Overly viscous ganache—what am I missing

[Kerry Beal]

I usually add glucose - 50% to the free water. So if you are using 100 grams of 35% cream - you have 65 grams of water and 35% fat - so 50% of 65 is 32.5 grams glucose.

[Pastrypastmidnight]

2 hours ago, Kerry Beal said:

I usually add glucose - 50% to the free water. So if you are using 100 grams of 35% cream - you have 65 grams of water and 35% fat - so 50% of 65 is 32.5 grams glucose.

Thanks, Kerry!

[Pastrypastmidnight]

On 4/24/2018 at 10:59 AM, Goober said:

Hi @Pastrypastmidnight

 

To be honest - your ganache looks great.

 

You won't likely get as flat of a top as in, say, a tart or when pouring a slab, as in those instances you are able to pour the ganache at a higher free-flowing temperature because you aren't concerned about melting a shell. You can get pretty close though, by tapping the mould carefully on the counter immediately after piping. 

 

Your ganache ratio is fine. The below ratios are recommended by Ewald Notter and are the ones I typically use.

 

Ganache Ratios

Slabbed:

Dark 2:1

Milk 2.5:1

White 2.5:1

_______________________

 

Piped pralines (freeform shapes)

Dark 1.5:1

Milk 2:1

White 2:1

_______________________

 

Soft ganache (for moulds and truffle shells)

Dark 1:1

Milk 1.5:1

White 1.5:1

 

Ganache piping temperatures correlating to the shell's chocolate type

Dark 31 °C

Milk 30 °C

White 28 °C

 

Other tidbits

Cream

30-40% butterfat works. The higher the cocoa solids percentage contained in your chocolate, the higher percentage of butterfat in your cream is preferred.

 

Butter

Provides mouthfeel and is useful for extending missing butterfat in cream.

A Cream based ganache can have 10% of the total ganache weight, of butter added to it.

Before butter is added, it should be as soft as possible without being melted, otherwise, it will have a negative effect on the mouthfeel. 

 

 

 

Hey, for some reason I didn’t get a notification for this response and I just barely noticed it now. Thank you so much for typing all that out. I don’t have any books or anything by Notter, so I appreciate it very much  .

[Jim D.]

8 hours ago, Pastrypastmidnight said:

Hey, for some reason I didn’t get a notification for this response and I just barely noticed it now. Thank you so much for typing all that out. I don’t have any books or anything by Notter, so I appreciate it very much  .

 

I would strongly recommend Notter's Art of the Chocolatier. He has a lot of recipes that I use frequently: lemon, lime, mint, pistachio, yuzu, and a wonderful recipe for a two-layer combination of raspberry and dark chocolate flavored with orange. His salted caramel is my basic caramel recipe.

[Rajala]

Book suggestions are always nice. I'll have to look that one up.

 

Chocolate and Confectionary or whatever that book is called, was an amazing suggestion from someone. I love that it uses the metric system.  You know which one I'm talking about. 

[Pastrypastmidnight]

14 minutes ago, Rajala said:

Book suggestions are always nice. I'll have to look that one up.

 

Chocolate and Confectionary or whatever that book is called, was an amazing suggestion from someone. I love that it uses the metric system.  You know which one I'm talking about. 

By Peter Greweling? I do have that one—actually two (the pro and the amateur versions)  

[Rajala]

3 minutes ago, Pastrypastmidnight said:

By Peter Greweling? I do have that one—actually two (the pro and the amateur versions)  

 

Yeah, that's it. Thanks Google. I didn't know there is a pro version.  

 

Edit: Well, I placed an order for The Art of the Chocolatier. I get my salary next week so a book for $50 is acceptable. 

Edited May 15, 2018 by Rajala (log)

[Pastrypastmidnight]

1 hour ago, Rajala said:

 

Yeah, that's it. Thanks Google. I didn't know there is a pro version.  

 

Edit: Well, I placed an order for The Art of the Chocolatier. I get my salary next week so a book for $50 is acceptable. 

 

This is the pro: Chocolates and Confections: Formula, Theory, and Technique for the Artisan Confectioner

 

and the home baking version: Chocolates and Confections at Home with The Culinary Institute of America

 

Enjoy the new book!

Edited May 15, 2018 by Smithy
Adjusted Amazon links to be eG-friendly (log)

[Rajala]

1 hour ago, Pastrypastmidnight said:

This is the pro: Chocolates and Confections: Formula, Theory, and Technique for the Artisan Confectioner

 

and the home baking version: Chocolates and Confections at Home with The Culinary Institute of America

 

Enjoy the new book!

 

Aaah. I have the pro one then. Didn't know about the home version.  

 

I will, there's no Amazon here so I'll have to wait until early next week!

Edited May 15, 2018 by Smithy
Adjusted Amazon links to be eG-friendly (log)

[GRiker]

On 5/15/2018 at 3:56 AM, Jim D. said:

 

I would strongly recommend Notter's Art of the Chocolatier. He has a lot of recipes that I use frequently: lemon, lime, mint, pistachio, yuzu, and a wonderful recipe for a two-layer combination of raspberry and dark chocolate flavored with orange. His salted caramel is my basic caramel recipe.

Thanks to the suggestions, I picked up Art of the Chocolatier.   Decided to try that delicious sounding raspberry and dark chocolate praline.  The recipe calls for 200 g orange juice, then in step 8 it says, "Place the orange juice in a pot over medium heat and reduce by half, until the final weight is 165g"

 

Half of 200 is not 165.  Jim D., do you actually reduce the orange juice to 100 g or to 165?

 

I went ahead and reduced to 100 g and it is delicious, but wondered what you decided to use. 

 

[Jim D.]

On 2/20/2020 at 10:49 AM, GRiker said:

Thanks to the suggestions, I picked up Art of the Chocolatier.   Decided to try that delicious sounding raspberry and dark chocolate praline.  The recipe calls for 200 g orange juice, then in step 8 it says, "Place the orange juice in a pot over medium heat and reduce by half, until the final weight is 165g"

 

Half of 200 is not 165.  Jim D., do you actually reduce the orange juice to 100 g or to 165?

 

I went ahead and reduced to 100 g and it is delicious, but wondered what you decided to use. 

 

 

Indeed there are some errors in the book. What I ended up doing is to start with 220g of orange juice and reduced that by half (I made that change a long time ago and am now guessing that I was trying to reach a compromise between the original conflicting numbers). I have notes that the ganache seems quite fluid when it is done but that it thickens successfully in time.

 

If shelf life is a concern of yours, I tested the free water content of this filling and it was 0.85, which is not astronomical but higher than I like, especially for wholesale sales, where I have little control over what happens. That water comes from using a raspberry coulis and can be reduced if you substitute a raspberry pâte de fruit.

Edited February 23, 2020 by Jim D.
Edited to correct misplaced decimal in Aw (log)

[GRiker]

Thanks for the reply and the information about aw.  Looks like 100g or 110g, pretty close.  

 

I am getting more concerned about shelf life.  I spent the day making chocolates at end of January with a friend who was in from out of town.  We made lime coconut truffles, mint truffles and peanut butter meltaways.  The day was super fun.  She was headed back to Oklahoma in a few days and I thought she'd passed them out to her friends as soon as she got back.  Then I heard from her daughter-in-law that she saved them to give away until Valentine's Day! It had been almost a month since we made them.  Then who knows how long her friends kept them before eating them. Makes me realize you can't be sure what people will do with the chocolates once they have them.  

 

The raspberry coulis was bit complicated for me.  When I was at the produce market in San Francisco, I found one of my vendors sold frozen fruit purees.  I had seen this recipe in the book and because I had a source for the raspberry puree I was inspired me to make it.  

 

I purchased the puree but when I got all ready to make it and pulled the puree out of the freezer I found that it wasn't straight puree.  https://www.perfectpuree.com/product/red-raspberry/ .  Ingredients are red raspberries, can sugar, fruit pectin, citric and ascorbic acids.  I have made a raspberry sauce before by straining out all the raspberry seeds from the fruit then adding sugar and reducing.  This commercial product is definitely thicker than straight strained raspberry juice and about the same consistency as the reduced and sweetened juice.  (In fact, I think I'll use it for my raspberry white chocolate cheesecake.  I don't often make it because the raspberry step takes too much time.) But I digress...

 

I also didn't have pectin and decided to use Sure Jell for lower sugar recipes that I use in making jam.

 

Not off to a very good start, but determined to give it a go as I have lots of things to practice, I followed the raspberry coulis recipe, using the pectin and puree that I had.

 

It ended up way too thick.  Even before I added the pectin and sugar then boiled it for three minutes it seemed it was already coating the back of the spoon pretty well (his verbiage for how long to cook it.)  I piped it at 86 - 88 degrees but it wouldn't settle into the mold and I ended up with air pockets between the raspberry coulis and the chocolate shell.  

 

I tried again tonight, just deceasing the pectin and making a 1/3 recipe but my kitchen scale was giving me issues.  The raspberry was still too thick, but I'm not totally sure the recipe was correct.  Since it was so thick and I knew that it wouldn't settle in, I just added some of the Perfect Puree until the viscosity seemed right made sure it was the right temperature and piped it in, figuring at least I would be practicing my molding techniques even if I wasn't perfecting the raspberry recipe.  

 

Now I'm thinking about a different solution.  When I compare the ingredients for the raspberry coulis: raspberry puree, sugar, glucose, pectin, more sugar for pectin, and lemon juice vs the ingredients in the puree I have easy access to, seems like the only difference is an absence of glucose in my commercial puree.  I understand that the ingredient list doesn't tell me much about how much of the ingredients are in the finished product, but I'm wondering if I could just add a bit of glucose and cook up the raspberry puree to reduce it a bit, then use it instead.  

 

What issues do you see with adding glucose (or not) to the Prefect Puree and then reducing it to thicken and piping that into a shell?

 

My goal is to have a product that will have a 2 - 3 week shelf life.  

 

I did think about the pate de fruit suggestion.  I've never made it before but am not totally sure I'd like the very firm pate de fruit inside a shell.  I do also need to get some plain pectin (I read some posts here that talk about pectin and seems like many people like apple pectin, I'd need to find a source of that.  I looked on Amazon but most of the apple pectin was marketed as a nutritional supplement.  Would that work you think?)

 

I'm so excited about all the recipes, I'm tempted to just try them one after the other, but decided I'd be more satisfied by focusing on one recipe until it works then move onto my next favorite or convenient.  

 

[Jim D.]

@GRiker, what I do is make a pâte de fruit with Pomona's pectin (easy to find on Amazon). It allows for much less cooking time (therefore more fresh fruit flavor) and is reversible (you can remelt the PdF and cook it some more or some less, and no harm is done). Controlling the texture is also fairly easy:  Test a bit of the finished PdF by placing in the refrigerator for a while and see what its texture is going to be like. Another trick is using an immersion blender to "un-thicken" the PdF to be able to pipe it. Kate Weiser is a chocolatier who uses lots of pipeable PdFs; take a look at her site to see examples (I also bought a box, and they are as good as they look).

 

The Aw issue is one I struggle with. A regular PdF made with "regular" pectin can have a somewhat high Aw, especially if you don't cook off the liquid (because you want the PdF thinner in consistency). All the sugar added to a PdF helps bind some of the water but makes for a very sweet product. With my recipe using Pomona's, I substitute sorbitol for some of the sugar. It provides the binding agent but is much less sweet than sucrose.

 

I don't know whether using the Perfect Purée as is (or even with adding glucose) would work. My guess is that the free water content will be high. Another guess is that glucose does not provide the same ability to bind with water as grains of sucrose (or sorbitol) provide. Wish we were closer so that I could test the Aw of the various permutations you are talking about; testing is the only way to know for sure. My raspberry and strawberry PdFs are higher than other fruits; I think that may be because it is so difficult to reduce those purées (I think I still have burns from violently bubbling raspberry purée). With cherry, apricot, mango, pear, and apple purées, on the other hand, I add some dried fruit and purée it along with the commercial purée--this adds more bulk and reduces the Aw while also adding more flavor. With raspberries, however, you really can't add fruit unless you don't mind the seeds.

 

You are so right about not being able to control the behavior of recipients of your chocolates. There are other threads in which I and others have given specific examples of exasperating customer behavior. They just can't imagine that bonbons can mold (or deteriorate in flavor).

[Tri2Cook]

2 hours ago, Jim D. said:

Another trick is using an immersion blender to "un-thicken" the PdF to be able to pipe it

I feel like we've already discussed what I'm about to ask regarding this usage of PdF but I couldn't find it via search and was unwilling to read 100 pages to try to find it so... is there any consensus or theory on the effect of the air being incorporated into the PdF during pureeing as far as shelf life goes?

[Jim D.]

3 hours ago, Tri2Cook said:

I feel like we've already discussed what I'm about to ask regarding this usage of PdF but I couldn't find it via search and was unwilling to read 100 pages to try to find it so... is there any consensus or theory on the effect of the air being incorporated into the PdF during pureeing as far as shelf life goes?

 

An interesting question. I have not measured the Aw of a PdF after loosening it with a blender. Actually I have not ever used a blender on it because, with Pomona's pectin, I can just add a tiny amount of liquid and heat it until it's pipeable. I think it was in a previous discussion of pipeable PdF that someone mentioned the blender idea (probably in a discussion of Kate Weiser's chocolates). Another bit of evidence regarding the water content after using a blender:  In several of Greweling's recipes he calls for beating a ganache, and in the two that I use regularly, the Aw readings were 0.59 and 0.52--and those readings were taken after beating the ganache.

[Tri2Cook]

So basically if the Aw is good, all is well? I was thinking of the air itself having a direct effect on shelf life, whether in regards to spoilage or flavor loss. A potential effect on the Aw never even crossed my mind.

[Pastrypastmidnight]

4 hours ago, Tri2Cook said:

I feel like we've already discussed what I'm about to ask regarding this usage of PdF but I couldn't find it via search and was unwilling to read 100 pages to try to find it so... is there any consensus or theory on the effect of the air being incorporated into the PdF during pureeing as far as shelf life goes?

I don’t think it makes a big enough difference to cause any issue. Honestly, it comes down to your target shelf life. Do you need something to last, like, 6 months—a year? Maybe then it would make a difference. I can’t really think of a ganache that wouldn’t spoil before your pdf would spoil. I’ve seen many professional recipes advocate blitzing the pdf to make it able to be piped. 
 

I’ve made pdf for piping many ways. Making a set pdf and blending with a mix of purée and glucose. Alternatively, you could make a sorbitol syrup. Cooking to a lower temperature. Cutting the pectin in half. They all work. They’ve all lasted at least 6 weeks. I’ve never had spoilage from any of these methods. Some bonbons I’ve had up to 3 months at cool room temp. 
 

The only time I’ve ever had spoilage was when I tried a recipe from here on eGullet where someone used pectin NH to make a pipable pdf. I tried it last year. I used that formula and my pdf layer fermented within a month. It was also really wet and weakened the shell. Thank goodness I didn’t give any of those away to anyone else. 

[Tri2Cook]

2 minutes ago, Pastrypastmidnight said:

I don’t think it makes a big enough difference to cause any issue.

Thanks! I'm not actually having any spoilage issues, that was entirely a curiosity question. It popped into my head while reading the discussion so it had to be asked. That's just how my head works. Once the question is in there, it usually won't leave me alone until there's an answer in there as well.  

[GRiker]

On 2/23/2020 at 6:21 AM, Jim D. said:

@GRiker, what I do is make a pâte de fruit with Pomona's pectin (easy to find on Amazon).

 

I working on this today after some study on the PdF board and acquiring the pectin and sorbitol.  I used 1/4 of your recipe here:

 

I found that the result was thin enough to pipe and flowed much better so that I didn't feel like I was trapping so much air between the raspberry and the shell - my last attempts definitely trapped lots of air.  When I cut them open, I see there was still at least one spot where things didn't flow as nicely. I did still have the issue with little peaks after piping it into the shell with a piping bag.  I ended up squishing them down with a cornstarch covered finger but that was time consuming.  If I'm still getting the peaks and it's not quite as flowing as I like, does that mean I might need to add a bit more water, or maybe just improve my piping techniques?

 

I decided to use the Perfect Puree as if it were a completely pure puree.  Doing some poking around the forums, it sounds like the ingredients added are simply to ensure a uniform product even when the fruit is varying with the season/harvest etc.  

 

The taste is nice.  Not too sweet. 

Thank you for the pointers and suggestions.  

[GRiker]

On 2/20/2020 at 12:46 PM, Jim D. said:

 What I ended up doing is to start with 220g of orange juice and reduced that by half

 

Today I didn't feel like juicing my own oranges, and I didn't have any juice on hand, so I used Perfect Puree Corazon concentrate (blood orange, pomegranate and passion fruit).  I used 165g and reduced it to 100 - 110 grams.  The resulting ganache was thicker than when I used the orange juice. It didn't self level as before.  Really since concentrate is already reduced, I probably should have just used 100 - 110 grams of the concentrate and boiled it with the cream without reducing it.  

[GRiker]

On 2/23/2020 at 1:24 PM, Pastrypastmidnight said:

I’ve made pdf for piping many ways. Making a set pdf and blending with a mix of purée and glucose. Alternatively, you could make a sorbitol syrup. Cooking to a lower temperature. Cutting the pectin in half. They all work. They’ve all lasted at least 6 weeks. I’ve never had spoilage from any of these methods. Some bonbons I’ve had up to 3 months at cool room temp. 

 

These sounds like good ideas too.  I'm going to put them on my list of things to try.  Thanks!

[Jim D.]

8 hours ago, GRiker said:

I found that the result was thin enough to pipe and flowed much better so that I didn't feel like I was trapping so much air between the raspberry and the shell - my last attempts definitely trapped lots of air.  When I cut them open, I see there was still at least one spot where things didn't flow as nicely. I did still have the issue with little peaks after piping it into the shell with a piping bag.  I ended up squishing them down with a cornstarch covered finger but that was time consuming.  If I'm still getting the peaks and it's not quite as flowing as I like, does that mean I might need to add a bit more water, or maybe just improve my piping techniques?

 

 

Your PdF looks very good. Unfortunately piping PdF is (at least in my experience) not an easy task. First, it depends on the viscosity of the substance, and there is no way of predicting how firmly it will set--too many variables. You can make it quite a bit thinner than jam/jelly, but then you run into the probability of a high Aw. Second, I am sure you have had ganaches and caramels that just won't level (there was a thread here some time ago about the search for a self-leveling ganache). Like you, I use a gloved finger or plastic wrap or whatever works best to squish the peak as much as possible. And often submerging the tip of the piping bag into the PdF as you pipe can help. I think @Pastrypastmidnight has had the most success piping PdF, judging from the photos of her cut bonbons. Perhaps she or others will share their tips. My only consolation when the PdF has not leveled is that most people don't cut their bonbons before they eat them!

[GRiker]

3 hours ago, Jim D. said:

My only consolation when the PdF has not leveled is that most people don't cut their bonbons before they eat them!

 

For sure!  And if it's two bite bonbon, it doesn't keep its shape anyway.

3 hours ago, Jim D. said:

And often submerging the tip of the piping bag into the PdF as you pipe can help

 

I'll try that next time. Thanks.

 

3 hours ago, Jim D. said:

Your PdF looks very good.

 

Thanks.  Would you be concerned about the air bubbles that you see?

[Jim D.]

13 minutes ago, GRiker said:

 Would you be concerned about the air bubbles that you see?

 

That is a good question, and I don't have a definitive answer. I can say that I have had leftover bonbons sitting around for many weeks, and (knock on wood) I have never seen any mold. The PdF has so much sugar in it that I am not surprised at its extensive shelf life. I use a lot of inclusions in bonbons (cookies, caramelized nuts, cherries), and I think about the air problem. With inclusions I pipe something in the mold first (ganache, gianduja, PdF), then press the inclusion into that bottom layer. Occasionally as a bonbon sets, small holes will form in the top of the filling. I assume those are caused by air bubbles making their way to the top. But, as I say, I have not had any trouble with shelf life...so far.  If you are using the PdF as a bottom layer, then I would make sure the top layer is fluid when it goes in because that will help eliminate space. Sometimes I pipe in the top layer when it is very fluid to cope with the issue. This makes a terrible mess, but if your production is fairly small, you can clean up the mold without too much time spent. Perhaps others with more knowledge will chime in with some further insights.

[Pastrypastmidnight]

You can thin the pdf a bit more via any of the methods about—slightly lower temp, slightly less pectin, purée with a bit of something to loosen it. You can also just make sure that the ganache you pipe over it is nice and fluid. It will fill in any gaps left by the mounding of the pdf. 

A white or a milk ganache is going to be easier to pipe over a mound like marshmallow or pdf.