Confections! What did we make? (2017 – )

[Rajala]

 

This is a bonbon with passion fruit in different textures.

[Jim D.]

My Easter 2021 offerings:

 

 

Eggs:  (clockwise from top):  strawberry cream with strawberry pâte de fruit, dark caramel with sea salt, coffee ganache & rum buttercream, crispy hazelnut gianduja.

 

 

Bonbon assortment:  "bananas Foster," "caramel macchiato," cherry with kirschwasser, coconut macadamia, pecan praline gianduja with toasted marshmallow, almond praline gianduja with salted caramel & shortbread, orange blossom mousse, cookie butter, hazelnut crunch with chocolate shortbread, lemon cheesecake, and dark caramel with sea salt.

[Jurjen]

On 6/5/2020 at 9:42 AM, Rajala said:

Bonbons with salty liquorice caramel. Most likely very few here would enjoy these?

 

On 6/6/2020 at 10:56 AM, Rajala said:

 

 I make a regular caramel by pouring 100 grams of water in a saucepan, followed by 300 grams of caster sugar and 50 grams of glucose. Deglaze with 200 grams of cream when you get that dark amber color and it's basically ready. I don't boil it anymore after that, it gets a nice consistency as is. This is a great base I believe, I used it for my hazelnut caramel where I add 50 grams of hazelnut paste. For the salty liquorice caramel, I just add q.s. of this https://lakridsbybulow.com/products/salty-liquorice-syrup/170g

 

Would love to try these, how did you cap them if the filling is so liquid? Is there some invertose in there?

[Haley]

My Easter collection this year. Raspberry Cheesecake, Peanut Butter Pretzel with Caramel, Calamansi Meringue Pie, and Cookie Butter Crunch.

[Rajala]

On 4/3/2021 at 2:29 PM, Jurjen said:

Would love to try these, how did you cap them if the filling is so liquid? Is there some invertose in there?

 

Guitar sheet!

[Jim D.]

On 4/5/2021 at 10:00 PM, Haley said:

My Easter collection this year. Raspberry Cheesecake, Peanut Butter Pretzel with Caramel, Calamansi Meringue Pie, and Cookie Butter Crunch.

 

Those are really beautiful.  If you don't mind telling, how do you get such subtlety when painting with cocoa butter?  Mine is almost always too fluid to stay in place and runs all over the mold.  And, in the case of the bonbon on the far right, the blue color had to be painted first to get the gradient effect.

[Jurjen]

4 hours ago, Rajala said:

 

Guitar sheet!

Haven't heard of that for molded chocolates, I assume you spread a thin layer on the guitar sheet then while it's still warm you invert it on top of the mold and press down?

[Jim D.]

1 hour ago, Jurjen said:

Haven't heard of that for molded chocolates, I assume you spread a thin layer on the guitar sheet then while it's still warm you invert it on top of the mold and press down?

 

Some people do it that way, but most (as far as I have seen) spread some chocolate on top of the mold, apply a transfer sheet (with a design pre-printed on it) or plain guitar sheet, then spread the chocolate with a scraper.  After the chocolate has crystallized, the acetate sheet can be removed easily.  Unless one is an expert, this makes a mess, with chocolate flowing down the sides of the mold.  And it is also difficult to remove the chocolate between the cavities with the scraper, but not doing so means they can be very difficult to get out of the mold.  Perhaps you can detect that I speak from some unhappy experience.  When it works, however, this technique produces an attractive bonbon, and a transfer sheet adds a nice design touch to the bottom of the bonbon--something I have learned, to my surprise, that customers notice and really like.

[Haley]

8 hours ago, Jim D. said:

 

Those are really beautiful.  If you don't mind telling, how do you get such subtlety when painting with cocoa butter?  Mine is almost always too fluid to stay in place and runs all over the mold.  And, in the case of the bonbon on the far right, the blue color had to be painted first to get the gradient effect.

Thanks! I did these with drops of colored cocoa butter (one petal at a time) and hit them strategically with straight air from my airbrush, blowing them in the direction I wanted them to go. For the purple/blue flower I just put 2 drops in at the same time and the air blended them together. There was a lot of trial and error at first but I ended up loving (for the most part) the non uniformity and random splatters that came with this technique.

[Rajala]

17 hours ago, Jurjen said:

Haven't heard of that for molded chocolates, I assume you spread a thin layer on the guitar sheet then while it's still warm you invert it on top of the mold and press down?

 

Yeah, that's a trick when the filling is very very soft. And then scrape the mould "through" the sheet. As Jim describes. I really don't think it's hard though, I succeeded with it on my first attempt. Maybe there was some chocolate left around one of the bonbon, but nothing that I really recall.

 

Just make sure that the mould isn't cold.

Edited April 9, 2021 by Rajala (log)

[Altay.Oro]

On 2/21/2021 at 12:03 PM, Rajala said:

 

This is a bonbon with passion fruit in different textures.

 

How can we do that perfect layers in a bonbon?

 

My guess ... completely fill the shells first with the white ganache, wait and then turn over the mold, drain the ganache ... and after the white layer set in the shells, fill the second layer. Before capping the bonbon, manually trim the white layer a little.

[Rajala]

18 hours ago, Altay.Oro said:

 

How can we do that perfect layers in a bonbon?

 

My guess ... completely fill the shells first with the white ganache, wait and then turn over the mold, drain the ganache ... and after the white layer set in the shells, fill the second layer. Before capping the bonbon, manually trim the white layer a little.

 

I piped some passion fruit marshmallow in the shell, and then placed a small hemisphere of passion fruit gianduja on top of it. Gently pressing it down. Let the marshmallow set and then close with a layer of chocolate.

[Altay.Oro]

44 minutes ago, Rajala said:

 

I piped some passion fruit marshmallow in the shell, and then placed a small hemisphere of passion fruit gianduja on top of it. Gently pressing it down. Let the marshmallow set and then close with a layer of chocolate.

 

Looks so yummy ) ... do you use silicone molds for hemisphere giandujas?

[Rajala]

5 minutes ago, Altay.Oro said:

 

Looks so yummy ) ... do you use silicone molds for hemisphere giandujas?

 

Yeah. I couldn't find the correct size though. So I had to make the mould on my own.

[Altay.Oro]

Food grade?

Are you taking orders? )

[Rajala]

No, I never use food grade while experimenting. Too expensive.

[EvgenyP]

my invented technique, never seen it before

 

Edited May 12, 2021 by EvgenyP (log)

[Rajala]

Looks great. I guess the black part is color in powder form? You gave me some inspiration for some upcoming "designs" - I have 30 recipes that needs some coloring. 😂

[Rajala]

I made a cinnamon bun bonbon

 

[Jim D.]

45 minutes ago, Rajala said:

I made a cinnamon bun bonbon

 

Looks delicious.  And the decoration nicely suggests the contents.  Another of your specialty multi-layered bonbons.  So can you reveal the contents?  Some cinnamon ganache?

[Rajala]

4 minutes ago, Jim D. said:

 

Looks delicious.  And the decoration nicely suggests the contents.  Another of your specialty multi-layered bonbons.  So can you reveal the contents?  Some cinnamon ganache?

 

There's cinnamon there for sure. Top layer is a caramel with browned butter and vanilla. Middle layer is a ganache made out of milk and dark chocolate with more browned butter, cinnamon, and vanilla as well. Bottom layer is the crispy part with Zéphyr caramel, browned butter, some extra cocoa butter, coconut oil and cinnamon bun crusts (not sure what to call it really), but they sell like dried cinnamon buns at the local store, so I just crushed them to pieces and blended it in.

[curls]

caramelized peanuts

 

[curls]

coffee marshmallows

 

[Jim D.]

On 6/12/2021 at 1:49 PM, Rajala said:

 

There's cinnamon there for sure. Top layer is a caramel with browned butter and vanilla. Middle layer is a ganache made out of milk and dark chocolate with more browned butter, cinnamon, and vanilla as well. Bottom layer is the crispy part with Zéphyr caramel, browned butter, some extra cocoa butter, coconut oil and cinnamon bun crusts (not sure what to call it really), but they sell like dried cinnamon buns at the local store, so I just crushed them to pieces and blended it in.

 

@Rajala has been kind enough to send me the link to the cinnamon bun bonbon recipe on his website. One rather humorous note:  If you have Google translate the page from Swedish to English, the "Krisplager" (crisp layer) gets translated as "crisis layer."  But all is well--no crisis developed.  The mold, which is perfect for the bonbon, suggesting the swirl on top of a cinnamon bun, is Cabrellon 6442.  I could not find an importer of Cabrellon in the U.S., but the mold can be ordered directly from Cabrellon or from Chocolat Chocolat in Montreal, Canada (4-6 weeks delivery time).  Side note:  too bad Cabrellon molds are so difficult to obtain in the U.S. They have a large catalogue with lots of tempting molds. One interesting fact I discovered in the process of getting the molds from Europe:  anything with a value under $800 enters the U.S. duty-free--I did not know that.  I had the shipment within three days of placing the order.

 

I served this bonbon recently with other chocolates at a party.  It was the item that got most of the attention and positive comments. After a lot of experimentation and tasting, I made a few changes to the recipe (which Rajala and I have discussed). For the ganache, I used Valrhona Orelys, which has some brown sugar/molasses notes, instead of the mixture of dark and milk chocolate in the recipe. For the crispy layer, I could find nothing like the Swedish crispy cinnamon buns Rajala included, so used a recipe for cinnamon bun cookies (sugar cookie dough with cinnamon and sugar, rolled up, sliced, baked until crisp, then ground coarsely in a small food processor).  To the crumbs I added Valrhona Opalys and spooned it on top of the ganache (the crumbs were much too coarse to pipe).  I used 65% dark chocolate for the shell to reduce the sweetness.  I'm about to try a version with a 72% dark to reduce the sweetness further.

 

This is a delicious chocolate, and I send my thanks to Rajala for sharing it and discussing it in innumerable back-and-forth emails.

 

 

Top layer is dark caramel with sea salt, next layer (not really visible) is a few toasted pecans, large middle layer is cinnamon, browned butter, and Orelys ganache, thin bottom layer is coarsely crumbled cookies surrounded by a little white chocolate.

Edited July 5, 2021 by Jim D. (log)

[Rajala]

Looking good Jim! I like the approach with Orelys.