VistaGardens

Thank you Kerry for all your work on this

Darn! I was trying to convince my daughter, who is Maddie's age, to come along.

I would love, love, love to learn panning!! Just got a small panner and have been looking for classes on this...

I'd love to be there! Master Class? Would really like detailed analysis of ways to reduce Aw and the properties of various sugars, etc, to do so. I think it would be fun to see how low we can go and still be palatable and have a fluid filling. I can bring my Aw meter. Also, if we are sharing techniques, I have been playing with candying in the instant pot, and happy to teach that.

New useful shop toy acquired today: a milk frother. This small device is perfect for stirring pigment into cocoa butter when you are making your own colors, or need to mix up ones that have settled. It makes no splatter like a hand held blender and is super easy to clean - just put it in a mug of hot soapy water... I picked one up on Amazon for under $20US with a stand, thinking it might be good, and it was great! Because the cocoa butter has a thicker viscosity than milk, it doesn't froth it, but does an excellent job of blending without the mess.

I don't usually like to post, as everyone on this thread does amazing stuff and mine is well, meh. But for some reason the Art Expo folks in my town put my studio on the open studio tour for the last two weekends, and I have met some interesting people just passing through. One of which was a photographer who bought a few pieces and sent me this photo. Not like any photo I'd take, but it looked really nice, so I am sharing. Just the dendrite, wipe away, back and spray thing. Filled with a simple 72% ganache.

these are great spiderwebs! Has anyone here ever purchased or worked with a Valrhona mold? I was going to purchase some but wondered if they are hobby grade or polycarbonate. Any feedback appreciated.

OK, so very late to this conversation. David, I am also in CA. I understand the labeling requirements. I mix my own colors, and there are really only four or five lakes that need to be listed, along with the metallic. So it is not overly cumbersome. As far as PUR color goes, it is not something that works if you want to put it in an airbrush. This is because the particulate size for PUR color colorings are too large. The exception is their yellow, which is tumeric. I purchased quite a bit of PUR color pigments only to find this out. The result was that they refunded my money and took the claim that it could be used for colored cocoa butter off their web site. If you paint with it by hand, then no problem. The colors you realize will not be similar to what you can achieve with the lakes. Hope this helps.

thank you for all your work on this and looking forward to next year. I am in California but am happy to help with paperwork...

So glad to find this thread. I've made pistachio gianduja and also raspberry cocoa butter. I bought a freeze dryer specifically to be able to FD the fruits to use with CB and use in the melanger. I used rice as the sacrificial lamb in cleaning out the melanger. I was so excited when I read that there was a small batch size drum and rollers, but sadly they are all sold out. Hope he brings more in. Very interested in the use of coffee in the chocolate! Thank you all for your great ideas and experimentation.

Yes, herpstat and flexwatt tape. Perhaps this would be a good workshop for the conference in St. Louis? Making colored CB and the box. We could place a mass order ahead of time and perhaps get a discount. Kerry has to bring her saw... As for the cost, the herpstat was the most expensive part, but it works well with the granularity and control that is needed for chocolate. I picked up the cambro from Craigslist. living in los angeles, it seems that whatever I want finally comes around on CL! So I'd guess all in all it was about $300 or less, not including the glass jars. I keep it on all the time except during vacation, and it doesn't eat up much electric, and it doesn't heat the chocolate room up, because of the cambro. throws off less heat than the Mol d'arts.

The box isn't "hard" to make, but it does have a few steps. The short version is that I took a cambro and cut a hole in it using a special saw like they use to cut casts off of arms and legs (Kerry would know...) and then inserted a thermostat for a reptile box into it. I then lined it with heat tape that is hooked up to the thermostat. While not made for chocolates, reptiles and chocolates seem to have the same constant gentle heat requirements. By messing with the container size and pan size, I was able to make a double decker container, and I keep the opaque on top, and the transparent and ones made with organic coloring (which don't play nicely with the airbrush) on the bottom. The photo below is the bottom layer and the heat tape is on both bottom and sides. Here is the top layer. As you can see, it holds quite a few 4 oz glass containers. All in all it can hold about 55 jars. There is more room on top than on bottom due to the nature of the cambro and the hardware on the inside.

I am happy to help with whatever can be done via internet, as I am in CA. Just let me know. I can also come out a day early if you like to help set up if needed.

Sort of late to the party here as I've been on vacation for a couple of months, but wanted to chime in on the colored cocoa butters and temps. As I mentioned a long while back on this thread, I make all my colored CBs, in varying degrees of transparency. Rather than strain thru pantyhose, I mix, let cool, then heat up again and it seems to work well for me. I have about 40 colors that I work with. I used to let them go solid, and store in plastic bags, breaking off a piece as needed and heating it with the gun. This was fine, but when painting a mold with 10 colors or so it was a PITA. Heating the colors via a microwave or in a water bath just wasn't getting the love for me and it took a long time. I came up with making a box that I can store all my colors in and it keeps them at a consistent temp all day all night - ready to use whenever. The colors are stored in glass jars and I pop each one out when I need it, paint, and then pop it back in. Because the box is insulated, and I have a thermostat on it, it works well. I only turn it off when I go on vacation, it doesn't eat up a lot of watts. Anyway, something like this might work well for others.