way down (<10psi on mine). Each time I press the trigger on the gun, it sort of sputters and coughs out a splatter of paint. Experiment with that and see if it gives you what you want.

One thing I've wondered about with the EZ Temper is what happens to excess chocolate. For example, I do small batches mostly, maybe 2 molds at a time, but I temper about 1kg of chocolate to do that. A lot of that chocolate is left over, and I pour it out on a sheet pan, break it into pieces and store it for reuse later. If I were to temper it by adding 1% silk, and every time I reuse it, add another 1% silk to retemper it, at what point does the addition of extra cocoa butter become an issue? How many times can I retemper the chocolate?

Here's my latest creation - a white chocolate pistachio gianduja with a morello cherry compote shelled in milk chocolate.

I regulate the consistency of caramels by the temperature to which I cook it. For example, I do a salted caramel square which is poured into a frame, cut and enrobed. I also do a molded bonbon filled with a salted caramel. The recipes for each are identical but I cook the one for the bonbon to a lower temperature to keep a bit more moisture in it. That allows a consistency where the caramel is firm enough to cap but soft enough to not be really chewy. It doesn't spill out of the bonbon when you take a bite.

I have gone back to tabling chocolate for tempering. It has been foolproof so far and faster than any other method I've tried. If you're doing huge batches for large-scale production, it might not be the most practical, but for the home chocolatier, I don't think it can be beat. One tip to pass on, though is that once you've melted the chocolate, you need to let it sit at the high temperature for a couple of minutes to completely melt, or else you will get small grains of chocolate that don't fully melt. You can smooth it out with an immersion blender, but this gets another tool dirty, actually raises the temperature of the chocolate and takes extra time.

Finished up my Thanksgiving chocolates with these two: The gold/green one is Mango Bellini - a white chocolate prosecco ganache with a mango compote. The pink/yellow is Creme Brulee - a white chocolate vanilla citrus ganache with burnt sugar flakes.

I use dark chocolate, toasted hazelnuts and powdered sugar in a 2:2:1 ratio. If I use milk or white chocolate, I'd add about 25% more chocolate. I basically put the nuts and sugar in the food processor until I have a nut butter then I stream in the melted chocolate and process until just combined. Don't forget to temper your gianduja - I usually table it on marble.

Made two bonbons today in preparation for Thanksgiving. First, the Michael and Paul - a vanilla white chocolate ganache playing in perfect harmony with a Valrhona 70% dark chocolate ganache. This one has the creaminess of a milk chocolate but with the depth of flavor of the dark chocolate. Also, the Pumpkin Pie - because someone told me it's actually illegal to not use pumpkin spice this time of year. It's a white chocolate pumpkin spice ganache with real pumpkin. Had to retake the picture....couldn't live with the photo with the messed up bonbon.

Cacao Barry just posted on their facebook a recipe from Melissa Coppel for Parmesan Hazelnut Bonbons with a caramelized white chocolate ganache infused with parmesan and a salted hazelnut/milk chocolate gianduja.

I agree. No changes required.

I want to do a pumpkin flavored bon bon for Thanksgiving and am looking for inspiration. Other than Greweling's pumpkin caramel ganache, how are the wonderful chocolatiers of eGullet incorporating pumpkin into their bon bons?

Did you know that today was not only Halloween but also National Caramel Apple Day? Here is my Apple Pie A La Mode bon bon: Apple cider caramel over white chocolate vanilla ganache with a hint of cinnamon.

I made a Maple Bourbon bon bon this weekend with a dark chocolate maple bourbon ganache and candied pecans. It came out great, but it the maple flavor is not as pronounced as I'd like. I ended up using way more syrup than I thought (probably ruining the water levels), but I would and still didn't get a solid maple flavor. Is Maple just too subtle a flavor or is there some trick I don't know?

Thanks! I was really happy with how this one came out. You get the tartness of the the lemon and then a burst of strawberry hits your tongue. The yellow is airbrushed in. It's Chef Rubber colored cocoa butter - about 70% Aureolin Yellow mixed with about 30% Alabaster White. The red is one of the jewel colors piped from a piping bag with a pinhole opening. I really took my time to get the cocoa butter to the right temp. I got great shine and the bonbons mostly fell right out of the mold. That never happens! @pastryani The compote is based on the Melissa Coppel recipe I referenced in the PdF thread. There is less sugar than in a typical jam or PdF and it is cooked for less time and to a lower temp than a PdF. That's my best guess at how it kept a lot more of the fresh strawberry puree's color.