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Hello everyone, Just wanted to start a thread how to spray chocolate with a paint sprayer. Please describe what has worked well for you and what has not. Do you like a Wagner Airless Spray Gun?

Hello Fellow Chocolatiers! I am working on calculated appropriate prices for my handmade chocolates. It's absolutely shocking that after 10 years of making chocolates, I never really dared to delve into the nitty-gritty cost of goods. And when I worked at a chocolate shop that was never a concern placed on my plate. So, I have attemped (with my horrible lack of excel spreadsheet skills) to figure out my cost of goods (including labor and packaging). Somehow, I must be doing something terribly wrong, as my costs worked out to be about $1.50 to make ONE PIECE. That seems outrageous! Granted, that did include using locally made bean-to-bar chocolate from a small producer. My business-partner-to-be is helping me sort it out (thankful that she and excel have a much better relationship). However, I need some information that is don't have at the moment and thought you guys might be able to help fill in the gaps. 1. For the sake of comparison, with cost of ingredients and labour (no packaging) how much does is cost you to produce one chocolate? 2. For those that make the fairly standard 22.5mm square enrobed chocolates, are you able to tell me how much and individual ganache square weighs pre-enrobing? How about post-enrobing? I know how much my ganache cost, but I don't know how many grams per piece to allot for the enrobed chocolate coating. And I am not in production right now so I can't test it out. If you can share it would be so helpful. ETA: can anyone tell me the same for one of their molded chocolates? Obviously there are variables like the height of the ganache and the size of the mould, but at least it would give me an idea. many thanks! Christy

I am making molded bunnies for Easter and I am finding that the necks are cracking and the head breaks away from the body. I have noticed that the neck is not as thick as the rest of the bunny. Total grams for this bunny is 200. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to rectify this? Oh yeah I didn't mention that after pouring into molds I place in the refridgerator. Any suggestions are welcome! Cheers Mary - Rookie

Hi folks! I've recently dabbled in running some kid bon-bon making birthday parties and they've been really fun (would NOT recommend for under 12 though:) I'm trying to cut time by tempering the chocolate in advance (pre-party) and then keeping it at 32 in the melter. It's usually a good 45 minutes before the shelling happens, so by that point, the chocolate is incredibly over-crystalized. I'm trying to streamline this process a bit, and so far all I've come up with is about 5-10 minutes before shelling, adding some untempered melted chocolate at working temp. But I'm just wondering if anyone has any other suggestions for doing advance tempering, without having to futz with it until its ready to be used. Thank you! Jen

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 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!

I’m wondering if anyone here has worked with Cacao Barry Mi-Amère 58%. It is 3 drop fluidity chocolate. I’m wondering what it tastes like and if it would be good for shelling and ganaches. I’ve seen it at my local Restaurant Depot and it is priced well below the Valrhona I use. I don’t want to buy a 5kg/11 pound bag to try out this chocolate. Hoping to find it in smaller quantities. All the talk about rising chocolate prices has me looking for some other potential chocolates.

It's that time again - I'm the group leader for a group of newly minted Ecole Chocolat grads taking a masters course. This one is in Wieze, Belgium. You may recall my last trip as group leader for Ecole when I took a group to Valrhona in France. I got my packing done on Sunday - was all prepared, car was to pick me up at 6 pm to drive me to the airport. Got a little suspicious when the child was late getting off the bus from school - the driver said that the highway wasn't moving well. At about 5:15 I got a call from the limo service to say that the car that was coming to get me had moved 2 car lengths in the last 30 minutes. Apparently a car roll over on the westbound lanes of highway had ejected two people into the eastbound lanes and the entire highway was closed in both directions. So I set out in my own vehicle - which of course had no gas, and needed oil... at least the toll highway got me past the problem. Airport wants $175/week to park - so a quick text to @Alleguede and he came to fetch my car from the airport to park in his driveway until I return. So here I sit in the lounge awaiting my departure. I'm doing the Jet Lag program that I have done several times before that has worked well for me. Overcoming Jet Lag, by Charles F. Ehret and Lynne Waller Scanlon. This involves food and caffeine modification. So for the past 4 days I've been drinking Rooibos Provence throughout the day and between 3 and 4:30 slugging down as much real tea as my bladder can handle! The dietary part consists of alternating days of 'feasting' and 'fasting' with high protein breakfasts and lunches and high carb dinners. I had planned to get the driver to stop at the Tim Horton's at the top of my street to pick up the black coffee that is to be taken at around 6 pm the day of travel - unfortunately as I was driving myself that didn't happen - so when I hit the lounge I drank down two cups of strong black caffeinated coffee - better late than never. I'm not much of a coffee drinker - and particularly not black. Should be good for some palpitations when I start the next part of the program which is to sleep as soon as I get on the plane! This is a 'fasting day', 800 calories suggested - I left my carb meal until I reached the lounge. ] One of the two cups of coffee. These are the "Gentlemen Retire to the Library' chocolates that I posted before that I am taking along - port wine PDF and tobacco ganache. I used Sosa tobacco flavouring this time instead of a cigar so I don't have to concern myself with nicotine poisoning.

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

One of the dishes at Alinea this weekend was a shot that included green apple juice or cider inside of a cocoa butter orb dusted with horseradish set in celery juice. The orb was crisp and thin. I've never worked with pure cocoa butter...can you temper it by itself? I didn't taste the sweetness of white chocolate, nor was it billed as white chocolate.

Hi! I've been looking for a refrigerated display case for my chocolate and confections. I've previously had a used Costan Allegro. I can't seem to find any informations as to what is recommended. Also I used to have my chocolate at 17-18 degree Celsius (62-64F), but I've since bought the chocolatiers kitchen book by Callebaut and the keep mentioning 14-16 C (57-60F) as the ideal temperature to have the longest shelf life. I'm at lost, any suggestions? Thanks ❤️😊

I wanted to produce a chocolate that has two layers of color, with bronze powder on top and some green color sprinkled underneath. The mould was half-circled shape. First of all I polished the chocolate mould, then I tempered the colored cocoa butter to 96-97F, then sprayed it inside the mould using an airbrush. then I used a small knife to tip up a little shiny bronze powder and sprinkled it in the mould. I waited for about an hour or two, then I poured chocolate into the mould. After I released the chocolate from the mould, there were some cocoa butter sticking to the mould, causing the surface of my chocolate to crack. There were also some shiny bronze powder stuck to the the cocoa butter inside the mould, causing the surface of my chocolate to have big holes on the area where there should be full of shiny powder. I have tried not to use any shiny bronze powder and only finger painted the mould with the colored cocoa butter, as the result there was no problem at all and there were no colored cocoa butter sticking to the mould. The mould was bought from Chololat-Chocolat, the colored cocoa butter was from Chef Rubber, and the shiny bronze powder was from PCB. Did I do anything wrong throughout the process? Exactly why did my finished products resulted in this way?

Hi guys. Came across these amazing bon bons on Instagram. How would you say I could replicate the design? thabks.

Last month, I posted in the Unexpected Food Gifts topic a selection of chocolates a friend sent me from a startup company providing up-market chocolates to the Chinese market. This garnered some interest and prompted more than one person to express surprise at the inclusion of dark milk chocolate, something some people felt was perhaps a contradiction in terms. Now, I am no chocolate expert or even a big fan of chocolate* of any kind, and therefore I was clueless, as usual. So, I was interested to read this in today’s Gruaniad. It is a review of some, dare I say, artisan chocolates of that description. Notes on chocolate: darker bars that pack both moral and fibre I know we have some chocolatiers here. How common is it? Do you make it? We also have major chocolate eaters. Thoughts? Opinions? * My only real interest in chocolate is linguistic. The name has an interesting history as it passed from language to language. English took it from French which took it from Spanish which took it from pre-Spanish Mexican which took it from Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs. Chinese, 巧克力, meaning 'chocolate' was borrowed from English and is pronounced something like chow-ke-lee. (Pinyin: qiǎo kè lì)

Have to say that most of the chocolate which I 'melt' I do over water using a stainless bowl whose flanges far outreach the edge of the pot. So far, so good. The other melting is putting the chocolate into the heated cream for ganache. Tempering in my Revolation except when away from home and then I use a Pyrex measuring cup in the microwave, once I have figured out the particular microwave I am using. Not exciting, but it's what I do.

As a lot of you already know, Kerry Beal has been working on a device to help the artisan chocolate maker – the EZtemper. I got a chance to see the EZtemper in action this weekend at the eGullet Chocolate and Confection 2015 workshop and it was nothing short of amazing. Dead simple to operate, you basically just load a container with cocoa butter and turn it on. Allow it to work overnight (about 12 hours, I think) and the EZtemper will produce cocoa butter silk i.e. Form V Beta crystals. The cocoa butter is transformed into a mayonnaise-like consistency which can then be used to instantly temper any melted chocolate or ganache. Like Mycryo, you add 1% by weight to melted chocolate at the proper temperature; however, the chocolate silk produced by the EZtemper is superior, in my opinion, because you don’t have to worry about melting out the Mycryo cocoa butter crystals and incorporating it into the melted chocolate. You just have to stir the silk in – much more easy. Not only that, but you can use it to temper your ganaches which we all know produces a product with longer shelf life and better mouthfeel. As if that weren’t enough, it also causes your ganache to set up much much faster. So you can pour out a slab of tempered ganache and move to cutting and enrobing a short while later. I think this device is going to revolutionize the chocolate industry. You should consider it for your confectionery business if you want to save a lot of time and produce a superior product. Take a look at the web site here: http://www.eztemper.com

Hello I am a new chocolatier. I am calculating my costs to come up with a budget for my new business. I need help from you guys. if lets say a box of 12 bonbons costs me 4 dollars including raw material and packaging, how much should your sales price be? Also how much would you charge for wholesale, assuming margin is between 20-40%? How much is a reasonable labour cost per hour?

Cool to see him using the same melanger that many of us have gotten from Premier. Interesting flavors and some information on recipe development. @Kerry Beal while their chocolate looks well tempered, they could probably use an EZ Temper to help with their workflow. 🙂 https://youtu.be/E2g-QZG4Vbg?si=pyK4eF2uxU1LTluj

A supplier recently sold me 4 packages of Valrhona Ivoire. But it was out of date last month (6/2023). They refunded me but now I have all this chocolate. I cannot find anything in my state food code (RI) directly prohibiting the use of food past it's best by date. Or rather use of non-tcs food past the best by date. I'm not really sure I feel comfortable using it for bonbons.. we all know how white chocolate gets and it would really have to be used up in just a couple of weeks. There is not way.. white chocolate just isn't popular enough. I've already reached out to a couple of weekly free meal setups around here to see if they might be able to use some... not sure for what, one of them does give out bags of cookies 2x a week and I've donated chocolate and other baking items to them before. I hate waste but I'm at a loss here. 1. I don't know if I can even use it. 2. Not sure if I should really offer this to a couple of bakery contacts. 3. It has to go fast. Any ideas? Recipes that use up a massive amount of white chocolate? If in the end it has to be binned then it has to be binned but I'd like to try to figure something out.

Hi all! My daughter and I are headed to Belgium this summer, just for a few days, and would love to sample and visit some great spots. Right now we just have Chocolate World in Antwerp on our agenda. I'd love any suggestions on unique (or not unique!) chocolate or pastry experiences. Or places to avoid! Thank you! Jen

I just got back from montreal and stopped by suite 88 a chocolate shop on St. Denis St. They had some really interesting chocolates which were delicious. One category was chocolates filled with different liquors /cocktail combinations. I didn't actually realize this until after I got them and she asked if I knew how to eat them. I said I think so and she then mentioned that I bit a portion and "drink" the liquor and then eat the shell or eat them in one bite. (I had thought they were ganaches). How would one get the liquor into the molded chocolate?

Hello everyone, The truth is that I have not written before in this forum but I do read it daily and I know that there are very experienced people in everything related to chocolate. It is for this reason that I wanted to ask for your help with the following: I'm trying to make liquor-filled bonbons, I've tried coating them with cocoa butter before closing, but almost all leak.If I make the closure only with chocolate, it's a disaster Can anyone share a method for doing this and stop pulling my hair? Thank you in advance.

I purchased this mold recently on eBay, and have been having a spirited discussion about it with the vendor. I am curious about the irregular edges on the piece, which look to me like the result of the application of a pair of metal snips to a larger mold. Does anyone recognize this mold, and can comment on whether or not this is, in fact, the way the mold would have looked when originally fabricated? Thank you in advance for any information you might be able to provide.

As a newbie here I thought, before piling in with my own questions, I'd pull together some of the things I've learned in my first months of chocolate making - in case this helps others who embark on the same path. Many of these learnings came from eGullet, some from elsewhere, and I'm very grateful for all the many sources of experience and insight. Cooking technique is quite personal so of course not everyone will agree with my idiosyncratic list of course. Most useful equipment so far Cooking isn't really about the equipment - you can make fine chocolates with hardly any equipment - but here are the things which have helped me the most. 1. Small tempering machine. This got me started on chocolate making with a superb easy path. The ChocoVision Rev 2B (with the "holey baffle" which increases its capacity) just gets the tempering perfect every time. Yes, I could temper in the microwave or on a slab, but it's great to take away any uncertainty about the final finish, by using this great machine. Downsides: continuously noisy, doesn't have the capacity for large batches. 2. Plenty of silicon baking mats (Silpat clones). I use these not just for ganache and inverting moulds onto, but also just to keep the kitchen clean! Working at home, I create a lot of mess and found I could reduce the risk of divorce by spreading large sheets (60x40cm size) across the work surface. So much easier to clean, and I can scrape unused chocolate back into the supply for next time. I get mine directly from China through AliExpress where they are about 1/3 of the local price. Then, for a further cost saving I ordered a couple of sheets of stainless steel at exactly the same 40x30 size, from a hobbyist place, and stuck some rubber feet underneath. The silicon mat + steel sheet can then easily be carried to the cool room. I got metal bars made up by another hobbyist place (an eGullet suggestion) which was a cheap alternative to caramel bars. 3. Scrapers. Life got better when I stopped trying to scrape moulds with a regular palette knife. I found we had two Japanese okomoniyaki spatulas from Japanese cooking which were perfect! 4. Polycarbonate moulds. Again in order to afford a bunch of these, I get them from China via AliExpress where they are £5-£7 each (including shipping) rather than £18 (+£10 shipping) locally. If I were starting again I'd buy little squares and half-spheres first, because these are easy to decorate with transfer sheets and cocoa butter respectively; plus a bar mould for quickly using up some extra chocolate or making a snack for the family. Magnetic moulds are not in my view essential for the beginner because you can just apply the transfers manually - but they are very easy to use. 5. Hot air gun - little Bosch paint stripper from Amazon. Always kept to hand to sort out anything which crystallises too quickly in the bowl or on my equipment. 6. Fancy packaging. We got some little boxes in bright colours with silver lining - great to turn your experiments into gifts. Quite expensive because you have to buy quantities, but worth it we felt. If I were working at scale I think my top 5 would also include a vibrating table, but that's beyond my means. Best sources of learning so far (apart from eGullet of course) 1. Callebaut website - fabulous range of videos showing how a master does the basic techniques. Also Keylink (harder to find on their website - look in "knowledge bank") which is refreshingly straightforward. 2. Several books recommended on this forum. Once I got past the basics, I delved into two masterpieces: Wybauw ("The Ultimate Fine Chocolates", a revised compilation of his previous books) and Greweling ("Chocolates and Confections"). These are just awe inspiring. Most useful ingredients so far 1. Callebaut couverture "callets" in 2.5kg bags - quick to measure, easy to re-seal. Everyone should start with 811 and 823, the "standards" ... but I soon moved to more exotic flavours. Current favourites are Cacao Barry Alunga (rich milk), Callebaut Velvet (white but not as cloying as the usual one; lovely mouthfeel), and half a dozen Cocoa Barry dark chocolates which go with particular ingredients. 2. Boiron frozen fruit purees. These are just amazing. I struggled with lots of different approaches to fruit flavouring until I discovered these. The problem is that most liquid purees have a short life span and are quite expensive if you only need a little quantity - whereas the Boiron ones just live in a neat, stackable tub in the freezer. Grab a flavour, pop it out onto a chopping board, slice off what you need, return the rest to the freezer. And the range is fabulous. So far I've particularly enjoyed raspberry, passion fruit, kalamansi (wow!) blackcurrant, and Morello cherry. (I'm experimenting with banana but most banana chocolate recipes seem to need caramel which I don't find so easy to perfect.) 3. IBC "Power Flowers" so I can mix my own coloured white chocolate with a wide palette of colours, for brushing or piping into moulds as decoration. Quite tricky to scale down to the tiny amounts I need, but I found this far better than heating little bottles of cocoa butter and being restricted to the colours I had. 4. Marc de Champagne 60% - great for truffles. My supplier sends it in a little chemical bottle which is a little un-champagne-like, but never mind. Rose drops (oil-based) were also useful for truffles if you like that sort of thing. Suggestions for learners (aka things I wish I had got right) 1. Start learning in winter. There is a HUGE amount of cooling needed in chocolate making; once we had cold weather we could close off a room, turn off its heating, and create a cool room. Made a big difference to productivity (and quality!). 2. Don't do anything involving caramel, marshmallows, turkish delight, or other temperature-critical sugar work until you are confident with everything else - or you will get demoralised quickly. Or maybe I'm just rubbish at these techniques. 3. Learn simple decoration (cocoa butter colour, texture sheets etc) early on. These make a big difference to how everyone will react to your work. 4. Don't rush. Chocolate making takes a lot of (elapsed) time. Give things time to crystallise properly. I find there is always an endless amount of cleaning-up to do while I wait :-)

I make shell molded truffles. After my neck fusion, shaking out chocolate from the molds is difficult at best. I went to a local chocolate shop and they have a Savage Brothers temperer with a vibrating machine built in over the bowl. They flip the mold over, turn the vibrator on, and dump the chocolate that way and it looks wonderful. They also double wall these truffles. That machine is $50,000 I'm told. I need a bigger tempering machine than what I have as well. I currently use a Revolation Delta and I love it. I'd get the 3Z but it doesn't have a vibrating machine build in. I prefer to buy used. I need suggestions that are in the $5000-$8000 range if they even exist. I'm self taught so any advice would be helpful.