Altay.Oro

Did you precrystallize the ganache? The precrystallization really so much affects the firmness of the end result of ganaches.

It was a little bit grainy and weak ... maybe can be said a little bit soupy. I used Greweling method for slabbed ganaches, that is, combined tempered and melted milk chocolate with cream which cooled down to 40 C. First I added the honey at the room temperature to the cream ... poured it down onto the chocolate. My temperature was between 30 - 32 C, I guess, when I started to stirring. I worked in the melter so I think that it never saw below 30 C. Pastrygirl is right, I realized later that there was too much fat in my original formula, but I could not understand why it was not emulsified with the added cream and as a last resort with water. Without extra cocoa butter, the cocoa butter ratio was % 19 in the recipe ... for a slabbed ganache, I wanted to increase it to % 25 or more, but I missed the amount of water required to emulsify the increased amount of butter.

Have you ever experienced a ganache refusing being emulsified to death? My initial ingredients ... milk chocolate - 100 grams, cocoa butter - 20 grams, honey - 10 grams, cream - 50 grams ... I worked at correct temperatures, stirred between 30 - 35 C, Tried immersion blender, Later, I poured considerable amount of cream, And even added pure water at the end ... But no luck.

Anyone having tried the "Rob Roys" recipe at the page 160 in the "Chocolates and Confections" second edition by Greweling? He says ... cut it with guitar after overnight crystallization at room temperature. It is a milk chocolate ganache ... and I think it is a very watery and syrupy / honeyed ganache for being slabbed ganache, having only ~17% cocoa butter. Anyone here really having done this recipe and could cut it with guitar or with knife cleanly?

I can not think of anything but caramelized / sugar coated nuts, seeds etc. And ... the formulation of the filling should be well balanced and the total water content be well saturated, I think. But no experience, I've never tried caramelized nuts directly in moist fillings like ganaches.

Is there any advisable temperature range in which the butter should be added to the ganache emulsion? After ganache properly set at 20 - 22 C, does the temperature at which we added the butter have any effect on the consistency of the end result?

Thank you both ... I'm still at the designing stage of my product range and I really benefit so much from your posts on this forum.

Enjoy it - I suppose it is said so in English - Is it practical to use one Selmi enrober with two tempering machines ... for example ... using it to enrobe with milk chocolate in the mornings and then later using it with the temperer filled with the dark chocolate in the afternoons?

It is not important ... we will just need the nutritional values label of your cream ... and for the dark chocolate you're using.

Would be great ... waiting the real aW measurement )) Then I need to recalculate it more precisely ... taking into account the lactose and the water absorbed by the nonfat cocoa solids.

No math indeed, maybe the summation sign here is confusing a little. Example calculations ... The recipe, 200 gr dark chocolate 100 gr cream (% 35) 50 gr butter (% 82) 20 gr invert sugar 20 gr glucose syrup 5 gr powdered sorbitol First thing is to calculate the total water content of the recipe. In doing so, I take into account the water coming from the sugar syrups as well. 100 gr % 35 cream has approximately 60 gr water 50 gr % 82 butter has 8,5 gr water 20 gr invert sugar has 4 gr water 20 gr glucose syrup has 4 gr water Total water in grams: 76,5 grams Then calculate the E values for different type of sugars ... Lets assume %45 sucrose in dark chocolate, then we have 90 grams sucrose ... then E.sucrose = 1 * 90 / 76,5 = 1,1765 E.invert = 1,3 * 20 / 76,5 = 0,3399 E.glucose = 0,8 * 20 / 76,5 = 0,2092 E.sorbitol = 1,3 * 5 / 76,5 = 0,0850 Total E value = 1,1765 + 0,3399 + 0,2092 + 0,0850 = 1,8106 aW = 1,04 - (0,1 * 1,8106) + (0,0045 * 1,8106 * 1,8106) = 0,8737

There are a lot of mathematical models trying to approximately predict the water activity levels ... one of them is Grover's model, very simple and in my calculations it gives really good approximations. I cursorily tried it with the recipes from the J. P. Wybauw's "Great Ganache Experiences" book which do not include fruit purees. For some recipes, it really gives good predictions ... but for some not so good. I think that the differences mainly come from the constant used in the model for glicose syrup ... and for some recipes, I also think that there may be some measurement errors for aW values given in the book. The constant for sorbitol is given as 1.3 in some other sources ... in my opinion, this constant should as well be taken with a grain of salt.

Maybe not big enough for painting molds ... As I will not use any food coloring, I'm not so worrying about painting a wall with white chocolate ... milk chocolate lightened with white chocolate reserved for doors.

Thank you again ... this surely will help me a lot.

I think so ... probably personal experiences will be more educative for me than reading all the 34 pages here ... thanks a lot anyway.

I want to cover all the cavities in a mold with two layers of different types of chocolate, one is very thin layer and it is under the main shell of a different type of chocolate ... for example, thin milk chocolate layer under the main dark chocolate shell. For casting the thin layer, do I need to have airbrush + compressor pair? Or ... would this type of equipment https://www.bosch-diy.com/za/en/p/pfs-1000-0603207000-v35962 do the job for me? What about applying the thin layer with a piece of sponge ... not tried yet, I will try it soon ... does it work?

Maybe a simple question ... if we have a saturated water - sugar solution ratio (I mean 1 unit water and approximately 2 units sugar at 20 C and the water here not absorbed by the nonfat cocoa solids) in a ganache recipe, would adding more sugar in any form decrease the water activity (aw) reading?

https://www.instagram.com/p/CL11DG3D0av/ https://www.instagram.com/p/CMFkUY4DV0Y/ Hi, What is the material used in these boxes? For Google search, which term I should use?

Same with you ... in my tests, I haven't seen any noticeable difference as well ... but Peter Greweling, Ewald Notter and some other chocolatiers in the recipes in their books always use melted chocolate and are tempering gianduja at the end of the process. Maybe it is just a habit coming from producing gianduja in bulk quantities with big melangeurs.

In terms of taste, appearance, structure, mouthfeel etc. of the final result ... is there any difference between these two methods ... combining melted, not tempered chocolate with nut pastes and tempering gianduja at the end ...and using already tempered chocolate without tempering at the end?

By the way ... bitter almond oil, cold press fixed oil, is sold here not for intake ... probably for its dangerous and risky nature to eat and to use in foods. Orange, pepermint, thyme are ok.

Melissa Coppel is preapring a ganache here, https://www.instagram.com/p/CLjw2l7H4Dx/ It is very shiny and ... so elastic that going back and forth at the tip of the piping bag, if not a manipulated video. I think that glucose syrup is responsible for the shine ... and invert sugar for elasticity, Any other thoughts? What is the fourth ingredient ... is it salt, maybe to much amount for salt ... or powdered sorbitol?

Maybe they are not so easily evaporating when used in tempered chocolate ... let me try ... Thank you Jim ...

This wiki page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_oil says that "In relation with their food applications, although these oils have been used throughout history as food preservatives, it was in the 20th century when EOs were considered as Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)." And ... there is a long list of essential oils on the page under the title of "Use in food" ... Do you use essential oils in your ganaches safely? Bitter almond, peppermint, thyme, orange, lemon, etc ...

Thank you ... seems really a must-have item for bonbon producers.