Search the Community

Assume somebody gives me a 5kg block of Callebaut 70-30-38Basis. Assume further that I wish to make a zillion chocolate chip/chunk cookies. What's the best way to convert the chocolate into chips or chunks? By "best" I mean easiest for a lazy amateur with no special equipment. But of course academically I'm interested in other approaches.

2007 U.S. National Competition of World Chocolate Masters... Held at the French Pastry School in Chicago on May 19th to decide who would represent the U.S. at the World Chocolate Masters finals in Paris on October 20-22nd, 2007. http://www.worldchocolatemasters.com/en/ Competitors were graded on a chocolate showpiece (minimum 1 meter tall), pralines (both dipped and molded), and on a plated dessert created from a mystery box of ingredients. I was at the competition (thank you Geoff at Barry Callebaut for the invitation by the way) and took the following pictures of the final sculptures and chocolates. My apologies for the mediocre pictures (especially of the chocolates), but it was crowded, the lighting wasn’t great, and most of all…I’m not that terrific a photographer. None the less...here they are: Naomi Gallego, pastry chef at PS7’s in Washington, D.C. -sculpture title: ‘Geronimo’ 2 Jove Hubbard, executive pastry chef at David Burke’s Primehouse in Chicago. -due to shipping problems, Jove did not submit a sculpture, making him ineligible to win; unfortunately, I was also unable to capture a picture of his chocolates. Jimmy MacMillan, executive pastry chef at The Peninsula Chicago. -sculpture title: ‘Fountain of Youth’ Oscar Ortega, executive pastry chef/owner of Cioccolato Pastry shop in Jackson Hole, WY. -sculpture: ‘A Gift To the World’ Vincent Pilon, executive pastry chef at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino in Las Vegas, NV -winner of the both the competition overall, and the taste award -sculpture: ‘The Great Spirit’ David Ramirez, executive pastry chef at Rosen Shingle Creek luxury resort in Orlando, FL. -sculpture: ‘A Land Remembered’ Joseph Utera, culinary instructor at the Orlando Culinary Academy Le Cordon Bleu. -sculpture: ‘Indian Great Spirit’

I've been struggling to adapt a brownie recipe. The original vesion is made with supermarket chocolate (baker's semisweet). The flavor is what you'd expect, but the texture is exactly what I want: dense, fudgy, smooth, just a bit of crumb. When I substitute good chocolate (I've tried El Rey, Callebaut, and different versions of Valrhona) the flavor improves just as it should, but the consistency goes to pieces. they become tender, fluffy, and barely hold together under their own wieght. I assume a good bit of this is due to cocoa butter percentages, but I really have no idea if that's it or even how to deal with it. Does baker's chocolate (which I've read is 55% cocoa solids) have more or less cocoa butter than the good chocolates? And is there anything else i should be thinking about?

Hi! Today I experimented with cocoa butter since I needed to melt some for a peanut butter filling (GREWELING) For some reason that name - Greweling- seems to need to be in a Harry Potter book... Anyway when it was melted I decided to use my finger and shmear some into moulds before making shells. After I filled and all and tried to pop them out of the moulds, I could not. I had to freeze them for 10 minutes in order to BANG them out. And then, half had white cocoa butter stains - erghghgh!!. What did I do wrong? Do I need to temper the cocoa butter before using it? Sorry I always have so many questions... One day I will be able to contribute also! Lior

I store my bulk chocolate at room temperature and my finished chocolates in the basement which is a bit cooler. I had a question from a newer chocolatier out there who follows eG but hasn't quite worked up to posting yet (you remember how intimidating it was to post at first). I thought I'd post the question here and get some opinions. Would a wine cooler be a good place to store bulk chocolate and finished bonbons? Apparently they can be kept around 55 degrees. The other question raised was moisture if you use one of these coolers to keep your chocolate cool. Any thoughts? Anyone have one and willing to do some testing?

I recently tasted a dark chocolate flavored with thyme. I thought the combination was fabulous. Now, maybe this match is obvious and old hat to the big city folks, but I found it to be something of a revelation. What other savory flavors work well with chocolate? Earl Grey tea and cayenne are pretty common by this point. Is there a history behind such pairing, or is this a recent innovation?

Hi all I am trying to do a photo shoot of a chocolate souffle. The problem is that by the time I get the souffle out of the oven, demoulded it, sprinkled icing sugar on and placed it in the right position for the shot it has already started to deflate. Does anyone know if there is a way to stablise the souffle so that it will not deflate (or not so quickly)? it doesn't matter if the souffle is not edible as i'm only after the shot. I'm thinking of just increasing the amount of corn flour in the souffle but not sure if it will effect the amount it rises? will be grateful for any tips thanks

So I can make creme brulee and it turns out fantastic, super smooth and creamy. Then I saw that there was a chocolate version of this in the Jaques and Julia book. Same recipe, just pour cream/egg/sugar mixture over 4 oz. unsweetened chocolate and mix until it melts. Bake in water bath as usual. The first time the chocolate didn't really melt and I ended up with ramekins with about 3/4 inch nice, creamy custard on top and about 3/4 inch solid, bitter chocolate on the bottom. So I decided to try it again, only I'd melt the chocolate over a double boiler first. Did this, but when I added the cream mix, the chocolate turned back into little specks. The cream was plenty hot. So I strained this mixture and baked. This time I ended up with a homogenous chocolate "custard", but it wasn't near as creamy as a regular custard and the unsweetened chocolate tasted aweful. Any suggestions?

Hi guys, I've been having a few problems with my chocolate-making endeavours lately. I've previously made dipped truffles with no problems, but now that I'm experimenting with molding, I just haven't been able to get it right! I use Callebaut chocolate, in milk and semi-sweet (54%). I've got almost 10kg left of each. Today I attempted to temper some of the semi-sweet to line my polycarbonate molds (dome cavities) using the seeding method. I brought about 600g chocolate (in a metal bowl) up to 110F in a water bath, then added 100g of callets. Doing this and constantly stirring, the chocolate came down to about 95F, but then didn't seem to go any lower. I was impatient, so I added some more callets, but by the time the chocolate was 90F, there were still some unmelted bits. I decided to bring everything back up to 110F and try again. Going by Peter Greweling's advice to bring the temp down to working temp, but not go over 90F, I began testing for temper at 89F by dipping a spoon into the choc and putting it in the freezer for a few minutes. I checked the spoon after two minutes, and there weren't any streaks, so I figured my chocolate was in temper. After I lined the molds and let it set, it was obvious that my chocolate was not in temper, because it's streaky and it doesn't look like it's contracted away from the sides of the mold. This is my third unsuccessful attempt (I tried molding with milk choc twice before), and I'm going to have to discard this latest try by soaking it in hot water to clean out the chocolate. Is it possible that my chocolate is thrown out of temper because I didn't warm up my molds first? I read in another thread that testing for temper in the fridge isn't a good indicator because the chocolate will harden whether or not it's in temper. I'll try smearing some on baking paper to see if it hardens at room temp. I'm finding that I'm becoming less excited about working with chocolate because I'm just intimidated by tempering! It's really frustrating me! I've taken some photos of the usage guidelines on the side of the Callebaut packet. Can some kind soul please explain what they mean? What does the little dotted portion of the line in the crystallization curve mean?! BTW, I use a Thermapen to test temps. Thanks for any help or advice!

Okay here is the roundup from the chocolate tasting. First off I will tell you what we tried with the prices, origin and cocoa percentage. 3.80 € Michel Cluziel (Mangaro) (n/a) 3.60 € Jean-Paul Hevin (Sao Tome) (75%) 1.50 € Monoprix (Ecuador) (70%) 5 € Patrick Roger (Ecuador) n/a) 6 € Maison du Chocolat (Cuana) (74%) 6.50€ Pierre Herme (Madagascar) (75%) 4.26 € Chocolate Bonnat (Venezuela CHUAO) (75%) 5 € Patrick Roger (Madagascar) (n/a) 3 € Valrhona (Guanaja) (70%) 3 € Valrhona (Dark) (72%) Second I will note that our tasting was a bit flawed in the sense that we didn't have the opportunity to compare single origin beans, given the variety of origins that each chocolate maker uses, it would have been difficult to do so. Finally each person's tastes are completely subjective. Some prefer milk chocolate over dark chocolate and vice versa. Some preferred the presence of fruit, while others preferred the woody or nutty aspects. All that being said, there were some favorites across the board. Maison du Chocolat got the most votes by our tasters. We all noted the texture was extremely smooth and tasted the most like a true dark chocolate with hints of cocoa nibs and a nice bitterness. Chocolate Bonnat tied for second with 2 others; Patrick Roger (Ecuador) and the Pierre Herme. Bonnat had a sweet wood taste and a slight bitterness. Some noted the dried cherry and apple hints. Patrick Roger (Ecuador) had a bergamot taste (earl grey) and slightly dry. Mild taste with a light finish. Pierre Herme had a bright citrus taste with hints of lime and zest. The others each had one vote except for the Michel Cluizel which received ZERO votes from the tasters. Ptipois will have some photos from the event. Join us next time for Olive Oil. Details coming soon.

Let see if I can keep this short. My brain is on overload. I've finally put myself out there, meaning bringing my chocolates to an upscale chocolate shop (they don't make their own, only sell) to see if they'd be interesting in selling mine. I've been selling to friends, friends of friends, and at small vendor fairs, so this would be a big step for me. I've been doing this for some time (and learning loads from this site as well as books and classes) so I'm stressed...OK this is already too long. Another aside - I'm out of town and don't have access to my Schotts book, Wybauw book, etc. so I appreciate any help. Now to the questions: 1.How long do you tell a shop to keep chocolates on their shelf. I'm using basic gananches, some with trimoline, but most without. If you sell a number of different fillings, do you go with the one with the shortest shelf life for all? (I assume one with a fruit puree would be the shortest?) 2. How much do I need to worry about how their storage is? The day I was in there, it wasn't as cool as I would have hoped, but it's a small space and the door keeps opening... 3. How do I decide on pricing? I know how much the ingredients cost me, and I know how much I sell them for (mostly based how much the market around here will bear) but what's a reasonable price for me to sell to them. Do you reduce prices for really large volumes? 4. Any other tips? Well this certainly wasn't short, but I hope you'll be patient. More questions will probably pop into my head as I restlessly try to sleep tonight. It's all good!

I am making an enormous batch of smiley-faced decorated cookies for an event and found myself having more and more questions than I probably should...but you guys are so generous with your answers, it makes me feel better. Anyhoo, after icing the cookies with royal-type icing, I plan on putting the smiles on the cookies using chocolate because 1. royal icing is so blah and 2. chocolate is so wonderful. It dawned on me that I might need to do more than melt the chocolate and put it in a pastry bag to put on the decorations. Does anyone have any recommendations for me? Should I add some crisco or a tbspnfull of oil or something? I want the chocolate to harden so the decorations don't smear when I travel with them. All help and thoughts appreciated. Thanks!

I'm looking for an amazing peanut-butter chocolate chip cookie recipe, so I can make a batch and send to a friend for his birthday. He is a peanut-butter/chocolate fiend, so I want to make the cookies a little bit more special than your average Reese's Pieces. I always think the thing that makes peanut-butter/chocolate so good is the salty/sweet/rich-fattiness. I plan to use a very high quality dark chocolate bar, broken into chunks for the chocolate chips. I'd like to add some really good salt to the batter (I prefer French gray salt, but I'm open to suggestions). What I really need is a recipe for the base. I'd like a thick, chewy cookie. One issue is that my friend lives in another province, so I have to send the cookies to him (courier). So, I will need a recipe that will keep, a little. If anyone has advice on shipping baked goods, I'd appreciate the information. I don't have much experience.

Question: Can this recipe be baked then frozen? or should I just prepare it and then freeze it before baking?

I've heard of someone making raw chocolate by combining "raw cocoa powder" with cocoa butter and agave nectar. Of course it doesn't temper or snap, due to the agave nectar. But I'm interested in whether it can actually be considered raw. Is there such a thing as "raw cocoa powder"? I thought to make cocoa powder it was pressed under great weight, which would translate to higher temps than is considered raw. Is that correct? Thoughts, anyone? Thanks, Tom

Lately, I am on a baking kick. I'd like to bake chocolate chip cookies but don't have a good 'from scratch' recipe. I was hoping someone on eGullet might have a good (and fairly easy) recipe to share!

I've been finding in some recipes that use cocoa powder that it's got this kinda chemical-ish 'smell.' It tends to be more prevalent in recipes that use only cocoa powder, or where the chocolate to cocoa ratio is low. But I've also found where I've to keep the cookie dough in the fridge overnight, it doesn't have this smell. Andiesenji's cocoa cookies do not have chocolate, only cocoa powder, and it does not have this smell. I'm using Valrhona cocoa powder. Maybe because it's alkalized?

With apologies to those folks who feel that the Pastry and Baking forums are being taken over by candymakers I think it's time we started a thread on cooking from 'Chocolates and Confections'. I know at least two of us have the book now. I'm still just reading it through from cover to cover and the only thing I've tried so far is aerating some tempered milk chocolate in my cream siphon. Of course I didn't read the directions thoroughly and I only used one charge so I didn't get a lot of real bubbles in the chocolate. It did however lighten up the chocolate to a nice soft texture. I used some milk chocolate I had left over from dipping some cookies, I had added some orange oil to it. I used some easter egg plates that make about 6 large eggs. I poured a shell with milk chocolate then used the cream siphon to discharge the aerated chocolate into the molds. So I ended up with these nice big eggs, apparently solid chocolate, but the texture was light enough to bite into them without breaking your teeth. I'll try it next time with 2 or 3 charges and see if I can make aero bars. The one theory I need to test out is weather if I don't line the mold with chocolate and just discharge to contents of the siphon into a mold whether there will be bubbles on the surface of the mold or will it sort of form a smooth 'skin' like an aero bar has.

I'm wondering what guidelines you could share for substituting cocoa butter for a portion of the chocolate in a ganache recipe, to reduce the sweetness while maintaining the same consistency? For example, Wybauw has a recipe for a butter truffle with Kirsch, which uses milk chocolate in the ganache. I've made the recipe in the past, using candied orange zest and Grand Marnier in place of the Kirsch, and it's great. I'd like to adapt the recipe using white chocolate, to make a truffle with candied lemon zest. However, I'm concerned that replacing the specified quantity of milk chocolate with white (recognizing that a larger quantity of white would be required to result in a similar consistency) would make the ganache too sweet. So, I thought replacing a portion of the white chocolate with cocoa butter would reduce the sweetness. However, I didn't know what amount of cocoa butter to use (e.g., 10% of the total initial quantity of white chocolate?). I'd appreciate any guidance my eGullet compatriots could provide! David

I've been approached to give a little chocolate teaching party for several women as part of a bachelorette crawl and I was wondering how other people would structure something like this. Kerry mentioned just such an evening in her wine with chocolates thread but I didn't want to hijack it so I'm posting this as a seperate thead. The gathering wouldn't be until some time in July and I don't have specifics about how much time they would want to spend yet, but I figured that this would be a good time to start planning. I was told that the group would come over to our house for the demo/lesson so I won't have to lug my equipment anywhere which makes it much easier. My thought was to use only equipment that they would likely have at home, which would mean teaching microwave tempering. On the other hand I could also have a melter full of chocolate tempered and ready to go just to make it go smoothly. I figured the best way to run it would be along the lines of a cooking show where I would have someone make a ganache, then stick it in the fridge and pull out a pre-set ganache and have them scoop and roll. Then set those aside and pull out a tray of dried ganache centers for dipping. I could also show molding as a technique even if they wouldn't likely have the nice polycarbonate molds. What would you do? Any suggestions to make it fun and run smoothly?

I've got a batch of Callebaut Dark chocolate that I've been having a great deal of trouble with. I started out pouring brand new callets into a Mol D'art melter several weeks ago and I left it on (lid closed) for three days as I couldn't get enough time to finish production in one sitting. It worked OK at first, though I noticed that the chocolate was pretty thick at working temperature by the end (after hitting it with hot air to melt out some crystals and thin it). I had read a post saying that a chef in one restaurant left his on 27x7 and this was in my basement with a relative humidity of 20-30% so I didn't think much of it. Since then I've had nothing but trouble with it. I managed to get a halfway decent temper in part of it by running small batches from the melter through my Rev2, though there was too much to process it all at that time. Now I'm having a terrible time getting a good temper even when running it through the Rev2 using the "Poor seed" cycle (though I'm using brand new callets for seed). I've been adding quite a bit of cocoa butter to thin it out. I added a bunch to the batch in the melter and more to the latest batch I ran though the Rev2 to get a decent dip. Yet when I finished last night the batch in the melter was at 90F (as measured by my infrared themometer after a good stir) and it was extremely thick once more. Is there anything that likely happened to the chocolate to make it so troublesome? Or have I lost my knack and the Rev2 lost its ability as well? I figure that I'll have to set all this aside for ganache, but it's quite a bit and I don't want to have to do it again so I'd like to know where I went wrong.

I've got this cake recipe I've been wanting to try, a chocolate custard devil's food cake (Chocolate Cakes, Michele Urvater). It's where you make some chocolate custard and mix it into the cake batter, supposedly making it very moist. I'm unsure what to do with it now that it's cooling, I'm awful at trying to pair things like the filling and the frosting/icing/ganache. I was think of adding a chocolate custard buttercream for the filling and maybe regular or whipped bittersweet ganache for the top? Does that sound too heavy? Or just like an all around bad idea? Any other suggestions? Thank you so much for your help!

Over the past few years I've managed to build up my chocolate book library but I'm interested to hear what other people have read and their thoughts on the books. To start things off, some of my better books are: Fine Chocolates Great Experience: Jean-Pierre Wybaux I don't think this one needs any further description. THE book for many chocolatiers although it does assume some previous knowledge. Belgian Chocolates: Roger Geerts Another chocolate book I love. Lots of recipes, lots of photos on finishing techniques. Can be a little hard to follow in places as it has some assumed knowledge. As an aside, Geerts has now done a DVD to accompany this book. The Chocolate Bible: Christian Teubner This was a great find for me. I picked it up fairly cheaply at a bookstore and it has a wealth of information. Once again, lots of pictures of finished products. On the downside, the book is not dedicated to chocolate alone - there are also cakes and biscuits etc. Candymaking: Kendrick & Atkinson This was my introductory book to candy and chocolate making and still serves as a great reference for me - I still use the Creamy Fondant and Soft Caramel recipes. A little cheaper than some of the books above if you are looking for an introduction to the topic. Truffles, Candies & Confections: Carole Bloom Not many pictures, but choc full of recipes and tips. Covers a wide variety of chocolate and confectionary recipes. The Complete Home Confectioner: Hilary Walden A great introductory book more for confectionary than chocolate. Simple recipes but on a wide range of recipes and recipes different to those covered in the books above. Otherwise I'm waiting for Making Artisan Chocolates (Shotts) and Chocolates and Confections (Greweling) which seem to have been well received by the eG community judging by the posts. So what does everyone else read/use . . . ? (edited for typos)

I thought the "Chocolate and confectionary" brigade would be interested to hear about the World Chocolate Masters 2008. http://www.worldchocolatemasters.com/en/ National selections (done in 2007) are starting now. The Australian selections are on 22 and 23 March at Crown Casino and Savour Chocolate school in Melbourne - I've seen some of the work thats gone into these displays and would encourage people in Melbourne to get there if they can. Other countries selections can be seen at: http://www.worldchocolatemasters.com/en/37

Cycling by Science World today I spotted the latest attraction The Story of Chocolate sponsored by a local company. Has any been yet-what did you think? Since I don't have kids I've never been in Science World but for somthing like this I might be tempted. TIA