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I live in a household of beer snobs - craft beer snobs to be precise. So there's been some pressure here for me to create beer chocolates. I completed experiment #1 yesterday and want to share for feedback and / or thoughts. I based my ganache recipe off how you'd do a fruit puree-based ganache. However, instead of adding a fruit puree, I created a "liquid" beer gel from a liquid port gel recipe I found on a molecular cooking site. Simply, this combined beer and agar agar. The gel was cooled and then pureed with an immersion blender. I had to add about twice as much beer as the recipe called for because upon pureeing, the gel broke into teensy tiny little balls of gelified beer. Not good. I had to heat/reheat and keep blending and adding beer until I got a more or less pudding like beer gel. Not terribly scientific, but the beer retained most of its flavor (I used a Founders barrel aged ale - so very strong and flavorul beer to start with). I added the beer gel to a ganache that had cream and butter and a 38% milk chocolate base. The ganache recipe I was working from also calle for glucose and invert sugar, which I'd rather leave out if using milk chocolate because the gananche turned out too sweet IMO. However, it has a nice beer flavor and is smooth. I think the beer flavor should be stronger. Next version I'll either omit or reduce the sugar and/or use a 58%ish chocolate base. Maybe also add more of the beer gel (then add more butter?). I have another experiment I'll be working on as well this weekend, and it will involve actually infusing the cream with the ingredients we'd normally use to brew a stout (chocolate malt, roasted barley, hops, etc.). It may end up tasting like a delicious bread truffle, since I can't ferment the ganache! :-) Would love to hear others' experiences or ideas. Cheers!

Are there any eGullet members who have ordered chocolate boxes from Chinese packaging companies? I have used boxes from Chocolat Chocolat in the past, but need customized boxes now in much larger quantities in order to take my business to the next level. I'm looking for Chinese companies who make sturdy customized boxes and offer debossing or embossing. Quality is of course key but communication and responsiveness are important too. I'm interested in purchasing 1000 to 2000 pieces at a time. Unfortunately, there seems to be no American company that can do what I need for a reasonable price. The companies I contacted either tell me they cannot do what I need, or their prices are way too high to make it work for my business. I also know that many providers of chocolate boxes here in the US get their boxes from China, so ordering directly from China makes a lot of sense to me. This being said, I checked out quite a few companies featured on the Chinese site Alibaba.com. There are so many companies that it is really hard to know which companies offer great quality and service. All seem to offer samples, which is good. Thanks in advance for any helpful replies.

I have been asked to make individual Mississippi Mud Pies for a catering company and have been doing some Internet searching on the subject. Firstly, MMP's are not very well known in South Africa and I have never seen one or tasted one, so I thought Google was my friend. Well, I have found so many different desserts called MMP's that are so different and varied that I still have no idea what a MMP should look and taste like. I did an eG search as well and came across many mentions of this dessert, but no recipes. Can anybody give me a few pointers or point me to a recipe or two for me to get aquatinted with this "pie". Just for a bit of extra info, the request is for individual portioned pies made in 70mm (D) x 50mm (H) ring moulds. Any gelatine used must also not be animal derived. The pies can be frozen and should have a shelf life of around 5 days once defrosted or from fresh, if not frozen. Any help will be greatly appreciated. John.

Hi! I've never been interested in cooking. But, then I ate some really good food, and became curious. I bought the Modernist Cuisine, and the last few weeks I have made food that is on another level than anything I have ever cooked before. This is truly amazing, and I have found a new hobby. I like the precision, and I do not fear the equipment. I just wasn't aware that food could be cooked this way. I have always loved chocolate pralines, for as long as I can remember. There are a few small local producers where I live, and I have found my favorites among their creations. I sometimes buy a couple of pralines, especially from one of the producers, and each one of the pralines taste so good that eating another is impossible for at least 15-20 minutes - it takes time to process the experience of the last one! (Compare this to what you buy at the supermarket, the only flavor found there is the one of excess amounts of glucose syrup, I think.) My recent experiences with Modernist Cuisine tells me that it is possible for me to create excellent tasting food in my own kitchen. That makes me wonder - would it be possible for me to make professional grade chocolate pralines in my own home? I truly want to try. I have skimmed through this forum and found advices on which books to buy. I will most likely order one and start from there, and currently I am thinking about going for a Greweling, but, I thought I would ask you first. My wishes, in order of importance: 1. Modernist Cuisine has totally changed the way I approach food. I would like to find a source of information on chocolate, that is as precise and detailed. Preferably, I would like it to teach techniques, which I can later use when following recipes. 2. I am looking for excellent taste! Is it possible to create chocolate pralines at home, by carefully following laid out recipes, that can provide me with similar episodes of 15-20 minutes of introspection that my local small scale producers are able to do? In my mouth, the less sweet praline is often preferred over more sweet ones. 3. In those truly mind blowing experiences, texture plays an important role. I think I need to understand how to control the final texture of the different parts of my future creations. Experiments that result in experience is most likely needed. 4. Appearance. I love simple and clean appearances. Initially, I do not want other colors added than those of the chocolate itself. Visually, I think I would prefer a style that is somewhat conservative? Imagine three different pralines, all looking roughly the same, quite anonymous, served with coffee after dinner, where each one turns out to be something very, very special. My question, which is the reason for starting this thread, is this one: Should I even try this? If my expectations are higher than what is achievable, I want to do something else instead. If I were to start with only one book, which book would that be? Thanks in advance!

It's time to start planning the next Chocolate and Confectionery Workshop. The 2015 Workshop is planned (again) for the Northern Virginia (Washington DC suburb) area. I'm working with a friend to help me out this year. We are working on obtaining the Stratford Culinary School again for the conference and hope to have the location approved and locked down in the near future. I have a guest instructor lined up that everyone will truly enjoy, but until we have contracts in place, I'm not letting that cat out of the bag. We also have tentatively lined up a Sugar demo for Sunday morning for those that would be interested in that aspect. This is just to announce that there will be a 2015 conference, so please start letting me know if you plan on coming (and/or are interested in joining us). Further details and information (costs/dates/etc) will be announced as we finalize them. When you indicate your interest would you also please let us know if you would be interested in a "Masters" class, similar to what was arranged for the 2014 Conference? If we obtain enough interest in such a class we need to assure we can get the kitchen space for an additional day - please don't forget that would also incur an extra added expense for those attending the Masters Class. Watch this space for exciting breaking news as it develops

Has anyone successfully made this at home before? The recipe from their cookbook isn't descriptive enough and I've had moderate success with it but the sabayon texture just looks much more aerated in the ambroisie version

Years ago I bought a chocolate, probably bitter sweet, and I believe it came out of Canada. This product was darker than unsweetened chocolate and made a gorgeous black ganache with a wonderful sheen. It was probably a 25 lb box and was in disc form. Does anyone know what it is?

A visitor from Switzerland recently brought some exceptionally tasty chocolate truffles as a gift, and I find myself wondering how they were done. I have done a tiny amount of truffle making myself for holiday gifts, but I am nothing near expert with techniques or flavors of different types of chocolate. Given how much everyone in the house enjoyed them, though, I am wondering if I can produce something similar at home when we particularly feel like a treat. I know that different chocolates will give different flavors, which I am prepared to experiment with a bit. What is stumping me is that the dark chocolate ganache filling has a cooked or almost burnt taste to it to me - not strong, and not caramel. It is very much like the scent that you get when baking something like brownies. Is it possible that they intentionally overheated a small amount of chocolate to get that flavor, or is it something that some varieties of chocolate have naturally? (I am working my way through various chocolate threads on egullet ATM. I had no idea I'd been quite lucky with my previous ganache efforts as I've never had any major issues with behavior or texture. Though I imagine having done it just for the home in small amounts helps - I never made enough for gifts that long term shelf life would be an issue.)

Hello, I've been trying to make these liquid center pralines using starch and then covering with tempered chocolate for the las couple of days. I am having problems when I pour the syrup in the starch holes. I've managed to make it in a way that it doesn't penetrate the starch(sometimes), but when I have to cover the filled holes with more starch it just goes trough the liquid, it doesn't stay on top of it. Almost forgot, if anyone has thought in a way to put them in a painted mold (with the chocolate shell already of course) I would like to read your experiences before I start experimenting myself. Hope you could give me some advise. Greeting from Peru P.D.: I don't post much in the forum, but I do read it and appreciate a lot any help you can give me, much of the advise you gave me took me from failing with painting to this: (many thanks to Kerry and everyone that helped me)

I've been making chocolates in my spare time over the past few years, but have taken a few big steps lately towards shifting from pastry chef to chocolatier. I had packaging designed and made, cobbled together a website, rented space in a commissary kitchen, and am almost out the door at the restaurant. Yup, finally quit the day job! I've done two pop-up shops and will be part of another on Saturday, and today I exhibited and sold at the Seattle Luxury Chocolate Salon. I'm learning a lot, but one thing I still need to figure out is how to determine shelf life and balance that with production. Products are filled bonbons, ganache truffle squares, bars with fillings or inclusions, caramels, and pate de fruits. My estimate of shelf life is around 2 weeks for bonbons and pdf, 3-4 weeks for truffles, and longer for caramels and bars. I guess I don't have a specific question, more looking for insight on how other confectioners & chocolatiers manage to have efficient production. Do you date your product? Refrigerate/freeze it? How do you determine your sell by date? How many orders/boxes of an item do you usually make at once, and how long does it take to sell? How much of a window before the sell by date do you think people expect? Is it better to have an earlier sell by date and risk people thinking it might be bad when it probably isn't, or have a later date and risk people waiting too long and eating things not at their peak? Your thoughts & experience are appreciated! Andrea

I'm wondering what you recommend as the best books about France chocolate cakes or great chocolate? Thank

Hi! I have been recently tasked with incorporating a red, fruity wine into a chocolate mousse for an event at the restaurant/winery where I work. I'm fresh out of pastry school so I'm still relying on my school recipes and knowledge from class vs years of work experience. I made a chocolate mousse today and had to add about 8oz of wine before I could really detect the flavor. The result unfortunately is a soft almost soupy mousse...which I would expect after adding so much of an additional liquid. My question is, how can I incorporate the wine, so I have the flavor, but still keep my chocolate mousse firm. My mousse is made by starting with a bombe (whipped yolks and cooked sugar), to that I add melted chocolate (14oz). At this point I also added the wine and then folded in whipped cream. If I add more yolks, will that help to stiffen my mousse? Would it make sense to cook down the wine and use as a reduction? Any advice is appreciated, thanks!

Hello everyone, I am brand new to eGullet. I started playing around with chocolates about two years ago. Mostly basic truffles, and bark and similar things. I'm excited to learn a lot from everyone here as I can tell just by a quick glance over some of the discussions that there is a lot of great information passed on by great people. Today I have a question related to my first experiment in making molded chocolates about a year ago. At the time, I just wanted to see what molding was like, so I made the shells (which turned out suprisingly well), but hadn't really planned a filling. On a whim, I filled them with a tasty strawberry jam. They turned out quite nicely. Since them, I have also made various flavor curds (sugar, egg yolks, butter, and juice) which I have used. They seem to taste pretty good and go down well at parties. As I'm learning more about chocolate making, I've noticed that these kinds of fillings don't seem to be used by anyone. Is this purely a shelf life issue? All my chocolates have been eaten within a week (often much less) of making, and I've never noticed any issues. Have I just been lucky? The people I've fed them to seem to enjoy them, especially a double layer one I made for a cinco de mayo party that was lime curd and chile ganache. Any other ideas why jam and curd type filling aren't used? Katie

Borrowing a page from Modernist Cuisine, I put 500ml of whole milk and 70 grams cocoa nibs in an ISI container with two charges of NO2. Eight to twelve hours later I strained. The milk is white with a grains of cocoa (which fall out on their own), but tastes strongly of chocolate -- it's white chocolate milk. As a drink, with sweetener it's delicious. But baking with it the flavour evaporates. Why, and does anyone have a suggestion on how to keep the chocolate flavour? To be more specific, I used the white chocolate milk in place of milk in drop cookies and white cake batter. In the batter the flavour is noticeable, after baking, it's gone. Baking times were between 10 and 40 minutes. The only thing I can think to do is try the experiment again with heavy cream and see if the fat preserves the flavour. Any thoughts on this?

Has anyone ever tasted a really good fresh-tasting citrus ganache? I have once. It was a lime bonbon made by Franck-Fresson over in France. Unfortunately, now every citrus ganache since then has tasted, well, old. Does anyone has any idea how these are done? I've gone as far as adding freshly squeezed lime juice to a zest-infused ganache (calculated with a slightly lower fat percentage than usual so the fat doesn't inhibit the flavour too much) and found that they still couldn't compare. Help?

Has anybody made the orange raspberry bon bon from Notter's book "The Art of the Chocolatier: From Classic Confections to Sensational Showpieces"? It is described as a smooth raspberry coulis, atop a dark ganache, infused with fresh orange juice, encased in a dark chocolate shell. What did you think of it? I'm very curious about the texture and taste of the raspberry coulis. Unfortunately the book shows a picture on the finished piece (no step-by-step photos or a cut-away photo).

I made bananas foster Bon bons for the favors for my parents 50th anniversary party favors, using the banana ganache recipe from M. Laiskonis' workbook. I made a dry caramel & added small thin shards of caramel into the ganache. They were completed Monday evening. On Wednesday I noticed a few had exploded so I replaced them in the boxes with another bonbon. Tonight I went to set them out & saw that every last one had exploded as in the attached photo. I made only one tray so I don't have a comparison. Any thoughts as to what I did wrong? I would prefer to avoid exploding anymore bonbons!

Has anyone come across tech sheets for Domori's products? I can't find *anything* online, and have yet to receive a response from the company. I'd really love to spend more time playing with their chocolate, but cannot realistically do so unless I know precise fat content.

Does anyone have experience using a confectionery coating pan? I got one from D&R over the summer, and have only had a few chances to play with it. When coating nuts with chocolate, how much chocolate is typically left on the pan? Last week I coated some hazelnuts, and about 1/3 of the chocolate that I used was left on the inside of the pan. Seems like a lot of waste. How much chocolate do you add at a time? Are more smaller additions better than fewer larger ones? Do you aim for a particular chocolate:nut ratio? Any tips for less spherical items like cashews? What do you use to cool the nuts as they are tumbling? I tried some cold spray, which seemed to help. Unfortunately I followed the cold spray with a hit of the propane torch to the outside to try to melt some of the chocolate on the pan, and managed to create a small fire ball, so I won't be doing that again! :0 Do you use a hair dryer to heat as needed, or something else?

I don't have the more expensive, fancy chocolate but, I do have different varieties of Merckens, Peter's and Wilbur that I bought really cheap, like $20 for 10lb. Does anybody have any experience blending them for either enrobing or for making frostings to make a tastier chocolate? Like using mixing Merckens Marquis with Peter's Ultra. I would appreciate a template to go by which would alleviate some of the headache of testing myself. does anyone know how to make chocolate cake with milk chocolate? how to replace dark unsweetened with milk chocolate? help, thanks.

I have a box of truffles that are good, but not great - my homemade ones are much better. So, I want to make something out of them. I don't want to use them to stick inside molten chocolate cakes or chocolate cupcakes, so I was wondering what would happen if I remelted them over a double boiler. I checked online, and couldn't find any information. Would they be totally ruined if I remelted them to make a sauce? If they can be remelted, should I add a little cream and/or butter?

Hello everyone. I'm a newbie and am seeking your help about a particular brand of confectionery coating that I've discovered. I recently bought about 70lb of real chocolate very cheap and it is great but, I noticed that the company also sells a brand of confectionery coating called SEMPER. And what's more, the coating costs more than the real chocolate does. It is around $38 for an 11lb block whereas Callebaut is only $35 for 10lb. The SEMPER does not require tempering either. I would like to try it if it tastes good as it would avoid me the bother of tempering. But only if it is good. Anyone have any current or past experience with this brand? I'd appreciate any and all input.

I'm making peppermint bark to start and plan to do a few others. Wanting an easy way to get a consistent size/weight so was thinking some nice polycarbonate moulds would be perfect but haven't found one that I like. If you look at Godiva barks they have a rectangular shape with break apart lines molded in. Ideally I'd love molds like this. Anyone seen a mold like this?

Locally I can only find two drop Callebaut chocolate and it's just too think for my molds. I have three drop dark chcolate and that works fine, but both the milk chocolate and the white chocolate are two drop. Is there any sort of standard ratio that I can use to know how much cocoa butter I should add to get it thinned out a bit? I know I can add it to the tempering machine during the melt phase but I have absolutely no idea how much to add and would like a general starting point. Obviously once it's added I can check and see if it's thin enough but I don't want to add half an ounce and find out I should have started with four ounces or something. Also, is it unusual for places to only carry the two drop chocolate? Even online I've had trouble sourcing a three drop Callebaut for milk and white. And lastly, anyone have a good source for Callebaut chocolate? I'm in Florida, just north of Orlando and am currently getting my chocolate from Restaurant Depot in Orlando. I first orderd online from Qzina but then their prices jumped way up so I went this route, but they for milk and white they only carry the thick stuff. Thanks guys!!!

Hello All! I am new to the eGullet community, here to pose my first question: I really enjoy the look of handmade plaques to decorate dipped chocolates (I have posted an example picture below, but for reference Thomas Haas and Theo Chocolates use such decorations). Yes, they are time consuming and probably not worth the effort on a grand scale, but for small batch production I think they are a beautiful detail. I have been cutting the little squares by hand, which takes a dreadfully long time. I am considering a caramel cutter – one like a rolling pin with a bunch of cutting disks attached. Has anyone tried this? Do you have a certain time-saving technique that you like to use? I’d love to glean from your wisdom, if you have some to share. My apologies if this topic has been discussed elsewhere already. I tried searching the forums, but it did not yield the results I was looking for.