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I greatly enjoy making chocolate truffles, but have had relatively poor luck holding chocolate at the correct temperatures for tempering. My standard method of very slowly melting it in a microwave produces chocolate that, while crisp with good mouthfeel, has severe bloom. After seeing some commercial tempering setups on YouTube, I noticed that many of them use a fountain-style setup for circulation and mold filling. I don't have any chocolate molds, but purchasing a secondhand consumer chocolate fountain and integrating a PID controller and thermocouple into the heater is a very viable possibility. Has anyone done anything like this?

Hi all! I'm on Long Island, NY, looking for a source of good chocolate and white chocolate that wont break the bank. Need it for Christmas confections (peppermint bark, coating caramels, etc) and refuse to use the melting wafers available locally (Merkens and Wilton). Suggestions? Thanks, Heather

There are lots of excellent recipes in eGullet and online for making English style/Buttercrunch/etc Toffee, coated on both sides with chocolate (tempered or not) and sprinkled with finely chopped nuts. eG's Kerry Beal has a really good one in Confectionery 101. I need to know if this recipe, or ones like it...I use a copycat Enstrom toffee recipe with basically the same ratios of sugar and butter...can be doubled or even tripled. Obviously a manufacturer like Enstrom makes huge batches at once, but perhaps this is one of those kinds of recipes which can't just be doubled or tripled holus bolus. I have foolishly agreed to help a friend and local professional fudge maker learn to make this kind of toffee. This Saturday. Morning. THEN she told me that she had a huge professional stove with huge copper kettles and needed to at least double the recipe for such a big pot. You can't put a normal sized pot...say 2 - 4 litres...on her stove. It has no rings. I haven't seen it and don't really know exactly what to expect. Carrying on...each batch she has attempted so far has been a failure in that the butter separated. We can come back to our place to try a simple one batch recipe if the big one fails again...or if someone, like Chocolot or Kerry Beal, tells me...no it doesn't work that way. You need a specially formulated recipe. Help Thanks.

Hi! I'm a newbie to confectionery. I've been lurking on this board for a few weeks and I've learned a lot, thanks to all of you. This is my first time posting! I hope you can help me with my little problem. I made a half recipe of Greweling's Rasberry Bites butter ganache. I poured it into a 8X8 pan and it set up nicely. Then I realized that it only made a very thin layer, so my chocolates would turn out very thin. So I had a bright idea - I made a half recipe of the Peanut Butter Gianduja (also Greweling) and layered that on top. That also set up nicely, actually somewhat harder than expected. Anyway, I managed to cut the ganache (bottom coated) and dip the squares in dark chocolate. They looked nice for a while, but after a few hours, hairline cracks have appeared along the corners on many of them. Also, droplets of sugary stuff are leaking out in places - looks like raspberry jam. I had the window open for a while (50F outside) because it was too warm in the kitchen. Temp. inside never got below 65F. Could this have caused the cracking? Thanks a lot for your help! Prabha

Are there any good desserts that utilize the pairing of apples and chocolate? Someone challenged me to come up with a compelling example and I failed.

I recently purchased this book but I'm unsure regarding the use of "glucose"... does anyone know if this refers to liquid glucose (corn syrup) or powdered glucose? Any advice would be grateful. Thanks, Stephen

I´m just working on dipping chocolate ganache in El Rey Mijao 61% dark choc. , but it seems to me it´s a litle thick. Do you have any information on this topic. I´ve read that most people adds cocoa butter from 5 to 10% for thining purposes. Can you help me?

Any suggestions of a good place to buy some new peanut butter cup molds online?

Hi I am going to be in Boston attending my niece's wedding next weekend and will have a little spare time. I would appreciate any recommendations for wonderful European style pastries and artisan chocolates. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

The aisles of our local stores are currently lined with row upon row of chocolate Easter bunnies. I bought two bunnies, "Honey" and "Sunny" made by the RM Palmer Company of Reading, PA. They're my favorite kind of Easter bunny-hollow milk chocolate. My Father prefers solid chocolate Easter bunnies, and I'm pretty sure he goes for the higher end Bunnies from the Godiva or Dove chocolate camps. Do you have a favorite chocolate Easter bunny?

I just returned from a vacation in Mexico and discovered the big (200g) bar of chocolate I had bought in the duty free shop while waiting at the airport. It is labeled Maria Tepozteca and is 70% chocolate with chiles. The texture is rough, and it doesn't have that glossy sheen and snap of nicely tempered chocolate but I'm kind of intrigued by it. I'm thinking brownies, with the addition of cinnamon might be a good way to use it. Alas, I am out of cinnamon ( ) and in the middle of moving this week, so I'm not sure if that will happen, at least no for a few weeks. Has anyone had this chocolate, and what have you done with it?

Can I substitute coconut fat for cocoa butter in peanut butter cup filling?

ok, so valentines day is around the corner and i had a request from a very old man for tiramisu. he said he had some in florence that was just amazing...amazing! i was trying to get him to explain what was so amazing, and he just sighed and said "i can't even tell you what it was, it was just amazing" so, yes , that gives me a lot to go on question being, he wants tiramisu for his wife for valentine's day to mimic the trip they had when they were younger, but i don't know what makes an AMAZING tiramisu. what do you guys think makes one super awesome? i myself barely know the components, let alone ratios and trying to make it "indescribable" but this man is too darn cute not to try. so....thoughts? also, i would love to make chocolate boxes, or hollow chocolate heart boxes for V-day and have no idea how to proceed. is there a mold for something like that? does anyone know how to make something like that or where i could find a mold for a choc box or a choc heart box? thanks so much you guys!

Hey everyone, I've been trying to hard to figure out a way of keeping acetate sheets curled long enough for the tempered chocolate i've spread on them to SET! They almost ALWAYS unravel and make a huge mess out of everything. (I don't have magnetic clips or anything, and paper clips just seem like a recipe for disaster). With reference to curls, I'm talking about somewhat spiraled ones, not one dimensional "curves". An example: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/__5LHZr7vZYc/Sd4n8_uDczI/AAAAAAAABvc/7z4Mp2C8q_s/s1600-h/DSC09903.JPG The acetate sheets need to be twisted more than once in order to produce similar looking curls but my problem arises when I need to secure the ends long enough for the chocolate to actually set. I also live in a humid environment and the chocolate ONLY sets in the refrigerator. I could leave it out for 2 days and it would still remain liquid due to the humidity here. Hope someone can help me out here Thank you!

You know how some cake decorators print edible images for cakes? Is this possible for chocolate transfers? i know of a wonderful company that makes transfers, and even has made logo ones for me...but i was looking into making my own for the mere fact that i have a lot of design ideas, but it might only take 5 sheets instead of 20.... question is, is there acetate paper and a printer and edible ink/cocoa butter that someone can buy to design their own transfer sheets? my husband is a graphic designer so it would be a great fit if we could do some things ourselves for certain projects....any thoughts on that? also, does anyone have a schedule or know of any chocolate shows coming up? or perhaps any chocolate trade shows or anything related to the industry that is happening in 2011? (besides our awesome eG workshop of course!) thank you!

Fat Guy just started an interesting topic about making your own hot cocoa mix. But, my question is different. I've always called it hot chocolate. What is this stuff we drink; hot chocolate or hot cocoa?

I'm looking for a good machine that'll grate bars or discos of chocolate into flakes or powder. Any suggestions appreciated. Thanks, Tom

I loved Jaques Genin's chocolate boutique and cafe, now comes along a more ambitious chocolate restaurant/boutique. http://www.ipreferparis.net/2011/02/sweet-week-3-un-dimanche-a-paris.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+IPreferParis+%28I+Prefer+Paris%29

I've been searching for a recipe for margarita truffles. Any suggestions?

Ok, so we tend to show off the jewels of the production, but certainly in my kitchen, there is a lot of stuff produced that is less than picture perfect. Let's bring them out into the light - as long as they taste good, the looks are bonus. I'll open by demonstrating how not to make a beautiful cocoa butter swirl. It was beautiful, but the swirl stayed firmly in the mould. It is salty caramel and almond. Tasty!

Perfect for Dipping by Melissa Clark is an article I found yesterday online in the NYT. What's this? Quick tempering of chocolate using a neutral vegetable oil? Why have I never noticed this before? Is this a terrible thing to do? I see that it 'lasts' only two days or so. What would I use it for? Of course I'm going to try it...the courverture, Guittard's Bittersweet, is out on the counter...but I'm really curious to know what, if anything, anyone else has to report about this technique.

Good morning from Norman, Oklahoma, home of the University of Oklahoma and suburb of Oklahoma City. For reference, Oklahoma is the state just north of Texas (no, it is not a musical by Rodgers and Hammerstein… that's Oklahoma! with an exclamation point. No one puts an exclamation point when they are talking about the state). Hopefully you've all heard of Texas, anyway, even if Oklahoma and Idaho and Iowa are all a blur. It is, alas, somewhat less idyllic than what Sheepish treated us to last week. Nevertheless, I eat well here. Not a whole lot of lamb, though! It's been a few years since my last foodblog, and life has changed more than a little. Some things, however, have not changed: OK, so that's a tiny change. Same mug, but now I brew pour-over rather than French press. Different coffee brand as well: Storyville Coffee sends me bi-weekly shipments of fresh-roasted beans. In my opinion, using fresh-roasted beans trumps any other factor when it comes to coffee quality. About some of the teaser photos Heidi posted: as someone who posts a ton of photos here at the eG forums, I had to work hard to find things to post that weren't dead giveaways! It's probably not well known that I love yogurt. The Fage is for eating plain, the Yoplait is for smoothies. Yes, the crocus was just meant to be a sign that it's spring here (I have dozens in various colors in my backyard blooming now, and the daffodils are just beginning to bloom as well). So, no saffron from them. Not that I don't love saffron. I just don't grow it. I think it's also not well-known that about a year ago I decided to try to learn to appreciate white wine, having been a red-drinker my whole life. So, a wine fridge. What you can't see in the photo is the identical wine fridge next to it that I use for curing salume. The wok? Well, I have a Big Kahuna wok burner, which you'll see a bit of this week. And the cookbooks are mostly what I'm cooking this week. I seldom actually plan out a week's meals when I'm not doing a "cooking through X" project, but just for you guys, this week, I have a plan. Let's see if I stick to it now…

There's about 6 pounds of Guittard Milk Chocolate sitting in my basement, leftover from a long Christmas story which no one needs to hear. I don't like the taste of milk chocolate: never have, never will. I can always use it over a longish period in cakes, icings, candies, ice cream, whatever, to give away. However, is there some way to hide/mask/alter the milk chocolatey-ness of it and use it for things we, as confirmed dark bittersweet chocolate lovers, might enjoy?

Hi folks. I'm quite new to this forum and also chocolate making. Loving every minute of it and finding this forum a god send! I am looking to somehow thin my chocolate a little in order to make my praline easier to dip. I use 60% dark from the Greneda Chocolate Company and it's far too thick to enable me to dip without getting into a righ old mess I've read cocoa butter and possibly veg oil? Any ideas? Thanks Joey

[Manager note: Follow this conversation from the begining at Chocolates with that showroom finish, 2004 - 2011] heard somewhere that the higher the % of cocoa in a chocolate then the thicker it is when in temper? is this true? it might explain things a little when im trying to temper the chocolate at work. Also, whats a good precise thermometer to use for tempering thanks