Muscadelle

You mean the darker chocolate? That’s the cap ( I use milk for the shell and dark for capping) sorry, here’s a better picture

I need help! This is a problem that has happened to me too many times. At first I thought the cracks happened because the chocolate I use to cap was not warm enough or I didn’t warm the surface enough before capping but now I think it may be because my shells are too thin. Do you think that‘s the problem?? I can not have that happen to me again! 😥 I let the ganache crystallize overnight and I cap with acetate sheets.

Hi everyone, I'll just ask my question in this thread: I made some bonbons with a caramel filling to sell during the holidays. So far in my chocolatier life, I've only made smaller batches so I stored them in a cellier at 16C and that was enough. but now I had to star a little earlier and would like to be extra careful. In an airtight container, are caramel bonbons good to go in the refrigerator? Should I consider freezing them? Any people have had bad experiences with texture changes due to storage?

The room temperature here is always 18C I make sur that when i'm painting, my molds are between 17,5 and 18,5C with the thermometer gun. . I always temper my cocoa butter and bring it to 28C if I paint and between 31 and 32 if I use the airbrush. When I pour the chocolate for the shells, the room temp is around 20C but right after molding I place my molds near a chilly air source for like 10 mins (AC in summer and a window starting october) after ten minutes you can see all the shells releasing. One problem that I have never had (And I've had many) is cocoa butter sticking to the mold... I realized that I can not paint a lot more than 5-6 molds before my cocoa butter starts going out of temper, even though it stays at the same temp (there's alway a thermometer in the cocoa butter). So I'd be delighted too if someone had a way to skip the tempering process altogether at least when spraying with an airbrush..

It’s clear cocoa butter with not color. The highlighter dust I used is from Roxy and rich but I guess you can use any brand. The difference between highlighter dust and sparkling powder is that you won’t get a full coverage with sparkling powder, you won’t be able to apply it with a brush either. I’m pretty sure you can get a good result too by spraying a thin layer of clear cocoa butter and spray some loose sparkling powder on it before it fully crystallize (Otherwise it won’t stick to it, contrary to the highlighter dust) but you won’t have full coverage. I’m making some tests with light pink and white sparkling dust with a white chocolate she’ll. I’ll post the results!

I know shiny metallic effects have been discussed here but omg you guys I think I just cracked it! You spray a thin layer of clear cocoa butter, you let it set dry and then you brush highlighter dust, that's it! I've been trying to obtain that finish since forever with a consistant result!

Interesting... I pay around CAD92 $ for Organic and faire trade chocolates from Valrhona. Waina - Andoa Lactee and Oriado

Yess, please post your experiments, would love to see the results!

i don’t know if they have one, I simply follow my instinct 😆

I have a feeling they're the same colour just different weight (even though they wrote a different name on chocolat-chocolat website) because if you look at the fat soluble powder on Roxy and Rich website, there's only one white. https://www.roxyandrich.com/food-coloring/fat-dispersible-food-colouring Only sparkling gold power, you can see that the result is mehh.

Personally, I like to spray or paint a thin coat of somewhat translucent cocoa butter and then spray the sparkling powder (powder form) and then give a super thin coat of cocoa butter to seal the powder. It gives a really nice finish!

Hi, I use Roxy & Rich and love their products though I gotta admit, working with their white powder is a pain in the ass. I feel like there's always some micro clumps left so I never use it. I think you can go a long way with red, blue and yellow AND black. if you want pinkish hues, i'd try their pink powder, really vibrant! To make a colour opaque I think you'll need to add at least 2-3% of colour powder to your cocoa butter. (it depends of the colour) As for the sparkling powder, make sure they're Hybrid Sparkle Dust and not lustre dust. The lustre dusts do not diffuse the light as much and it takes out some of shine, imo. If I add around 0.5 - 1% sparkling powder, I'm able to spray with a 0.5 nozzle. You'll alway need to back your sparkling powder with at least 2-3% regular colour powder. otherwise the brown of the chocolate will take over like this:

Hahaha, yeah well I've never been a big fan of yuzu myself but I get where you're coming from!

OMG that is beautiful!! I can't get over how awesome that is. I'm not sure exactly what you want to know... do you want to melt the cocoa butter on the surface enough to be able to apply new cb and blend it in? In that case you could try a long reach lighter and try to find the right distance from the surface and move it around.

I love that! I'm sure you could literally picture a walk in the forest when eating that bonbon, which is, imo, the greatest achievement one can make when cooking: evoking memories. I'm so thrilled! I'd have never thought I'd find someone who likes candying lobster mushrooms! It would be my pleasure to show you around if you travel to Quebec city, if i'm ever in St-Louis I'll definitely stop by your restaurant, menu looks really creative! One of my best bonbon is a simple fir tree (buds) infused white chocolate ganache. I like delicate flavours so resin is not my cup of tea. I could try pine but I feel it would be too similar to fir tree. If you want to take a look at some of the wild ingredients I work with: https://www.chocolatsvolage.com/pages/sauvage And some of my creations https://www.chocolatsvolage.com/pages/ingredients Sorry the web site only has a french version...

If Tonka bean is too difficult to find in the US maybe you can try your luck with sweetgrass, that's what i use. The smell and the taste is divine and similar to tonka! Don't use too much though because, same as tonka bean, it contains a lot of ''coumarine'' which is molecule that can cause your blood to thin too much is ingested in big enough quantity it can cause serious health problem. 2g for every 100g of cream in a ganache.

That is sooo interesting. My brand is about putting forward local products and ingredients that grow in the forest mainly, so my customer are pretty open minded about trying new things! Thanks i would have never thought to go there with the garlic.

I'm not sure if you're serious or not haha I'm all for bold and new flavours but garlic is really on another level. 😅 Unless we're talking black garlic which has a nice balsamic vinegar taste.

Yep, when you think about it afterwards it makes sense but i couldn't have expected it! I mean, when you cook mushrooms in butter it doesn't taste like cheese? It's a mystery! I already have a chocolate bonbon with a caramel filling made with candy cap mushroom powder, it does work but I just wanted to explore more avenues. They're delicious on their own, I canned them in their syrup. You can put some on your ice cream or pancakes, the syrup taste a little bit like maple. I wanted to try an put a little piece inside a bonbon with caramel or maybe make some similar to a pate de marron with it. But the taste is really fragile, it's easy to lose it inside a chocolate. Oh and they're chanterelles! I guess the taste will differ a lot depending on the mushrooms you use.

Today I made a test bringing my mushroom syrup to 120C. By the smell, I knew I couldn't go higher. I added butter and a little cream and something extraordinary happened... Umami happened!! My caramel has a scent and a taste reminiscent of cheese!!! But in a really good way! 💛 I know it sounds off putting but It is so tasty!! I dont know what I will do with it, i still need to work on the fluidity but anyway, I'll keep you posted!

Thank you so much for sharing the results of your previous experiments! Since it is a candied mushrooms syrup, maybe it will react more like a the marrons glacés and less like candied fruits syrup. I will make some tests keeping everything that was said in this thread in mind, and I'll share the results!

Okay interesting, the post below mention 115 minimum but it also mention that an higher temperature has good chances of ruining the thing. Since my syrup already has a beautiful light maple syrup color I can not count on my eyes for this one. I might try 108, I dont mind not having the caramel flavor that much. I just want to get it high enough to get a nice caramel texture. I’ll try to balance it with salt if it’s disgustingly sweet 😅 thank you very much for those thoughts! Oh no! I knew at some point some people had the same idea and tried it. do you think it’s because of some leftover food particles in the syrups that burns before the sugar can caramelise. I’ll filter it with cheese cloth before hand and see what happens... Thank you for the warning, I won’t get my hopes too high.

Hi everyone! One of my culinary nemesis has always been caramel. I would like to make a caramel from a syrup in which I previously candied something in. (A caramel to pipe in moulded bonbons) That syrup is 70° Brix and is approx 95% sucrose / 5% glucose. The syrup is already perfumed so I would like to bring it to the minimum temperature at which I would be able to make a nice piping caramel. I've read that 70 ° Brix equals roughly the 37° Baumé (Petit boulé stage (112C-117C)). Do you guys think it's ok to just bring my syrup to 120°C and then add some butter? Thank you in advance for your help!

No problem, all the flakes stuck to the chocolates! I use hybrid sparkling powder from Roxy & Rich, their products are made in Montreal and are sold by Chocolat Chocolat. (I dont know if it's authorized to recommend specific brands here) Anyway, they have a line called Hybrid sparkle dust which reflects the light a lot more than the Hybrid Lustre dust. I even mix some into the cocoa butter even though it's not made for that purpose and it works great. Otherwise I use a powder spray pump and spray after having applied cocoa butter. I like it because it always gives a nice transparency/ombre look. here's an exemple of spraying red and green sparkling powder after making black cb swirls. The other one is gold sparkling powder mixed with cb and used with andrey dubovik technique with the airbrush. white chocolate shell.

Hi, I'm new here, I've been lurking for such a long time here and this community seems so nice, I thought it was time i joined... so here it is my first post! I tried something like that a while ago, I got a nice result by applying a thin coat of clear cocoa butter than sprinkling some gold flakes and pressing them gently to flatten them and make them stick to the cocoa butter. I used a cotton ball at the time but now that i use an airbrush, maybe it could work if you spray very lightly from far away. The idea is only to have something to make the gold flakes stick otherwise it will blend into your chocolate.