[Modernist Cuisine] Carbonated Mojito Spheres (4•188 and 6•291)

[Judy Wilson]

Who has tried this? I've tried it twice and both times I've ended up mojito jelly, not spheres. I even have the benefit of being able to ask coauthor Maxime Bilet for tips...only to have him finally tell me it must have been some user error. 

I should have taken pictures, but, well, I was kind of embarrassed!   I promise that next time I try them--and there will be a next time!--I'll take pics and post them here no matter the outcome.

If you did finally get spheres, I envy you. But, I am also curious to know how you served them. As Max noted on eGullet a couple months ago, they don't actually serve them in a cocktail glass at the cooking lab. The photo of the sphere in the glass in the book is purely to demonstrate the fizziness. So, how did you give them to your guests?

[Anonymous Modernist 310]

I made the recipe twice with good results both times. But since I haven't got a very good technique I pre-froze the spheres in semi hemispheric mold and put them in a warm alginate bath after that. When I removed them from the bath they were fully liquid and the pressure of the carbonation made them fullyspherical.

The only smallaestheticproblem was that I had some air bubbles in the spheres. It made the sphere look like eyes. I'm still not sure if it's a plus or minus...

[Anonymous Modernist 737]

I made them, and they looked pretty good before carbonation. When I carbonated them, they got large air bubbles in them that made them look pretty odd. I tried serving them in a glass with some of the lime/sugar water plus a little extra rum, which was OK, but pretty odd. I also did have some trouble with them sticking to each other when setting in the bath, which was solved by gelling fewer of them at a time.

[Anonymous Modernist 733]

Is it normal for them to have the air bubbles? After all, they ARE carbonated.

[Anonymous Modernist 310]

In that case it's large air bubble created by the emulsion process. In my case it was directly related to the amount of frozen bubbles on top of my sphere when I put it in the alginate bath. I think if everything is done correctly the carbonation should be invisible until you put it in your mouth.

[Anonymous Modernist 737]

I don't think that was what I was seeing. I had some that were not carbonated, and those didn't have large air bubbles in them. It looked to me like the inside of the spheres were carbonated, and the bubbles in them were building up at the top of the sphere and not escaping.