GRiker

Everytime I read about the workshop, I wish I could come! This year is out for me, but can someone answer some questions for me? Seems like the location of the workshop changes as I’ve seen postings from years past from different areas. Is there some kind is schedule? When are the dates decided for the next year? Generally what is the cost to attend? I think I saw somewhere that there is a basic fee then an additional masters class fee for those who want to participate in that. I’m doing a lot of reading and learning from the forum - its so helpful. I’m in a stage where I don’t have lots of time to actually experiment but I’m moving along slowly but surely. I’d love to add a future workshop to my plans.

I don't strain out the zest.

Yes on Saturday. I saw EZTemper on the presenter list. Are you going to be there?

Thus the question...how do you really know you've inverted all the sugar when you're doing in at home? And your answer that you can't really know. Good point. Thanks for that insight.

thanks for sharing your insights. I think that's all part of the art part of chocolate that sometimes gets left out of the teaching, or at least the places where I've been learning. I know I've read on the forum somewhere here the idea that there are guidelines, but in the end you may find that something outside those guidelines will work for you. All part of the learning curve. The idea that the type V crystals don't disappear the minutes you go over their melting temp makes sense as the phase change will take time. I try to check my temper regularly especially when I replenish and I'm always surprised that I usually find all my tests show the chocolate had good temper. With my limited experience, I'm coming to agree that it's more forgiving than I thought.

Indeed. I'm afraid I am. I'm surprised to see even a chocolate manufacturer like Valrhona telling consumers both to seed and to lower the temperature. https://www.valrhona-chocolate.com/baking-tips Seems like a waste of time. Maybe they just recommend that to get even more type V crystals? I did some looking too and only found one slight acknowledgement of thinking about crystal formation. Makes me curious... Yes. Thanks for the reply.

@keychris Interesting observation. Last night I tested my invert sugar using litmus paper. Interestingly enough, the pH measures around 6, so slightly acidic. Not what I expected. When I posed this query to my PhD Food Chemist neighbor he told me that the reaction is not quite as simple as it seems when you simply work out the mols of each. I'll try to distill some points. Of note the acid is only acting as a catalyst for the hydrolysis of the sucrose into glucose and fructose. Most online recipes are not attempting to neutralize the acid with a base. My friends opinion was that you would only reduce any of the acid if the tartness were objectionable. It does make me wonder what is the pH of commercial Trimoline or invert sugar. I had a batch that didn't work so well where the pot boiled over and all the baking soda didn't get dissolved into the solution. I did taste that one and it is very tart. It has a pH of about 4. pH tells you how acidic or basic a solution is, but it does not tell you how strong it is - that would be pKa which I can't easily measure. However, when looking at the solution, you have 1000g of sucrose and water, and about 30 g of citric acid. My friends comment is that a 3% solution is probably quite a bit stronger than you need it to be to act as the catalyst in this reaction. I wondered about decreasing the acid and then how would you know that you had successfully inverted the sugar (aside from actually measuring the the inverted light reflection of the molecule!). The color change from clear to amber seems to be a good indication that the inversion has taken place as both glucose and fructose are more sensitive to heat than sucrose. Much of our conversation was over my head, but I tried to reach back to my college chemistry to understand it. Some recipes use lemon juice. Lemon juice isn't just pure acid so it has some buffering affect - not totally sure the affect on the final product. Just putting it out there. When I look at other online recipes for invert sugar syrup, I'm seeing significantly less citric acid added to the mix, like on the way less than 10 gram range. I was attracted to Wybauw's recipe because it was so scientific with exact amounts and came from a reputable source. Many of the other online recipes talk about adding 'the juice of one lemon' etc. - how precise is that! However, after a bit more study I'm wondering if his recipe for invert sugar is not as scientific as I originally thought. The next time I try making invert sugar, I believe I will poke around online some more and use less citric acid. I know, I know, I could just buy it, but where's the fun in that!

Yes! and that's something I didn't understand for a long time and am still trying to wrap my head around. My first experience even knowing chocolate could be tempered was with a friend who had a 1 pound tempering machine. She would use the chocolate while tempering some more. Because she was using it quickly and then having more ready via her machine, I didn't learn anything about nuances of temperature. In addition, I'm sure a lot went over my head because so much of it was new. Then, I started tempering myself using the seed method. Many times I read about people who tempered via the seed method but also lowered the temp down to 82 or so and brought it back up. I was confused because it seemed like they were combining two different tempering methods. I now realize they were! In my studying I read so much about how critical the temperature was that I thought that if my dark chocolate went below 86F or above 88F that my chocolate would be out of temper, even though it didn't seem quite right in my mind. The more I read about the crystal melting temps, I started to understand that temps weren't as exact I as I understood them to be. Now I'm trying to understand how flexible those temps are. What I'm thinking is that as long as you don't go so low as to introduce type 4 crystals and not so high as to melt out the type V crystals, you could still be in temper (but of course might be over or under crystallized.)

Thanks for the reply. So, let me see if I understand: since the EZtemper silk contains lots of type V crystals already, you have sufficient seed to pre-crystallize the chocolate quickly even at the higher temperature. I've always used the saying that tempering correctly is about time, temperature and agitation. Using the standard tempering process (seed is what I've used before) the reason for lowering the temperature to the standard working temps mentioned above is that it takes that much time to have enough type V crystals to properly pre-crystallize the chocolate. If, for example, I were to use well tempered solid chocolate as seed, when I got to 92.5F I wouldn't have enough type V crystals to efficiently seed the chocolate I'm trying to temper. Using the seed method since I couldn't start adding until 94F, there's no way I would have enough seed the term I got to 92.5F. Am I understanding this correctly? In theory (and practice), I could seed using well tempered solid chocolate and enough time and agitation and get a proper temper at the standard temps. Once I had enough seed to temper the chocolate well, could I theoretically raise the temperature to 92.5F? since none of the type V crystals would melt out until higher than that? Of course this method would take lots of time, but I'm just trying to work out if in theory it's possible.

Thanks for the answers to all these questions. Super helpful. I'm just starting to make more chocolates as a hobby right now and am fascinated by the idea of using silk. I made some and tried it out and it works very well. I'm still perplexed about the temperatures. I have tried using silk and working with my milk and dark chocolate at 92.5F. It worked great. When I look at the melting temps of the different crystalline forms, the wider temperature range makes sense. Type V crystals melt at 93.2F (34C), and the next highest temp crystals melt at 82.4C (28C). So it seems like as long as your above 83.5F or so and below 92.5F or so, you should only have type V crystals in your bowl (assuming you tempered correctly in the first place) But it begs the question...if property pre-crystallized chocolate can be worked with at these temps, why do chocolate manufacturers suggest a working temperature of 84-86 for white and milk and 88-90F for dark? It's so much easier for me to work that these higher temps. Especially for milk chocolate.

Good idea. Also might consider more lime zest. When paired with the coconut, it could handle more lime flavor.

What kind of pectin do you use in this recipe?

I don't think this is just what you're looking for, but it's a start. It's from Greweling's Chocolate and Confections at home. Coconut Lime Truffles 2 oz. heavy cream 2 oz cream of coconut (not coconut cream or coconut milk, this is a sweetened product) 1/2 oz (1T) light corn syrup 1 Limes, grated and juice 12 oz. white chocolate I've made this a couple times enrobing in white chocolate and I really like it.

Thanks for the reply and the information about aw. Looks like 100g or 110g, pretty close. I am getting more concerned about shelf life. I spent the day making chocolates at end of January with a friend who was in from out of town. We made lime coconut truffles, mint truffles and peanut butter meltaways. The day was super fun. She was headed back to Oklahoma in a few days and I thought she'd passed them out to her friends as soon as she got back. Then I heard from her daughter-in-law that she saved them to give away until Valentine's Day! It had been almost a month since we made them. Then who knows how long her friends kept them before eating them. Makes me realize you can't be sure what people will do with the chocolates once they have them. The raspberry coulis was bit complicated for me. When I was at the produce market in San Francisco, I found one of my vendors sold frozen fruit purees. I had seen this recipe in the book and because I had a source for the raspberry puree I was inspired me to make it. I purchased the puree but when I got all ready to make it and pulled the puree out of the freezer I found that it wasn't straight puree. https://www.perfectpuree.com/product/red-raspberry/ . Ingredients are red raspberries, can sugar, fruit pectin, citric and ascorbic acids. I have made a raspberry sauce before by straining out all the raspberry seeds from the fruit then adding sugar and reducing. This commercial product is definitely thicker than straight strained raspberry juice and about the same consistency as the reduced and sweetened juice. (In fact, I think I'll use it for my raspberry white chocolate cheesecake. I don't often make it because the raspberry step takes too much time.) But I digress... I also didn't have pectin and decided to use Sure Jell for lower sugar recipes that I use in making jam. Not off to a very good start, but determined to give it a go as I have lots of things to practice, I followed the raspberry coulis recipe, using the pectin and puree that I had. It ended up way too thick. Even before I added the pectin and sugar then boiled it for three minutes it seemed it was already coating the back of the spoon pretty well (his verbiage for how long to cook it.) I piped it at 86 - 88 degrees but it wouldn't settle into the mold and I ended up with air pockets between the raspberry coulis and the chocolate shell. I tried again tonight, just deceasing the pectin and making a 1/3 recipe but my kitchen scale was giving me issues. The raspberry was still too thick, but I'm not totally sure the recipe was correct. Since it was so thick and I knew that it wouldn't settle in, I just added some of the Perfect Puree until the viscosity seemed right made sure it was the right temperature and piped it in, figuring at least I would be practicing my molding techniques even if I wasn't perfecting the raspberry recipe. Now I'm thinking about a different solution. When I compare the ingredients for the raspberry coulis: raspberry puree, sugar, glucose, pectin, more sugar for pectin, and lemon juice vs the ingredients in the puree I have easy access to, seems like the only difference is an absence of glucose in my commercial puree. I understand that the ingredient list doesn't tell me much about how much of the ingredients are in the finished product, but I'm wondering if I could just add a bit of glucose and cook up the raspberry puree to reduce it a bit, then use it instead. What issues do you see with adding glucose (or not) to the Prefect Puree and then reducing it to thicken and piping that into a shell? My goal is to have a product that will have a 2 - 3 week shelf life. I did think about the pate de fruit suggestion. I've never made it before but am not totally sure I'd like the very firm pate de fruit inside a shell. I do also need to get some plain pectin (I read some posts here that talk about pectin and seems like many people like apple pectin, I'd need to find a source of that. I looked on Amazon but most of the apple pectin was marketed as a nutritional supplement. Would that work you think?) I'm so excited about all the recipes, I'm tempted to just try them one after the other, but decided I'd be more satisfied by focusing on one recipe until it works then move onto my next favorite or convenient.

I think pastrygirl’s suggestion about engaging in conversation is a good one. People usually like to talk about what they enjoy doing. Telling him about eGullet could be helpful too.

Those look very nice. I like the texture on the egg. Looks like those Bunnies are going to get a new life as something else!

Thanks to the suggestions, I picked up Art of the Chocolatier. Decided to try that delicious sounding raspberry and dark chocolate praline. The recipe calls for 200 g orange juice, then in step 8 it says, "Place the orange juice in a pot over medium heat and reduce by half, until the final weight is 165g" Half of 200 is not 165. Jim D., do you actually reduce the orange juice to 100 g or to 165? I went ahead and reduced to 100 g and it is delicious, but wondered what you decided to use.

I used Recipe 2 listed above. Attempt #1: I first tried putting the first two ingredients into a quart jar in a sous vide set to slightly over 200F to keep the syrup at 200F. Then when the syrup was at 200F (this took a while), I added the citric acid and water then loosely capped the quart jar with a plastic lid. I kept the sous vide at 200F for an hour. Then after the hour I removed the jar onto a towel covered counter and added the baking soda/water mixture. THAT was a mistake! Citric Acid + sodium bicarbonate = sodium citrate + water + CO2! It's the carbon dioxide that I forgot about. See image of sugar boiling out over the top and on the towel! I decided the kids could use this syrup for lemonade and moved on to attempt #2. Attempt #2 consisted of putting sucrose and water into a 5 quart pan, dissolving the sugar up to 200F, added citric acid/water and then trying to keep the mixture at 200F for an hour. This required way too much hands on. I put my probe thermometer into the pot and set my thermometer's alarms at 195F and 205F. Despite my best efforts, I kept having to adjust the temp to get it to stay in that range. Then the nagging questions of ?how close does it have to be for 200F for one hour? what happens if it's not etc...? So, I didn't actually make an attempt #3 (feeling mostly satisfied with the result from attempt #2) but when I do, this is what I will do. *Heat 250g water in a quart mason jar (not too hot, just to get the dissolving moving along a little) then add 750 grams sucrose. Stir *Heat water in 8 quart pot to 200F *Remove pot from heat and add sous vide set to 202F or so (some heat is lost to the atmosphere) *Add the quart jar to the sous vide. *Stir to dissolve the sugar. *When sugar is dissolved and syrup temp is 200F, add citric acid/water and stir to combine. *Lightly cap the mason jar with a plastic lid *Let run for 1 hour *After 1 hour, remove quart jar from the Sous Vide and empty contents into large heat proof bowl *Slowly add baking soda/water mixture *Let cool completely before transferrng to a storage container Seems like this would take advantage of the rapid heating available from the stove (my sous vide took a long time to heat to 200F), the hands off 1 hour cook time, and then more space afforded by a pan. The result was about a quart of amber colored liquid with a very slight acidic sugary taste. I thought I wouldn't taste any acidic flavor at all, but I seem to just a little. Hope this helps anyone else trying to DIY. I'm just trying out some confection recipes that need invert sugar. I'm sure there are local sources less expensive than Amazon, but I could get food grade citric acid and make pounds and pounds of invert sugar for the cost of a pound or two of invert sugar online, so I ventured to make my own.

Smithy- thanks for the welcome. I’ve learned a lot just reading but decided I want to speak up sometimes! It is fun to see what others are doing.

Thanks for the welcome weinoo. I’m in the South Bay too, Milpitas. Native to Livermore. Are you still in the Bay Area?

Thanks for the warm welcome Darienne.

I've been lurking for a couple years on the website and decided to join to learn and share. I'm a chocolate fan. For most of my life this just meant chocolate chip cookies and cakes. Several years ago a friend invited me to her house to dip chocolates. It was my first exposure to a chocolate tempering machine and even knowing about tempered chocolate. For the past couple years I've been learning more and more about making candies and tempering chocolate. One big hurdle to overcome in making significant quantities of chocolates was how to temper enough chocolate so that I could dip more than 40 - 50 candies at a time and how to hold it the temperature consistent for a long enough time to dip them all. In early 2018, my husband helped me create a temperature stable bath using a sous vide cooker. This enabled me to dip for hours with beautiful results. That year we made about 500 chocolate dipped caramels and toffees around Mother's Day and another 500 pieces during the holidays. On these forums I learned about the Greweling books, Chocolates and Confections. I first purchased the book designed for the Artisan Confectioner, then found the book for the home chocolatier. Both books have been helpful in understanding the different aspects of chocolate making and given me some ideas. After Christmas 2018, I was eager to try some of the recipes - soft caramels, marshamels, Nougat Torrone, Chocolate Nougat. Some worked great, others need more tweaking but it was fun. It was when I was dipping all these that I learned I could replenish my chocolate with 95 oF chocolate and I was able to dip for hours. That has been a game changer for me. Instead of tempering more chocolate when I ran out, I could replenish when it got thick or low and keep going! This Mother's Day, we made 750 pieces and just finished making and dipping 1400 pieces. I was able to dip them all with just a batch each of milk and white chocolate but needed to use two batches of dark as I had to stop and eat! I've been interested in tempering machines, but hesitant because of their limited capacity. Yesterday, I read all about the EZTemper machine and woke up early this morning thinking about cocoa butter silk and how to use it to shorten my tempering time! I again used my sous vide to make some cocoa butter silk, tempered some chocolate with it and then a few days later used microplaned cooled silk to make some more. It worked and I'm curious about exploring more on that topic. I'm also thinking about learning to do some simple molded bon bons. Lots to learn still. I use Guittard chocolate almost exclusively. I live local to the chocolate factory and have buying their chips and now melting chocolate direct from the manufacturer for over ten years. Their sales rep has been super helpful answering questions about their different chocolates and how to use them. In addition to chocolate, I enjoy making cheesecakes and if we are lucky, even making dinner for my family! I'm excited to learn from the members of the forum and contribute as well.