Rajala

Off topic, but the video where he talks about getting shot is special

Yeah, I buy them peeled already. I did try that on my own a while back. Kind of blanching the nuts, removing the skin, and leaving them to dry for a couple of days. I'd rather pay extra to get them delivered like that hah.

Get a bit of better viscosity. I learnt that from pastry, so it's probably not common. I usually don't toast the pistachios for too long to keep their color as well, when you pay over 40 EUR per kilo, you want the color to stay. The pistachio oil I have have a nice flavor to it, so it adds to that as well.

Yeah, no issues to change the ratio of sugar. More sugar = higher viscosity. For pistachio praliné, I usually go 60% pistachio, 40% sugar, and I also add 10% of total weight in pistachio oil.

I tried it, worked great. Thanks for the tip @Kerry Beal Wasn't allowed to add movies here, but it's not much different than what you did. I did it on a bonbon mold though!

I love this idea. Thanks for the bump.

I would guess some water/alcohol, I got a similar effect you can see in the beginning of the video when putting my failed molds in my sink a few years back thinking; "it would be interesting to get a pattern like this."

I'll try some extra cocoa butter next time. It actually went well in the end - the ganache were more like a caramel in its viscosity, but it leveled out in my shells on its own in the end.

I think I searched in this thread but couldn't find any hits. Did anyone ever tried making a ganache with Zéphyr Caramel or any other caramelized white chocolate other than Callebaut Gold? It gets so thick - must be something with the caramelized milk?

Always a good idea. Just did it, hopefully it's something "superficial" that can be fixed easy so I don't need to buy a whole new machine.

One of the "wheels" in my melanger is acting kind of weird. I can stop its movement by just pushing a spatula kinda soft on it. It's almost like it doesn't do anything, just spinning a bit but no "grip". Do you guys think it's time to replace some part in my melanger? I could record a movie if it would help.

I mean like if you leave it to cool down, that it might get "dry" on the top? You know if you leave a sauce standing. Maybe I'm overthinking here.

Magic Temper Alpha. The size is perfect for my little kitchen. Realized that I might've been unclear there. Not a tempering machine, just this for the cocoa butter.

No issues with "skin" forming on the top in that amount of time? I guess I just could try haha. Recently got a machine and tempering chocolate for molding is soooooooooo much better with this.

How would one best temper a ganache with "silk"? I never really tried and people just "well add it at temperature X" - but like what do you guys do if you do it? Just leave the ganache in a bucket and let it cool to the desired temperature before mixing in cocoa butter?

Yeah, that's a pretty good price I would say. I think a new Pawkit is like 2500-3000 EUR and this machine is light years better. One thing though; you need to change the sensors in these from time to time. Not sure HOW often though, but you should check how much that would cost you. Also make sure to source a filter that can handle all that you want to measure. Alcohol will influence readings quite a lot - but they have filters for that. I guess you're in UK based on the pounds - so just find the local Novasina distributor and buy what you need from them.

I always make my own hazelnut paste with my stone grinder. Let it go for like 24 h. The viscosity is pretty low. If I were to buy some random brand it would probably be a lot thicker.

One part hazelnut paste and one part milk chocolate wasn't soft enough? That's quite a lot of nut oil added to chocolate. I usually go with 60/40 and that's still soft. But yeah, to each their own. Of course it's not as soft as a ganache, and maybe that's exactly the the texture you want. The downside with adding to much nut paste to chocolate is that the nut oil can make the product feel a little bit "fatty", not sure what the expression is in English. But the oil from the nuts if totally different on your tongue compared to cocoa butter.

It doesn’t have to be complicated. It could probably be done by folding in a caramel in your nougat and just roll it out in a frame. Or it could be a simple version of leaf croquant.

I took a reading on another brand of that (and not vegan) and it was above 0,85, someone measured something else. I bought a new can of the same thing because I forgot to note down.

Roxy and Rich and Chef Rubber both have replacements based on E170. It’s obviously not as good as E171.

Hehe, if you read the instructions you can see that any machine have a repeatability range and a +- accuracy. So those combined will need to be taken into account while looking at repeated readings of the same sample.

My bottle is in the fridge, but I measured at room temperature.

I got 0,6347 for European made invert sugar, trimoline style. European made Heinz ketchup = 0,916. No sure why the reading is that much higher? Less sugar? Different sugar types?

The Chinese one is pretty accurate based on its specs, but it takes like an hour to get the correct measure. And yeah, it's 0,02 in accuracy which is kind of bad if you get a 0,85 reading. Is it 0,85? 0,87? 0,83?