Maple Fondant chocolates

[chocofoodie]

Does anyone have any tips on how to cut the sweetness of fondant? When I add maple syrup to flavor it, it becomes really sweet. and since this is going inside chocolates, i feel it is overall to sweet. id like to havea strong maple flavor, but less sweetness. any suggestions?

[John DePaula]

You might try an oil-based maple flavor by, for example, Amoretti or Lorann. These may or may not be artificial, so check if that's important to you.

Another option, might be to use a higher-percentage dark chocolate to coat them.

[Nyago123]

It's not exactly maple, but when making confectionery fondant, I've substituted Lyle's Golden Syrup for glucose/corn syrup as the "alternate sugar", though this was for a specific purpose. Very yummy and maple-like.

I also like John's suggestion of darkening the chocolate as well.

[dystopiandreamgirl]

la cuisine carries maple essence; these are so concentrated that you wouldn't be adding any sweetness to your product. Or you might try using a grade B syrup or even C if you can find it; these are much stronger than the grade A typically sold.

I've read that artificial maple extracts are flavored with coffee, grade C maple syrup, and fenugreek. That seems pretty innocuous compared to all-chemical extracts.

[Kerry Beal]

Lorann Canadian Maple flavouring is excellent.

[chocofoodie]

Thanks everyone! Great suggestions. I am going to look into ordering these alternatives and trying them out to see which I like best. Enjoy your baking and confections!

[chocofoodie]

John, thanks for that tip about the dark chocolate. Im going to try that now actually. I'll let you know how it comes out :-)

Edited November 2, 2007 by chocofoodie (log)

[chocofoodie]

Ok, I tried the dark chocolate. It was over-powering. You couldnt taste the maple flavor anymore at all. So I was thinking, I use Callebaut milk chocolate, what could I do on the milk chocolate scale to enhance maple flavor but not sweetness?

[John DePaula]

Ok, I tried the dark chocolate. It was over-powering. You couldnt taste the maple flavor anymore at all. So I was thinking, I use Callebaut milk chocolate, what could I do on the milk chocolate scale to enhance maple flavor but not sweetness?

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I know that Slitti makes a higher-percentage milk chocolate, though it's one that I don't really care for, myself. Don't know if they make it in couverture.

[gfron1]

I know that some of the chocolatiers shy away from El Rey (versus many of the bakers who love it), but their Gran Saman 70% I find relatively bland, so that might be ideal for what you are doing. I just think a milk, even a 40 or 50% would be too sweet.

[Nyago123]

I know that some of the chocolatiers shy away from El Rey (versus many of the bakers who love it), but their Gran Saman 70% I find relatively bland, so that might be ideal for what you are doing.  I just think a milk, even a 40 or 50% would be too sweet.

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Drifting a little off topic, I'd say that sounds consistent with my first hand experience.

I've used the El Rey 73.5% Apamate and it has a strong earthy + tangy acid flavor. Additionally, I've been told by a professional chocolatier who uses Venezuelan chocolates that El Rey can be a little inconsistent in their production and that off-flavors can appear from time to time, depending on the batch. So when coating and/or in a ganache, the El Rey "tang" and other flavors can potentially drown out or conflict what you are working with.

At the same time, El Rey is still great to eat out of the box as opposed to a "straightforward" chocolate, like Guittard, Callebaut, or Felchin. Which means that it's also good where just plain chocolate is the dominant flavor, such as in a chocolate cake, glaze, mousse, or terrine... and it'd probably be fine in something like a mendiant as well.

[chocofoodie]

I tried the filling in these two chocolates: Callebaut 815NV (which is a 56.5 dark chocolate) and 845NV (which is a 34% milk chocolate).

The results:

In the milk, which I tried first, you could taste the maple flavor of the fondant clearly, but together it was a very sweet chocolate.

In the dark, you couldnt taste the maple flavor at all, but the dark chocolate did tone down the sweetness.

soooo... there has already been one suggestion for switching chocolate, but I think the gran saman will be to powerful, considering this callebaut was already to strong. Im up for the idea of switching though. I dont trust the gran saman i have now in the cupboard, so ill have to order more to try it out. any other brand suggestions?

anyone have experience mixing chocolates?

oh, i just thought of something as well... do you guys think that maybe i should have put in more maple syrup to the fondant before using it with the dark chocolate? that would be making it even sweeter, but maybe it needed the flavor to be much stronger so it could stand out?

[tammylc]

I went through something very similar this weekend, trying to find the right chocolate to coat a butter nut caramel in, so I know exactly where you're coming from. Fortunately, I think I've found a chocolate that will work for my purposes (Cluizel 60%).

I tried some Maralumi from Michel Cluizel - it's a 47% milk. He also makes a 50% milk, the Mangaro (I think). Both are single origin so have pretty distinctive flavors, but maybe one of them would work well for you? I also like the Orinoco 41% milk from E. Guittard, but i think that would probably still be too sweet.

Good luck!

[chocofoodie]

I went through something very similar this weekend, trying to find the right chocolate to coat a butter nut caramel in, so I know exactly where you're coming from.  Fortunately, I think I've found a chocolate that will work for my purposes (Cluizel 60%).

I tried some Maralumi from Michel Cluizel - it's a 47% milk. He also makes a 50% milk, the Mangaro (I think). Both are single origin so have pretty distinctive flavors, but maybe one of them would work well for you?  I also like the Orinoco 41% milk from E. Guittard, but i think that would probably still be too sweet.

Good luck!

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Thanks Tammylc!

So is it your experience then that the Callebaut milk is very sweet in general? I've never tried working with any other milk chocolate, so I just thought they would all be like this.

In general, when you are looking for the right chocolate, do you have to experiment a lot with different brands and percentages? Would that be the best way to go about this?

[tammylc]

I've not used Callebaut milk a lot, but I know it is pretty sweet, and relatively low in cocoa solids compared to the ones I mentioned.

This was the first time I really felt I needed to experiment a lot. I'm still a pretty new chocolatier, so I've been keeping it simple up until now. This weekend I started off thinking I just needed to figure out if wanted to dip it in my standard milk or my standard dark, but then I realized that "neither" was the right answer and I needed to do more work to figure it out. I think the best chocolatiers pay a lot of attention to choosing the right chocolate for each flavor - I'm not there yet, but I'm working on it.

Chocosphere has a huge range of chocolates, you could order small amounts from them to try.