Runny praliné in molded chocolate

[gfron1]

Haste makes waste.

 

I'm in the middle of trying to knock out 5k bonbons for an upcoming event, and balancing that with maintaining a relationship with my spouse who doesn't like how my 14 hour days stretch to 16 hour days. So in my impatience when I was making a hazelnut praline from scratch, I added a bit of hazelnut oil to help it loosen. It loosened and I continued adding my chocolate and cocoa butter; piped it and let it set overnight. Next morning it was runny and still completely liquid - well hell! - wasted time and ingredients. But I didn't want to give up, so I did a heavy spray of cocoa butter on top to create a sort of seal. This morning I went in and there definitely was a seal but when I touched it it was still liquidy to the touch, but it felt firm enough that I should be able to get a cap on the shells.

Has anyone had success with this? If the first of the 10 trays doesn't work, I'll stop and dump the filling out, add more chocolate and try again.

[gfron1]

In a related note - I asked AUI about their praline and they were out of the 50/50 hazelnut variety, but at the unsweetened. How would I use that? Would I make a caramel, warm the praline and then combine them? Has anyone bought the unsweetened praline?

[Jim D.]

Gfron1:

 

If you haven't piped all the hazelnut praline, you could add cocoa butter to the part that hasn't been piped.  If you have piped all of it, I would think the spray of cocoa butter is about all you can do.  In fact I have had Greweling's recipe not set up (and have since revised the amount of chocolate and cocoa butter upward to take care of the issue), and everyone loved the softness of the filling.  I would go with it.  That stuff is too expensive to waste!

 

As for the other question, I suppose you could make a hard-crack caramel and grind it with the nut paste, but, of course, you are never going to get it completely smooth.  Theoretically making a softer caramel should work, but getting the texture right could be an issue--you might end up where you are at the moment.  A simpler solution:  L'Epicerie in New York has Cacao Barry's hazelnut praline paste for sale and ships reasonably quickly.

 

Jim

[pastrygirl]

You could sweeten with powdered sugar. That's what I use when I make hazelnut paste. Or fondant sugar if you don't want the added corn starch.

[gfron1]

So I dumped as much as I easily could, added more melted chocolate and re-filled. The bottoms weren't perfectly pretty but they did seal and look pretty good. Tops are perfect. I can't imagine a shelf-life issue since we're talking oil not water, and I'll be selling in 2 weeks so the oil won't go rancid. I lost maybe 10% of the cavities to shells falling out when I dumped. Overall, a good save.