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  1. My 7 year old daughter was diagnosed with Fructose Malabsorption Disorder in August, after six years of terrible digestive trouble. Now she's doing very much better on a low-fructose diet, but she misses all her favorite treats. She can tolerate glucose/dextrose, aspartame (nutrasweet), saccharin, and up to a tablespoon of sucrose (cane sugar) per day max -- in practice we try to give her almost none. We've been bumping along without sweet things, but when I asked her what she wanted for Christmas, tears welled up in her eyes and she said "I want to be able to eat candy again." I'm not made of stone. My heart just broke. I want to help her out as much as I can, which means learning how to make candy with dextrose/glucose/corn syrup and as little cane sugar as possible. I have made candy occasionally in the past, and I'm a reasonably good and adventurous cook -- I make my own salami, that sort of thing -- so I feel like this is something I can tackle if I have good resources. Which resources, though? I know that dextrose/glucose, while still a natural sugar, has very different structural and chemical properties than sucrose/cane sugar, but I don't know HOW they're different. Is hard candy out of the question? What about fudge, or caramels? What are the hard and soft ball stage temperatures?? Does glucose even HAVE a soft or hard ball stage? Are there resources, either online or in print, where I can learn more about this? Would I look at regular candymaking, or some molecular gastronomy whatnot, or. . .?
  2. I'm looking for a recipe that yields caramels that are chewy, but quite hard. A couple of weeks ago I was visiting with friends, and one of them was in a candy-making mood, so we decided to make some caramels and marshmallows. I suggested David Lebovitz's salted butter caramel recipe, and from my perspective, the caramels were an unqualified success, but although my friend did like them, she said 'They're good, but too soft'; she had in mind a sort that is popular in Denmark, which approaches toffee for hardness, but is still unquestionably chewy. These may have a special name, although I don't know of one. I believe that reducing the amount of cream/butter mixture would do the trick, but would prefer to start from a reliable recipe, if anyone has one to recommend. Thanks!
  3. OK, so here's a question for all of you confectionary gurus: do you think it would be a terrible waste of my ingredients to try making ginger caramels using a panela-ginger 2:1 sugar:water syrup as my sugar base? Would they turn out the way I'm imagining, which is chewy creamy gingery goodness, or would it just be a pan full of awful yukk and a frustration? If you think it would work, what proportions of syrup to cream should I be looking at? Is there anything else I should be adding? And finally, I normally shave 18 F off of my boiling temperatures to account for my extreme altitude - I should do the same with these, yes? Thanks in advance.
  4. 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?
  5. 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).
  6. I just received from the US the book Bachour. It brings plated desserts to a imaginable level with plenty of different recipes and ideas to use and modify. I think it's a great debut for the author and for one who wants to practice or learn gastronomic plated desserts.
  7. I make lollipops for local organizations to sell to made some money. And while I do have a goodly number of hard candy molds, I've been unable to find suitable dog molds and would dearly love to buy some. I've checked a number of online sites and found nothing that I can use so far. Any help out there? Please and thank you. Sorry. Should have been more specific. Hard candy dog LOLLIPOP molds only.
  8. I have my first holiday bazaar gig and am very excited. It occurred to me that I have no idea how many chocolates to make for this fair. They estimate 1500 attendance and it's at a private club (golf course, spa, etc). How do you estimate quantities? I did read through an excellent thread on the topic of fairs, but didn't come across formulas or strategies for estimating how much. Thanks.
  9. 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
  10. In the April issue of the Oprah magazine Gayle King mentions getting some merveilleux, a pastry she had never heard of before. Neither had I, so Bing to the rescue I had hoped, but all I really found out was its a meringue and whipped cream concoction. Has anyone heard of this? Any links for recipes? Is it as wonderful tasting as it sounds?
  11. I've had a few requests for maple syrup caramels. This is a new one for me. Anyone had any successful experiences with this, or words of wisdom before I embark on this adventure? My plan was to replace half of the corn syrup portion with locally produced, grade A maple syrup. Does that sound about right? (I also had requests for a honey-caramel, so I plan to use the same formula- replacing half the corn syrup with honey.) I'm not afraid to try new things, but this could be a costly little experiment if I screw it up. Any help or wisdom you'd care to impart would be greatly appreciated!!! Thanks, in advance. Andrea
  12. I have recently started making toffee and I LOVE it! However, I have noticed that the chocolate stays soft at room temp, and I wanted to package it to use as gifts at the holidays. Can anyone suggest how I can make the chocolate solidify so I don't have this problem? I have been just using Nestle chocolate chips that I put on top of the hot toffee after pouring on a sheet pan. I let it sit for a couple of minutes and then spread it out with my offset spatula, and then I chill in the fridge for a couple of hours before breaking up.
  13. Host's note: this is a continuation of the ever-popular Confections! topic; the previous segment is here: Confections! What did we make? (2012 – 2014) Here's something I did yesterday, peanut butter chocolate bars.
  14. Every year around this time I candy a bunch of orange slices for use in Christmas treats, and afterwards I'm left with a bunch of very tasty orange syrup. Similarly, after making a bunch of cherry cordials with amarena cherries I'm left with a bunch of cherry syrup. Inevitably, a lot of it ends up getting tossed because there's just too much of it to use in other applications. This year I'd like to try my hand at turning it into some orange marmalade and cherry flavoured marshmallows, but it's hard to match it to a recipe when I'm unsure what the sugar concentration in my syrup is. My question is, do I need to buy a refractometer calculate the amount of sugar I have there or is there another way to approach this? Maybe estimating quantities by doing an initial cook down to soft ball stage and going by volume? Any suggestions?
  15. 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!
  16. I am using a recipe from Jean-Pierre Wybauw for beer ganache that calls for sorbitol. I have been searching for information online and with my local shop about whether this is considered a preservative (since I tell everyone I don't use preservatives!). Does anyone know? I'm at a loss! Thanks.
  17. I am attempting a recipe from Peter Greweling's book "Chocolates & Confections." It's the Salt & Pepper Bars. In the recipe you first lay down a layer of salted caramel in your frame, then spray with cocoa butter before laying down the second layer. I don't have an airbrush or any equipment really. Can anyone shed light onto how this is done - I've searched the book and online, but haven't found any sources to help. I get that it's supposed to help with moisture retention, but am not sure how to "spray with cocoa butter." Thanks for any tips!
  18. We're planning to have an Apple Festoon party as part of our autumnal celebrations. The idea is that guests will come and dip/decorate their own caramel apples. We did this a few years ago and discovered some problems with the plan-- namely, the period of refrigeration between dipping and rolling it in stuff, and then again before going home with it. This year I thought we might try dipping them in caramel ahead of time, and then having guests just roll them in stuff. Or maybe have chocolate available for dipping, if they want to wait. But how to re-soften outside of caramel so nuts and whatnot will stick? Seems like popping them in the oven would make the caramel slide off. Hit it briefly with a hair dryer? Anyone have any ideas? There must be a way to streamline this.
  19. I made and dipped some sponge candy in dark chocolate the other day. It was probably my second or third time ever tempering chocolate (seeding method), so while I roughly understand the process, I'm far from experienced. I didn't have much chocolate on hand, so I had to split the dipping into two batches on separate days. The first batch set perfectly. The second batch of chocolate appeared to be in temper - when I tested it with a cold knife, it developed the appropriate shine within a few minutes. I proceeded to use all of the chocolate and then move the pieces to a slightly cooler area, but after I cleaned up, I returned to find that every single one had bloomed badly. To my surprise, however, when I ate one of the bloomed pieces after letting them set for 24 hours, I found that it had the hardness and snap I would expect from properly tempered chocolate - certainly not the mushy, almost frosting-like texture that I've seen before in completely untempered chocolate. The chocolate I was using was not particularly fluid, if that matters (Guittard's 70% "baking bars"). I understand that bloom can have a million different causes, but since I used the exact same chocolate and technique both times with dramatically different results, I was hoping to narrow down the possibilities before I risk another attempt. In particular, I was wondering if a warm kitchen could cause this type of problem. I keep a combination thermometer-hygrometer in the kitchen, and on the second day, it was around 77 degrees Farenheit while I was working (far from ideal, but it's what I had to work with). Regardless, I didn't move my finished pieces to the fridge, since it is my understanding that rushing the setting process will interfere with proper crystallization (Greweling mentions this in the context of ganache, but also says the same is true for chocolate). I guess I sort of naively believed that as long as the temperature of the chocolate in the bowl was controlled properly, and the room wasn't warm enough to heat up and literally re-melt the setting pieces, I would be fine. I don't recall the exact kitchen temperature on the first day, but I believe it was around 72-74 degrees Farenheit, definitely cooler than the second day. I found some posts while browsing eG that reference the "latent heat of crystallization" and describe this type of loss-of-temper, but always in the context of molded chocolates, rather than dipped chocolates. I presume the reduced ventilation that chocolate in a mold receives makes the issue more common?
  20. Hi! I am making molded chocolates at home and just started airspraying cocoa butter into the molds. I only have R & R cocoa butter. I haven't been able to find any discussions here about using it. I know I am tempering the cocoa butter and I have a Grex Tritium (side feed) with a .7 needle. I have a California Air Tools compresser 1 HP, with an 8 gallon tank. The cocoa butter seems to clog in the airbrush, and I have to heat it with my blowdryer every few (2-3) minutes to keep it running. It seems I have to use high pressures to get any spray from the gun. I wish I hadn't gotten the side feed, but I didn't know better. Could the brand of cocoa butter be part of the cause? It splatters a lot as well. II am loving the airbrush but I know I have much more to learn yet! I would appreciate any help to help improve my spraying!
  21. I recently purchased a vintage metal chocolate mold. I was fascinated by its pattern, and it was relatively cheap. Now I'm trying to figure out how to use it. I have begun to suspect that it may have been designed for making some particular type of chocolate, and before I start acting on my various speculations, wanted to put a couple of images of it before this group to see if anyone might recognize what it was made for, or, alternatively, what I could use it to make. It's very heavy, and the cavities are in pretty good condition.
  22. Hi guys hope your doing well, so i just want to ask you about some tips, recipes or informations about making chocolate bonbons am already know how to tamper and make my shells and i want to learn more about this, thank you so much 🎀
  23. Hi all!! I work at an amazing little New Zealand Style ice cream shop in the beautiful Denver Colorado. I was hoping to get a little help on the subject of adding fruit into ice cream after extracting it and ensuring that, when the ice cream is frozen, the fruity bits don't turn into rock hard shards. I am planning on doing a cherry chocolate ice cream and I was going to soak some dried cherries that we're no longer using for something else. I was planning on using some brandy and a ton of sugar, but I was really hoping someone had a tried and true method they could send my way so that I KNOW that the fruit will be luscious as it's frozen. If you have a certain sugar ratio. I know there is the brix test, but to be honest it's been many years since pastry school and I am very rusty. Would love to hear from some of my fellow sugar-heads. Thank you! Amy
  24. Hello eGForums, I'm curious if anyone has purchased these ganache and caramel ruler bars (https://www.tcfsales.com/products/658-ganache-and-caramel-ruler-bars-set-of-2-ea/) from TCF before or has experience with this company? Are they a reputable company? It costs $87.96 (not including shipping) to purchase 4 stainless steel square bars, measuring 1/2" x 1/2" x 15" L, which seems like a reasonable price relative to other companies. Correct me if I'm wrong. Does anyone suggest other companies to purchase bars from? On a related topic, I know that a possibly more affordable alternative would be to visit a local metal fabricator and purchase metal bars from them. My concern is purchasing bars that are made from an alloy and finish that is 'food-safe'. Does anyone know what grade/alloy and finish of stainless steel is 'food-safe'? Does anyone know what grade/alloy and finish of aluminum is 'food-safe'?
  25. I work at a small business with about 25 employees where we make chocolates, popcorn and caramels. In capacity as head chocolatier I have to work with our facilities supervisor to develop a food safety testing plan for the facility. Right now we are developing a plan to do the following: swab with ATP detectors to see if bacterial activity is present, test for Aerobic Plate Count bacteria (APC), and swabbing for the presence of nut proteins to verify our cleaning protocols are sufficient to eliminate nut allergens and test the floor drains for the presence of listeria. Does anyone have any experience with food safety testing in chocolate plants?? If so, is there anything else that you think we need to be testing for?
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