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So, what is everyone doing for the pastry & baking side of Easter? I'm working on the following chocolates: fruit & nut eggs, hollow bunnies, Jelly Belly filled bunnies, coconut bunnies, dragons (filled with rice krispies & chocolate), peanut butter hedgehogs, and malted milk hens. Hoping to finish my dark chocolate production today and get started on all my milk chocolate items. My father-in-law will be baking the traditional family Easter bread a day or two before Easter. Its an enriched bread and he makes two versions -- one with raisins and one without (I prefer the one with raisins). And I was lucky enough to spot this couple in the sale moulds stock at last year's eGullet chocolate & confections workshop in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. These love bunnies help so very much with Easter chocolate production! ;-)

hi everyone, Another problem occurred with our caramel recipe for our bonbons. I had a perfect texture using my recipe for 32 cavities and when I multiplied that by 2 the caramel was a completely different texture and very runny. Any suggestions why this happened? Thank you

I have an opportunity to obtain (without a trip to NYC, where everything appears available) some hard-to-find liqueurs or brandies for my chocolate work, primarily in ganaches. I already have a poire Williams eau-de-vie and a framboise one as well. I have German kirschwasser but am getting low on that, so am thinking of getting more while I have this chance. For new ones, I'm thinking primarily of apricot. I have heard there are some wonderful European apricot brandies/liqueurs, but don't know which really taste of apricots and are worth purchasing. And the other flavor I would like is a strawberry brandy or liqueur. Online I've found Dolceterra Marcati wild strawberries liqueur and Drillaut strawberry liqueur but know nothing about either. I lean more toward a liqueur/cordial than eau-de-vie because sometimes I think the latter does not always taste specifically of the fruit. Any guidance would be much appreciated, including ideas for fruits I haven't mentioned.

Anyone can help why this is happening to my caramel bonbon after I scrape? They are not very full and it happened to almost all of them

Hi there, Does anyone know of a good app which allows you to enter orders which come from your website to keep track of them and schedule in a calendar. View of paid invoices, unpaid and any extra features to help with online ordering?

Serious help please 😬 In production of airbrushing many moulds at a time: Paint and scrape the mould immediately for each mould every time After scraping the mould you cant get everything off so you need to clean each mould on paper As a result paint from the edges of the mould chips off Please see picture attached and if anyone has any suggestions it would be greatly appreciated. Any tricks on scraping and cleaning moulds after airbrush when in production. Thank you Egli

Hey Guys, I have just managed to acquire two secondhand 2016 Selmi One's at a good price, but they did not come with operator manuals. Since the very first thing I want to do is give them as thorough a clean as I can, I feel having access to a manual is vital, and yet I don;t seem able to find one online. As such, I have reached out to the UK agent, but thought I would also ask here if anyone has a digital copy they could ping me? I'm really excited to have purchased these two Selmi's following some outside investment in my chocolate racing helmet business. Also within the next couple of days, both Mario Andretti and Fernando Alonso will be tasting my creations, which if you know anything about motorsport, is kind of a big deal Cheers guys! Matthew

I am a new start up in chocolate making. I tried to freeze a container with my bonbons and all the caps just cracked after using my simple vacuum machine. Please help! Which containers should I use and how do you vacuum pack these containers. Anyone with a picture of the container would help. thank you

WANTED: Chocovision tempering machine. Looking for a gently used tempering machine. Anyone have one they like to sell? thanks!

So I seem to be doing the thing where the more I find out and learn about chocolate the more I realize I don't know. I'm wondering how little I can get away with spending in the very beginning. My husband is back in school and I'm wondering if chocolate experimenting is even feasible right now or if its something I should wait on. I figure I can practice tempering and molding at a low cost, but from there does it get steep?

What kind of boxes do people use to package non-standard molded bonbons? Specifically the longer ones like the cacao pod, teardrop or "slug". I bought molds that I love but they dont fit in the standard paper cups or trays and Im struggling to figure out how to package them. I'm just getting started with my chocolate business so I'm not at the point where I am ready to invest in custom packaging. I bought some boxes that I like from ClearBags and am planning to add a branded label but I dont think they're secure enough. My chocolates will shift all around if given the chance. Any advice would be great.

I hope this isnt a dumb question, I'm super new to chocolate work and am I trying really hard to learn. I just bought Greweling's book C&C and many of the recipes call for liqueurs. I'm wondering if its possible to replace them without unbalancing them too much. Would extracts work? Thanks in advance.

Hi there, I am looking for a very simple vegan bonbon recipe that is just a dark ganache. I am having trouble balancing a coconut cream that has less fat than UHT cream to have a balanced recipe that can have a 3 month shelf life. My bonbon recipe had mould after one month testing. Anyone have any good solutions?

I need some help to balance my recipe fillings for my bonbons. Anyone have time to help me? I have based myself on Ramon Moratos %

For my purposes I have mastered the art of packaging chocolate bars, but search as I might I cannot find an eGullet thread or any information on packaging chocolate eggs. I ask as I have an egg mold in transit. Assuming I can successfully fabricate an egg, how can I wrap or package it? All I can think of is cellophane. I've seen pictures so I know some of you are making eggs. Do not deny it. When I was little and still celebrated holidays the neighborhood candy establishment sold eggs in windowed cardboard boxes with cellophane grass*. That was the early 1950's. Is this still the state of the art? *cellophane grass tastes terrible. And the ubiquitous coconut cream filling not much better.

Hi there, i am moving into our lab next week so excited!!!! I have one million questions but the ones popping up in my head are 1) If I have 6 moulded bonbon recipes to airbrush, fill and cover and 6 bars recipes to make for our production,how do you organise production? Can someone give me an example of their weekly plan am and pm plan just to get an idea? I have a Selmi 😀. 2) how many bonbons and bars should I produce just before we launch? I have my budgets and projections but you know those first weeks God knows how you will do! Should I be freezing from the beginning? And what is the ideal packaging way to freeze bonbons? Thank you so appreciate it!

Hi there, Anyone use any specific equipment or product to clean chocolate from floors?

Does anyone have a chewy chocolate caramel recipe they love? One that holds its shape but can be cut on a guitar? The recipes I’ve tried have either been not very chocolate-y or suuuuuuuper stiff. Like, I bruised the palm of my hand cutting them stiff :(. Or or even if you can just point me in the direction of some theory, that would be great!

A mistake was made with my Albert Uster order this week and I received it twice. Since it's shipped from CA, doesn't go bad, and I'll use it eventually, I'm not going to mess with trying to return the second delivery. But now I have a huge amount of inventory so I thought I'd see if anyone here was looking for Felchlin by the bag. Each bag is 2kg (4# 7oz) in the following varieties and prices: Maracaibo Creole 49%, $48 Sao Palme 60%, $30 Arriba 72%, $46 As for shipping, I can fit 2 bags in a medium flat rate box for $14 or 3 bags in a large box for $19 to go anywhere in the USA. If you'd like some, PM me with your selection, email, and shipping address. I'll invoice you via Square and you can pay securely online with a credit card. Thanks for reading!

I made aerated chocolate using the recipe from Greweling's "Chocolates & Confections." However, the air bubbles are not very big and I'm not a huge fan of the finished result. I would much prefer to reuse it in a different form. Any idea if it would be possible to melt and reuse the couverture? Or is it doomed since now it has a bunch of O2/NO in it? I worked so hard to get the bubbles in and now I want them out! 😣

Hello, My question is this... Is there a company that manufactures an automated machine capable of wrapping cube-shaped caramels and chocolates??? And would such a machine also be capable of wrapping large (3-4 oz.) rectangular chocolate bars or would such a product require a flow wrapping machine? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

I am trying to work on making some chocolates for my diabetic sister. As the sweetener, I used Swerve, an erythritol-based sweetener that supposedly behaves like sugar (and that my sister likes.) I added it to my standard milk chocolate recipe from Chocolate Alchemy- http://chocolatealchemy.com/recipes/dark-milk-chocolate-45 It came out of the melanger fine and set up OK. But, when I went to temper it, it would not melt! Even after an hour at 140F, it was about the consistency of peanut butter. Has anyone worked with Swerve and have any successful recipes? Or have any idea why it was so viscous? The stuff is darned expensive, so I don't want to experiment too much.

Hi, I am looking for a seriously quiet compressor which works well for daily bonbon airbrushing. Can someone recommend something that is quiet and oil free? Thank you

Well, I guess I am more curious than embarrassed. Although I use fairly good quality chocolate to make dipped citrus peels, bonbons and so on, I also use a lot of less than good quality chocolate to make toppings on pies and cakes, particularly for friends and neighbors who think that Merkens is delicious. Well, that's unkind, but you know what I mean. In Canada, we have a chocolate called 'World's Finest' and it is truly awful. Oh well. So here is the situation. I have purchased from Canadian Wal-Mart for a good number of years now a bar, Waterbridge Imported Belgian, 400 grams, in Milk, Dark and Extra Dark varieties. And my topping is invariably 4 oz of chocolate and 1/2 cup of half and half or whipping cream. And it always sets just fine. Perfect. About 3 months ago, I made a Milk chocolate topping for a friend who loves milk chocolate. It didn't set. It was soup. OK. But the Dark and Extra Dark still worked fine. Two days ago, both of those were soup. I wrote to Wal-Mart noting the change, and also that the ever-present gold cardboard is now missing from the bars. They apologized profusely and offered me my money back. (In the meantime, I figured out that 1/4 cup of cream would work perfectly.) The ingredients are: for the Extra Dark: cocoa mass, sugar, cocoa powder, soy lecithin and the Dark: cocoa mass, sugar, cocoa butter and soya lecithin. What do you suppose they did to the mix to make it so different?

I've seen so much beautiful molded chocolate work here I decided to come to the experts. I'm still trying to get consistent shine on my molded chocolates (not using colored cocoa butter yet). I typically get a few really good ones, most have some spots with really good shine and some ok shine, and then maybe I have 1 dud (air bubble or some kind of blemish). I'm just wondering, what would you all say are the top 3 tips to getting that consistent super shine?