Bonbons with cheese?

[pastrygirl]

With cheese especially, water could be used instead of cream to balance fat and solids. 

 

In in the goat cheese recipe, there's no liquid except lemon juice and the small amount in the cheese, so adding water makes sense. Adding cream would add too much fat and be hard to emulsify. 

 

 

[martin0642]

As an experiment (an at the behest of my girlfriend) I tried just dipping cubes of manchego in very dark chocolate.

 

 

Yeah.........

 

If the cube was small enough it was a taste sensation (especially with a chilli chocolate). If the cube was a little bigger...the texture was a little weird to say the least!

[Bentley]

Cacao Barry just posted on their facebook a recipe from Melissa Coppel for Parmesan Hazelnut Bonbons with a caramelized white chocolate ganache infused with parmesan and a salted hazelnut/milk chocolate gianduja.

Edited November 4, 2016 by Bentley (log)

[Jim D.]

On 9/20/2016 at 11:47 AM, Jim D. said:

 

I would also like to have the recipes that you offered.  At first I found the idea totally repulsive, but Stilton and port in dark chocolate is intriguing.  If you post that recipe, I'll give it a try and see what the water activity is (although the port will make a difference in shelf life that is, as far as I know, not measurable). 

 

I thought I should follow up with what I have learned in regard to this Stilton and port filling. I posted the basic issues about shelf life on The Chocolate Life forum, and Sebastian, who appears to be very knowledgeable about all things chocolate, replied first with information about the impact of alcohol on water activity: "The impact of the alcohol you add will be factored into any Aw reading you take." And in another post:  "...an Aw meter will give a reading of the overall Aw of the food system being tested, and will be agnostic of individual ingredients. It considers the system as a whole, and if that system contains alcohol, that will be considered as well as part of that system. As Clay notes, port, while relatively high alcohol for a wine, is still relatively low in overall alcohol content, and as such the contribution of alcohol to the overall formula will be nominal at your likely use level. While it may be measurable, it's not likely to be meaningful in terms of its ability to provide extended microbiology shelf life." So the good news for those with Aw meters is that those devices do take into account any alcohol; the bad news is that it takes a lot of alcohol to make a substantial difference in shelf life.

 

Then there is the cheese in this bonbon. On that issue Sebastian wrote:   "Perhaps consider grating the cheese, putting it in a sous vide bag, and then into a pressure cooker - sort of a DIY HPP process to reduce the micro load of the cheese? I've no data on it, but theoretically it should work pretty well. Better yet, grate the cheese, add it AND the port to the bag and pressure treat them both - that way you get the impact of heat, pressure, and alcohol working on micro load reduction."

 

I don't have the equipment to perform that experiment, and frankly the mention of "micro load reduction" would keep me from making this filling in situations where the seller of the chocolate has no control over how long or under what conditions the buyer keeps it. I might make it for guests who I knew were going to eat it right away.

 

So, long story short, I might experiment with this in the coming summer months and, if it tastes good, make some Stilton and port chocolates for Christmas for friends, but, because of the issues with the cheese, I would not see adding it to the list of items I regularly make for sale.

[Tri2Cook]

4 hours ago, Jim D. said:

So the good news for those with Aw meters is that those devices do take into account any alcohol; the bad news is that it takes a lot of alcohol to make a substantial difference in shelf life.

If this is indeed the case, it gives me a small sense of relief in a way. Not because the alcohol doesn't make a substantial difference, it's a nice tool to have available if it did. My relief comes from the idea that if adding it doesn't make much difference, then neither does leaving it out. Because I have a tendency to prefer not to add booze to my chocolates unless I'm doing a filling where it's a specific part of the desired flavor profile. Thing like cocktail mimics and the like.

Edited to fix a dumb spelling error that would have bothered me if it remained.

Edited February 23, 2017 by Tri2Cook (log)

[Jim D.]

3 minutes ago, Tri2Cook said:

If this is indeed the case, it gives me a small sense of relief in a way. Not because the alcohol doesn't make a substantial difference, it's a nice tool to have available if it did. My relief comes from the idea that if adding it doesn't make much difference, than neither does leaving it out. 

 

Jean-Pierre Wybauw states that extending shelf life with alcohol requires adding 15% alcohol to the amount of other liquids in the ganache. This means that a ganache using 500g of chocolate and 250g of cream would require 37.5g of alcohol. That's not a huge amount, but it's not nothing.

[Kerry Beal]

28 minutes ago, Jim D. said:

 

Jean-Pierre Wybauw states that extending shelf life with alcohol requires adding 15% alcohol to the amount of other liquids in the ganache. This means that a ganache using 500g of chocolate and 250g of cream would require 37.5g of alcohol. That's not a huge amount, but it's not nothing.

I  think it's 18% of the free water - so 250 g of cream has 162.5 g water - 18% of which is a little over 29 g of pure alcohol. If you use lower proof you need to account for it.

 

A standard dew point  Aw meter without special filters doesn't recognize the Aw lowering effect of alcohol. From the Aqua Lab manual - ‟Samples with a high amount of volatiles condense on the mirror during the reading process, but do not evaporate from the mirror as water does. As a result the reading on samples with volatiles may not be accurate with the dew point technique.”

[Jim D.]

2 hours ago, Kerry Beal said:

I  think it's 18% of the free water - so 250 g of cream has 162.5 g water - 18% of which is a little over 29 g of pure alcohol. If you use lower proof you need to account for it.

 

 

I was quoting what Wybauw says about the 15% figure; he does not mention "free water."

[Kerry Beal]

44 minutes ago, Jim D. said:

 

I was quoting what Wybauw says about the 15% figure; he does not mention "free water."

My bad - looking at my shelf life talk - he does say 15% pure alcohol. Can't find my copy of the book anywhere around here though. I know that glucose etc is based on percentage of water vs cream.

 

 

[Jim D.]

19 hours ago, Kerry Beal said:

A standard dew point  Aw meter without special filters doesn't recognize the Aw lowering effect of alcohol. From the Aqua Lab manual - ‟Samples with a high amount of volatiles condense on the mirror during the reading process, but do not evaporate from the mirror as water does. As a result the reading on samples with volatiles may not be accurate with the dew point technique.”

 

I wrote to Aqua Lab asking about this issue and got this reply: "The statement was quoted from the 4TE manual that used the chilled mirror sensor. I've attached the link to the maual, this statement is on page 51 section 8.4."

 

I replied to them, asking specifically:  "But does the statement also apply to the Pawkit, meaning that it too may not give accurate readings with high amounts of volatiles in the sample?"

 

And the reply to that was:  "Not at all James. Pawkit uses the capacitance sensor, there is not a chilled mirror on the Pawkit. Our Series 4TEV instrument uses the same sensor as the Pawkit."

[Kerry Beal]

I shall have to do some ganache with and without some 96% ETOH. Unless Ruth already did?

[Kerry Beal]

23 hours ago, Kerry Beal said:

My bad - looking at my shelf life talk - he does say 15% pure alcohol. Can't find my copy of the book anywhere around here though. I know that glucose etc is based on percentage of water vs cream.

 

 

Ok - so reading the Wybauw book - it talks about 'total water content in the recipe' and mentions 15% but 'with 17% it achieves an ideal shelf life'.

[pastryani]

On the subjects of both cheese and shelf life, I've been toying with the idea of a cheesecake bonbon using dried/powdered cheese.  I know it's been done before (ahem @Kerry Beal) so it definitely seems possible, but what is the shelf life of a freeze-dried dairy product that has been reconstituted?  More/less/or the same as the real, fresh thing?

[Kerry Beal]

18 hours ago, pastryani said:

On the subjects of both cheese and shelf life, I've been toying with the idea of a cheesecake bonbon using dried/powdered cheese.  I know it's been done before (ahem @Kerry Beal) so it definitely seems possible, but what is the shelf life of a freeze-dried dairy product that has been reconstituted?  More/less/or the same as the real, fresh thing?

I'd say yes - if you reconstitute - but I think making the bonbon with a recipe that you know the shelf life of - then adding the dried/powdered cheese for flavour. 

[aldrins]

On 9/16/2016 at 8:56 PM, AnythingButPlainChocolate said:

Paul Young (Adventures in chocolate) has a couple of recipes with cheese.  I can reccomend the lemon and goats cheese (it tastes like lemon cheesecake) and the port and Stilton (strain the Stilton mixture before adding to chocolate or it will be all kinds of grainy).

Can i have the recipe that you used for this lemon goat cheese?thanks

 

[Merry Berry]

Aldrins,

 

If you look on page 1 of this thread, poster AnythingButPlainChocolate posted a lemon goat cheese recipe that I recently used to great success.  I did a play on New Orleans Sunday brunch theme at a charity event that started with a mimosa, then the "salad/entree" portion of the lemon goat cheese (hence why I colored it green), then dessert of bananas foster, and finish it off with a Bailey's coffee bonbon.  I got a lot of strange looks from people when I mention goat cheese, but some were converts once they tasted it and the others...well not so much.  I personally loved them and for the people that already liked goat cheese, they were hooked.  I am going to try an attach a picture of them, but the recipe given by ABPC was nice and I will make it again.

 

 

[Desiderio]

On 9/16/2016 at 6:10 PM, teonzo said:

Last year I made a 2-layered one with gorgonzola and mace (here is the page of my blog if interested, it's in Italian). For gorgonzola I used a white chocolate ganache (Valrhona Ivoire), for mace I used a dark chocolate ganache (Valrhona Guanaya 70%).

 

The recipe for the gorgonzola ganache is:

30 g   milk

50 g    gorgonzola (traditional type, not the "sweet" one)

10 g    honey

180 g    white chocolate

Melt white chocolate.

Boil milk with gorgonzola and honey.

Add to the white chocolate.

Mix, then temper the ganache.

 

I thought it was good and was expecting mixed feedback since it's a weird combination, but I've been surprised, all comments ranged from "good" to "great". I would have been less surprised if everyone said they didn't like it.

About shelf life, the last one was eaten after 3 weeks and was fine. Can't say how much more time they can last.

 

 

 

Teo

 

Grazie Teo, I just saw this post (it has been awhile since I posted here),  I am loving your blog. wondering if you got to open your own shop?

[teonzo]

18 hours ago, Desiderio said:

Grazie Teo, I just saw this post (it has been awhile since I posted here),  I am loving your blog. wondering if you got to open your own shop?

 

Thanks for appreciating what I did on the blog!

I still haven't opened my shop. I'm going through lawyers to get back my money from my father. The exact second after I got it back in my hands I'll start to put my plans in reality.

 

 

 

Teo