jbates
-
Posts
78 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Store
Help Articles
Posts posted by jbates
-
-
On 2/14/2018 at 5:35 AM, julie99nl said:
I did a back to back comparison with two half circle molds I got from aliexpress and two half circle molds from Chocolate World. Aliexpress was 1/4 the price of Chocolate World and that's with living very close to CW. Table tempered my callebaut 811 and shelled the molds and left them to completely crystallize. I wanted to see if there was a shine difference, ease of demolding..etc..
I didn't fill them on purpose.
Immediately when I was scraping off excess chocolate, I noticed the aliexpress molds scratched very easily and plastic actually scraped off. After an hour or so, the shells in the CW molds had almost entirely released when I checked them. The aliexpress were not released at all. So, I left all four molds in my chocolate room of 16C for the rest of the night. Next day, the shells in the CW molds slipped out without one single release mark or resistance. The aliexpress molds still didn't show that the chocolate had shrunk away from the mold. Turning them over and tapping them, released maybe one or two shells. I put it in the fridge for 5 minutes, still no movement in the shells. I put it in the freezer for a few minutes, and still nothing. At this point, I applied the heat gun to it to just soften the chocolate and I'd clean it out with my fingers. While the surface of the chocolate was very slowly melting, I put my finger in to clean it out and the plastic had actually softened as well as the chocolate!
I talked to my mentor where I went to pastry school about it and he said he had heard of the melting happening as well.
I've also had issue with one Italian brand mold, but never ever melting, just poor and inconsistent release.
I’ve found that you have to be careful which AliExpress sellers you use. Some are just very slow to send their products and some actually misrepresent their products. The melting problem may have been due to receiving a low-density PE (polyethylene) mold instead of the PC (polycarbonate) type.
You also get better prices when using the mobile app instead of the website.
Most of the better PC molds seem to be made by Shunda, with a few stores offering rebranded boxes. I’ve ordered a bunch of molds from the “Dcrt pastry tools store” and they work well. The quality is quite good, but I have received the occasional one with a poor finish, especially on the edges (I used emery paper to cleanup excess plastic on the upper surface that would have been curled off using my scraper).
Searching for “polycarbonate chocolate mold” will avoid most of the silicon ones. “pc chocolate mold” is also a good filter. If you want dome molds add “2124B” to the search; these are the larger size (29mm, 11-13g/⅓ oz), similar to a CW2116/2295 but at a limited number of stores. The “2124” (no B) is available from more stores but is smaller (8g/¼ oz) size (I like these for liquid centers).
-
On 5/15/2018 at 4:20 PM, pastryani said:
This is less of a “name that mold” question and more of a “how would this work?” question.
I’m referring to this bubble bar mold: http://www.chocolat-chocolat.com/home/chocolate-molds/c378160713/c378157546/p16471988.html
The spheres on top look like full spheres, and I’m just wondering how that would work (ie - how the chocolate (with spheres) would come out of the mold). I hope that makes sense. :-)
This also looks similar to the CW signature mold by chef Kevin Kugel:
I’ve got a few and they work well.
-
1
-
Chocolate making: Things I learned in my early months
in Pastry & Baking
Posted · Edited by jbates (log)
Any particular shape you’re looking for? ~~Larger half-sphere/dome molds are available from 1 or 2 sellers on AliExpress.~~ Didn’t read properly, you asked for bars. I’ll have a look.