Confections! What did we make? (2017 – )

[curls]

Cooler weather has come to Virginia so it is time to start making chocolates! Picked up some moulds from JKV chocolates while on vacation this summer (took lots of photos to share but have yet to sort thru them all). JKV has a great showroom and amazing "museum" with a collection of antique metal moulds. I found a 50 gram bar mould that I liked -- using it to make dark chocolate bars. The pictured bar is with Agrimontana orange peel.

[curls]

A fun polycarbonate mould I ordered from JKV, the peanut shell. These are filled with peanutbutter meltaways. Meltaway filling tempered with EZ Temper silk & piped into the shells.

 

 

Edited November 17, 2019 by curls (log)

[curls]

And then there were truffles and coconut rum.

 

[Jim D.]

A photo of the second of my Christmas 2019 assortments.

 

Beginning at the top with the item topped by a hazelnut:  Coffee ganache & hazelnut gianduja, cherry pâte de fruit & pistachio gianduja, pear pâte de fruit & almond cream, spiced plum ganache, gingerbread, sesame crunch, maple walnut ganache, apricot pâte de fruit & almond gianduja with spiced shortbread, cherry with kirschwasser, raspberry cream, eggnog ganache, dark caramel with sea salt.

 

 

I am aware that many people (usually including me) are a bit scornful of using transfer sheets vs. original decorations, but I can attest that, in a very busy December, those transfer sheets help take the pressure off creating designs from scratch for so many different fillings (24 in all for the month). The sobering reality is that customers loved the transfer sheet designs. Quite a few asked me how I managed to paint all those intricate designs on each piece. And yes, I told the truth. 

[Jim D.]

I don't spend every waking moment working with chocolate. Once the Christmas chocolates were done, I turned to desserts for Christmas dinner. This is one of three, a caramelized orange polenta cake:

 

[pastrygirl]

A few recent things

 

passion fruit ganache with tangerine pate de fruits

 

coffee caramel 

 

strawberry vanilla (Valrhona fraise shells, dark & white vanilla ganache layers) 

 

pistachio saffron

 

boxed

 

strawberry, pistachio, candied lemon mendiants for a vegan option (candied lemon slices from Trader Joe’s were good) 

 

snowflakes are a regular winter item but cute round jars are new and sold better than expected - I piped about 100 kg of these little guys!!!

 

made toffee for some corporate gifts, couldn’t resist a few colorful sprinkles. 

Edited December 25, 2019 by pastrygirl (log)

[teonzo]

On 11/17/2019 at 6:41 PM, curls said:

 

 

Beautiful mold! I would try using caramelized white chocolate for the shell, both for appearance and taste.

 

 

 

Teo

 

[teonzo]

10 hours ago, Jim D. said:

Quite a few asked me how I managed to paint all those intricate designs on each piece. And yes, I told the truth.

 

This is one of the cases where you are allowed to say you have some Oompa Loompas in your basement.

 

 

 

Teo

 

[Merry Berry]

Did a chocolate gift box for a client for New Years.  Truffle is Honey Clove (my fave of this run).  Black heart is Salted Caramel.  White heart is Raspberry Ganache.  Dome is Bailey's Coffee Ganache.  Was definitely a little rusty, but glad to play with chocolate again.  Here's to hoping I get to do more in 2020!!

 

 

 

 

[Haley]

Finally back on the forums to get some Valentine’s inspiration and thought I’d share my Christmas collections.  I can never narrow down the flavors that I want to make, so as usual, I overdid it.  I made 24 different bonbons this year in order to fulfill my idea of offering a “nice” box (more traditional flavors) and a “naughty” box (more non traditional flavors and more dark chocolate).  
Nice box flavors: turtle, salted caramel, strawberry,  peanut butter, cookie butter, hot chocolate, peppermint, coffee, coconut, key lime, raspberry cheesecake, and hazelnut gianduja

Naughty box flavors: rosemary olive oil, bananas foster caramel, kalamansi, spiked eggnog, salt and pepper, peanut butter pretzel, creme brûlée, pecan gianduja ganache, dark chocolate passion fruit, hazelnut latte, mango habanero, and chai

I’m going to stick with a much more manageable number of flavors for Valentine’s Day!

 

[pastrygirl]

1 hour ago, Haley said:

Nice box flavors: turtle, salted caramel, strawberry,  peanut butter, cookie butter, hot chocolate, peppermint, coffee, coconut, key lime, raspberry cheesecake, and hazelnut gianduja

Naughty box flavors: rosemary olive oil, bananas foster caramel, kalamansi, spiked eggnog, salt and pepper, peanut butter pretzel, creme brûlée, pecan gianduja ganache, dark chocolate passion fruit, hazelnut latte, mango habanero, and chai

 

Tough choice!  Did one sell better than the other or about the same?

[Haley]

21 minutes ago, pastrygirl said:

 

Tough choice!  Did one sell better than the other or about the same?

The nice sold slightly better (as I suspected and was prepared for knowing my customers).  I offered a slight discount when buying a box of each and that seemed to help balance out my inventory.

[Desiderio]

On 12/25/2019 at 12:58 AM, pastrygirl said:

A few recent things

 

passion fruit ganache with tangerine pate de fruits

 

coffee caramel 

 

strawberry vanilla (Valrhona fraise shells, dark & white vanilla ganache layers) 

 

pistachio saffron

 

boxed

 

strawberry, pistachio, candied lemon mendiants for a vegan option (candied lemon slices from Trader Joe’s were good) 

 

snowflakes are a regular winter item but cute round jars are new and sold better than expected - I piped about 100 kg of these little guys!!!

 

made toffee for some corporate gifts, couldn’t resist a few colorful sprinkles. 

 

Gorgeous work. I wasn't sure where you worked at. It would be fun to visit you sometimes 🙂

[Desiderio]

Since I started working in the chocolate world again, I have been busy with production. Of course it didn't help that I started during the busiest time of the year. My hands haven't healed yet, and at this point not sure they will ever.

Anyways, work is fine, products aren't exciting, but I am trying to find my creativity here and there and helped them out update some stuff.

These are one of the new ones, not fancy, but they use our toffee, which for some reason they weren't using for production, like chocolate bars etc, but instead buying crappy toffee somewhere else!🙄 Toffee Butter Truffles. A butter ganache made with the long shelf life method of using 75Brix syrup and butter, toffee bits inside and in the coating as well.

[Desiderio]

On 11/17/2019 at 11:42 AM, curls said:

Cooler weather has come to Virginia so it is time to start making chocolates! Picked up some moulds from JKV chocolates while on vacation this summer (took lots of photos to share but have yet to sort thru them all). JKV has a great showroom and amazing "museum" with a collection of antique metal moulds. I found a 50 gram bar mould that I liked -- using it to make dark chocolate bars. The pictured bar is with Agrimontana orange peel.

Yum! There is something special about chocolate and orange peel 😍

[Jim D.]

My chocolates have been on the menu at a local restaurant for the past year. It's quite a challenge to package them so that they can withstand the controlled chaos of a restaurant kitchen, but it is going well. Now the publicity person for the establishment had the idea of pairing them with cocktails for the lucrative Valentine's business coming up. So below is the photo they are using. The actual batch will have all three in heart molds. The flavors of the chocolate fillings will be fig with anise & port, hazelnut gianduja & coffee with Kahlúa, and "raspberry rose" (dark chocolate ganache with raspberry purée & rosewater--made from locally grown edible roses, incidentally). To give credit where it's due, the third filling is from Andrew Shotts's book. All are molded in dark chocolate, either Felchlin's Maracaibo 65% or Arriba 72%.

 

[Kerry Beal]

14 minutes ago, Jim D. said:

My chocolates have been on the menu at a local restaurant for the past year. It's quite a challenge to package them so that they can withstand the controlled chaos of a restaurant kitchen, but it is going well. Now the publicity person for the establishment had the idea of pairing them with cocktails for the lucrative Valentine's business coming up. So below is the photo they are using. The actual batch will have all three in heart molds. The flavors of the chocolate fillings will be fig with anise & port, hazelnut gianduja & coffee with Kahlúa, and "raspberry rose" (dark chocolate ganache with raspberry purée & rosewater--made from locally grown edible roses, incidentally). To give credit where it's due, the third filling is from Andrew Shotts's book. All are molded in dark chocolate, either Felchlin's Maracaibo 65% or Arriba 72%.

 

Nice!

[jedovaty]

Success.  However, holy cow it was messy.  Part of it is that my mold is larger than my bowl so chocolate got everywhere, and then I'm also pretty new to piping so the filling kept squishing out the top and getting all over.  Also, the mold isn't very good, it's a non-proline from Tomric, with this lip around the bottom edge and slightly flimsier than the better stuff - # on the mold is g-205.  Not sure where or when I got it, have had it for a long time unused.  I wanted to try this out with what I had on hand

 

Hardest part was tempering, and I gave up trying to keep the chocolate warm in tempered state.  Still lots to learn, although, I was jumping around like an idiot after seeing the shine on these 😁.  There's a pastry/confection store near my work, they offer classes, I think I'll go check them out - generally, I like to learn on my own, but I think being able to repeat multiple times over course of a day or two will give me a jump start on the learning curve here.  In case you're curious, fillings got mixed up, but they are hazelnut praline butter, or dulce de coconut (can of sweetened condensed coconut run in pressure cooker for 20 minutes.. my goodness this stuff is amazing). 

 

Second hardest part was trying to keep myself from licking and tasting everything.  Nothing's being shared yet, don't worry.  It does give to palette fatigue, though, by the end, I was sick from the sugar 😝

 

[Jim D.]

@jedovaty, when I am working on a single mold or two and using a small bowl, I don't try to empty the mold over the bowl; a mess can be the only outcome of that. Instead I fill the mold, then invert it, while holding it horizontal, over a piece of parchment. Tap on the sides of the mold to empty it, turn it right side up, scrape it, still over the parchment. In this way all chocolate goes onto the parchment and nothing is wasted. Then let the chocolate shells crystallize at room temperature so that the chocolate turns from shiny to matte, then place in the refrigerator for at least 5-10 minutes, then remove and store in a cool place until you are ready to fill. Doing the whole procedure (including filling and sealing them) at once is really not (in my opinion) a practical option. Most fillings need time to set before the cavities are sealed; otherwise you risk scraping off some of the filling when you are sealing. And one of the most difficult parts of the whole process is getting just enough filling into each cavity--too little and the bonbon bottoms will be too thick, too much and you won't be able to get a good seal.

 

If it were easy to make filled chocolates, every fool in the world would be making them.

[keychris]

9 hours ago, Jim D. said:

If it were easy to make filled chocolates, every fool in the world would be making them.

 

only the fools in here hey 🤣

 

 

[jedovaty]

@Jim D. I think you just helped solve the biggest workflow challenges for me, thank you!  The rest will only improve with more practice and experience. 

[Rajala]

I made a carrot cake bonbon.

 

[Jim D.]

1 hour ago, Rajala said:

I made a carrot cake bonbon.

 

Very interesting concept and attractive exterior. Can you tell us more about the various components inside?

[Rajala]

19 minutes ago, Jim D. said:

 

Very interesting concept and attractive exterior. Can you tell us more about the various components inside?

 

Well of course!

 

- Cream cheese ganache. Based on Susanna Yoon's receipe that we've discussed in the past

- Dulche de leche, with some sea salt. (don't add that much to the overall experience - the salt helps for the overall sweetness though)

- Milk chocolate ganache with cardamom, cinnamon, ginger and browned butter.

- The shell is then made out of carrot "chooclate". 520 grams of sugar, 380 grams of cocoa butter and 100 gram of freeze dried carrots.

- Paint job is a few white dots and orange cocoa butter (100 gram cocoa butter, 10 gram of orange color) - no white coloring. Using the shell's brownish orange color as a part of it.

Edited February 10, 2020 by Rajala (log)

[Rajala]

Also made banana chocolate with some peanut butter and lime caramel.