Scaling down pate de fruits recipes

[Bentley]

I was going to try making some pate de fruits.  I have the Boiron recipes which call for 1 kg of puree and a little more than 1 KG of sugar.  That sounds like it will make a significantly bigger batch than I need.  Can I scale it down by just cutting the recipe down, say by half?

[Tere]

The only thing I have made that is close to this is wild damson cheese but why not? Just don't rely on the timings.

[Kerry Beal]

Yup - you can - I do it all the time. I probably add a slightly larger amount of booze at the end though. I mix my tartaric acid solution with about 10 ml of alcohol and add it all together at the end to stop the boiling. 

[gfron1]

Many of us keep an Excel spreadsheet to do just that. I'll attach mine here.

PateDeFruitCalculato0r.xls

[Bentley]

One further inquiry:  the Boiron recipes say to use 25g Tartaric acid for the particular one I'm making.  Is that 25g of solution (12.5g of TA and 12.5g of water) or 25g of TA in solution with 25g of water?

Edited March 31, 2016 by Bentley (log)

[Kerry Beal]

25 grams of solution which is made by mixing 12.5 grams acid with 12.5 g water. I make bigger batches though.

 

[Bentley]

Thanks Kerry.  For now, it's small batches for me because I'm just experimenting.

[Kerry Beal]

Keeps in the fridge pretty much forever.

 

[Patrick S]

On 3/24/2016 at 9:04 PM, gfron1 said:

Many of us keep an Excel spreadsheet to do just that. I'll attach mine here.

PateDeFruitCalculato0r.xls

 

I'm glad you posted this! At the end of 2014, for a project at work, I educated myself on Excel. I use pivot tables, pivot charts, and a variety of custom formulas to create quality improvement/risk management metrics and graphs. I took your Excel workbook, reworked it a bit, and created several template worksheets. So, on the template worksheets, if you just enter values for the ingredient names and the ingredient weights, the custom formulas in the adjacent columns will automatically calculate the ingredient weights for 75%, 50%, 25%, 12.5% and 6.25% reductions, as well as the total ingredient weights for each reduction. Just enter your ingredient names and the weights for the base recipe ingredients, and the rest of the values will auto-populate.

ingredient calculator.xls

[Patrick S]

I thought of a much better and less cluttered-looking way to do what I was trying to do with the first workbook. In the new and improved workbook (attached), just enter your ingredient names, and base-recipe weights for each, in columns A and B. Then, just enter the percentage change you want to that base recipe in the yellow cell, B12 (e.g. 200 if you want to double it, 50 if you want to halve it), and your new weights for each ingredient, as well as total ingredient weight, will automatically calculate in column C. Additionally, I've added two columns that will automatically calculate baker's % for each ingredient, and % of total weight for each ingredient.

ingredient calculator2.xlsx

Edited April 4, 2016 by Patrick S (log)

[Bentley]

Well, my first attempt was a success.  I made two batches...a strawberry and a kiwi.  They both set up beautifully and tasted great.  The only issue was the color of the kiwi pate de fruit.  I made my own puree, and it was a brownish green and the finished candy was a dark yellow/brownish....not a super attractive look.  I think maybe the seeds that got blended into the puree may have darkened it.  Perhaps I will try to strain it next time before pureeing the fruit.  Has anyone else tried a kiwi pate de fruit?  Did you get a nice green color on it, and if so, how?

[gfron1]

I would add a bit of spinach and a strong hit of citric acid and see if that gives you a better color.

[Bentley]

That's an interesting tip - not one I would have guessed.  The spinach makes sense - although I worry it might darken it even more, but I didn't realize the citric acid would have any impact on the color.

[gfron1]

I thought you went brown, not dark. I would think about other neutral greens that can get a quick blanche to keep the color lighter. As for the citric acid, think about when you cut apples and store them in lemon juice. Its slows oxidation. Same idea here plus generally its a good idea to have tartaric or citric acid to counter all the sweetness. I've not done kiwi so its just random thoughts.