GRiker

I have now used the O’Creme mold a couple times now. I like the size and I like how easy it is to push the caramel out of the mold. I don’t like the spaces between the molds. The amazon picture shows someone putting the caramel in a candy funnel with no mess between the squares. I don’t own a candy funnel and not sure I’d have the patience to use it neatly anyway. Instead I pour it into the mold and scrape the mold down with a taping knife. I used 2/3 of my batch and I still had lots of leftover that scraped onto my pan. I decided I wanted to try the Chef Rubber ones since I needed another one anyway. Just purchased it today. Will see how that one works.

This is how I temper with seeding: Once one has melted chocolate (100˚F if starting with well tempered chocolate, if not well tempered in the beginning, 115˚F for dark and 110˚F for milk/white) start adding tempered chocolate (chopped or wafers) to the melted chocolate. Add slowly enough that one completely melts what one adds in. One doesn't want unmelted bits. Add smaller amounts of chocolate as one approaches working temperature. In order for chocolate to seed properly, some of the added solid tempered chocolate must be added below 95˚F. One can also add a large chunk of chocolate which one stirs in and then remove upon reaching working temperature. Stir until chocolate mixture has cooled to 90˚F for dark or 88˚F for milk and cocoa butter white. This can take 10-15 minutes. This is the working temperature. Check temper. If the chocolate doesn't set quickly, try stirring it a bit more then checking again.

Yesterday I did molded chocolates for the first time in months. I polished all my molds the same way but had varying degrees of shine. I remembered gfron1's comments here, the perfect temper has a LOT to do with the shine. The second is the temperature when piping my ingredients. The shiniest pieces were those where I filled some leftover shells with some caramel that I had finished with earlier but decided to pipe into the shells. It was much cooler than my other piped fillings (and thus a pain to pipe.) I think as I learn to be more precise in my tempering and more particular in my filling temperatures that the shine will improve.

Yesterday I spent a fun 10 hours with friend making molded chocolates. Jim D. was right that she was amazed with the whole process and finished product even though I saw many imperfections. We made Notter's Lemon Praline discussed above. I am a fan of citrus with white chocolate so we made a white chocolate ganache instead of milk chocolate. I wasn't using couverture white as I had some older white to use up, so I replaced a bit of the white chocolate with cocoa butter hoping that would help in making the melted ganache more fluid. When the white chocolate had a hard time melting and coming together (often my experience with older white chocolate), I was grateful for having read on this forum that an immersion blender can force the chocolate into submission. It worked beautifully. For the aforementioned lemon puree I used half lemon juice with some pulp and half Perfect Puree Meyer Lemon Concentrate. I did try the concentrate and RWood is totally right. It is very strong and very sour. I tried some plain and puckered for sure. I love lemon flavor though, so I decided to not dilute it. If I only had the PP I would not have used the entire amount as concentrate. I didn’t have an issue with the ganache splitting, but appreciate your hint to add a bit of extra water if I did. One of my children described the resulting ganache as white chocolate lemon curd. It was absolutely delicious! We also made the Salted Caramel Praline. I clearly saw the issue Douglas K talked about. In the Salted Caramel Praline it calls for 3 Tablespoons, 2.47 oz, or 70 grams of unsalted butter. The Lemon Praline calls for 3 tablespoons, 1.2 oz or 35 grams of unsalted butter. I can extrapolate that the metric is correct, but a bit more editing would be nice. I did have a honey ganache in the freezer and when we were finished we still had one tray shelled ready for something. I zapped it in the microwave for a bit and thankfully it came back together with some mixing and we piped it in. I can see how going from frozen to ready to pipe could be a risky proposition. Thanks for your comments and help on my questions. I really appreciate the helpfulness of those on this forum.

Thanks for the tips. I'll keep them in mind as I make these. I will experiment and see how it goes then report back what I did. Do you ever make your fillings ahead of time then heat them to bring them up to pipeable temp (83F)? That way, if I have issues with it I can try again and if it works, I could just save it in the fridge until production day. Wednesday will be my first chocolates of the season - Yay! I'm hosting a friend who wants to learn to make molded chocolates. I'm nervous because I don't consider myself an expert, but reminding myself I know more than she does so it will be fine.

@Jim D.Thank you so much. I knew you would have good insight. I have the same question with the Passion Fruit Pralines that call for passion fruit puree when I have access to passion fruit concentrate, Sounds like the recipe could work with either the puree or the concentrate. I'll have to experiment and see how it goes. Thanks again!

I'm looking to make Notter's Lemon Pralines from The Art of the Chocolatier. He calls for 2/3 cup lemon puree. I looked at the Boiron lemon puree which states its ingredients are lemon and sugar. I don't know it it's whole lemon or lemon juice. I have easy access to Perfect Puree's Meyer Lemon Concentrate. Ingredients are water, meyer lemon juice concentrate and natural lemon flavor. When Notter asks for lemon puree, does he mean with the pulp or do you think my Perfect Puree Lemon Concentrate will work? @Jim D.I know you've made many of these recipes, so tagging you here. Do you have some experience you can share with me?

Is it too late?

Totally right @curls, off topic here on that part. Not sure how to move part of a post over...or if needed at this point since I think the discussion is over.

This is how I make mine too. I'm also a very amateur chocolatier but love tempering with silk straight out of the sous vide or from the solid grated with a microplane. I had trouble with my first batch of silk in the sous vide. Kerry gave me the tip to fully melt the cocoa butter then give it a few days to solidify before making the silk. It worked to fix my problem the first time and when I made some more this month, I did the same thing even though I was working with different cocoa butter. Seemed like a good idea to get a clean start especially since I'm new at this. When I just made silk in my sous vide this past month, I started a little lower than I thought I would need, 91.5F, then stirred it at 12 hours. It didn't seem quite right, so increased my temp by 0.5F. My cocoa butter was a mayonnaise consistency around 92F. I know different cocoa butter can behave differently. Sounds like your question is, if the cocoa butter gets too hot during the silk making process, can you just turn down the heat to the appropriate temperature and hold it there for 12 - 24 hours? Good question. It seems to me like it would work if you held it for long enough for the crystals to form properly, but I'm interested to hear what someone with more experience thinks. I have found the best success by using a microplane and grating the amount I need into a seperate bowl and then adding it all at the same time. I add the grated solid silk at 94F. The chocolate loses heat fast as its crystallizing.

Thanks. I tried looking in YouTube but couldn't find it. I found it on Instagram.

Does anyone have a link to where I can watch this?

The recipe is similar to cookie batter with a couple differences I noted 1. It uses only egg whites (most of my cookie recipes use whole eggs or even whole eggs plus yolks). 2. The batter is thinner than cookie dough, more like a cross between cookie dough and cake batter.

I have tried the variety sold at Costco but don’t like it. I much preferred the King Arthur Flour recipe.

I just made this one from King Arthur Flour last week. We liked them. https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/brownie-crisps-recipe

I recently read an article on King Arthur’s site about using the tangzhong method. It touts one of the benefits as: Having retained more water during baking, bread and rolls will be moister, and will stay soft and fresh longer. https://www.kingarthurflour.com/blog/2018/03/26/introduction-to-tangzhong I’ve used this method a couple times and can attest to it tasting delicious but I can’t speak to it lasting longer as the loaves disappear pretty fast around here. However, it might be worth a try to see if it helps.

Lucky parents. 🙂 Those look nice!

Wow! Look at the shine and love the colors with the flavors!

Those look great! The lemon sounds especially refreshing! If you have an extra one, will you show what the inside looks like?

I’ve definitely thought of that, though not tried it yet. There is a Mexican drink called agua de jamaica which along with hibiscus flowers has cinnamon. I’ve thought an agua de jamaica bon bons would be delicious. It’s on my list.

I wonder if one of the advantages of the Presto cooker is that the temperature of the pot can be set pretty close to the desired final temp of the caramel. I noticed in chocolots photo that her pot set temp is just under 250. Not sure if she cooks the whole time at that temp, but if so, maybe there would be less carry over heat? I haven’t ever tested the caramel for texture while cooking. Maybe because I’m inexperienced, but it takes much longer than my thermopen, and I can’t see why temperature wouldn’t work just as well. However, there are lots of variables to be sure.

Jim, I'm using Grewelings Soft Caramels from his Chocolates and Confections at home and I have consistently positive results. It's designed to pour into a 9x13 straight sided pan, which I line with parchment for easy release (but now I'm going to try those molds when they arrive.) 4 oz water 1 pound sugar 14 oz sweetened condensed milk 12 oz light corn syrup 6 oz unsalted butter, soft 1 tsp salt (added at the end) 1 vanilla bean (I use a tsp real vanilla at the end of cooking.) All cooked to 245F. Listing it here in case it's helpful since it's worked for me.

I ended up buying the O'Creme mold. Mostly because I could give it a try with minimal cost investment. I'll report here how it goes. I just made caramels Monday and try as I might, I can't get them as uniform as I'd like. I guess I don't quite have the patience required. Then, I went searching for these molds. It is interesting the different styles of the molds, with some having a very thin separator between cavities, and others having a lot more space.

@RobertM, certainly sounds like many years of experience not to disagree! Anyone else using the caramel molds like chocolot is using? They look super handy. I'm kind of obsessive about getting my caramels all the same size. A chef knife and a ruler don't give the accuracy I'm looking for. I've thought about a caramel cutter, but the silicone caramel square molds seem easier than using a caramel cutter. I saw several very inexpensive brands on amazon. I usually subscribe to the "you get what you pay for" so usually don't go for the lowest priced option. I found the following brands that look quality when I did some looking (edited to show price with and without shipping.) O'Creme runs about $0.50 per cavity (free shipping with Prime) Chef Rubber runs about $1.15 per cavity ($1.00/ cavity without shipping) Truffly Made runs about $1.40 per cavity ($1.30/ cavity without shipping) JB Prince runs about $1.50 per cavity ($1.30/ cavity without shipping) Does anyone have real experience using these (or other brands)? Any issues with release? Any thing that surprised you with how they work?

@RobertM Thanks for the reply. Why do you like to use the Presto Kettle instead of just a pan on the stove?