acetate sheet for capping chocolates?

[BobbyB]

hi everyone! long time lurker, first time poster with a quick question.

 

i recently caught a video on Lililoveme Academy's instagram account where he capped his chocolates with what looked like a chocolate coated acetate sheet. has anyone done this before? any tips, or suggestions as to why this would be better or worse than the traditional sealing technique of pour and scrape? (sorry, i thought i'd saved the post but it must have been in one of the stories)

 

[RWood]

I use a similar method.  I have a large box of acetate sheets I bought years ago, so I'm trying to use them up.  I don't coat the sheet, I just pour some over one end, then place the sheet on and scrape it down.  I like it because I get a better seal, and a shiny bottom. You can use transfer sheets as well. They aren't as stiff as the acetate I have, and I like them better.  But, either has worked.  

[MoonChild]

I use the same method as @RWood as well.  I've seen some of the more well known chocolatiers use transfer sheets mainly for branding purposes.  I find it helpful to cap with an acetate or guitar sheet if I ever slightly overfill my molds.  It helps to keep the chocolate cap higher than the filling. 

Edited January 22, 2020 by MoonChild (log)

[Bentley]

This post from Kriss Harvey, one of my chocolate gods, shows the process.  He uses this technique when he wants to cap a bonbon that has a liquid filling that can't be capped the traditional way (because the chocolate would displace the filling).  If you're using a traditional filling like a ganache, gianduja. praline or even a firmer caramel that can support the weight of the chocolate, there owuld be no reaosn to use this method over the regular way of capping your bonbons.  There is also capping the bon bons with an acetate sheet or transfer sheet as @RWood described, but it doesn't sound like that's what you're talking about (but just in case, take a looka t the second video, also from Kriss Harvey).   

 

 

Edited January 23, 2020 by Bentley (log)

[BobbyB]

this is great info, thank you! 

[hvea]

how do you clean the acetate or guitar sheets?

[pastrygirl]

4 hours ago, hvea said:

how do you clean the acetate or guitar sheets?

since your chocolate is tempered, they should peel off cleanly. You may be able to re-use them once or twice but they may get damaged by the scraping

 

it is an added expense and more plastic waste so I rarely use them

[Pastrypastmidnight]

So, I used to use acetate, but I think mine is too stiff and I would get cracks in my caps that I never get when I cap without the acetate. it’s also kind of messy. If I cap without acetate and work really quickly I can get almost no chocolate running down the sides of my mold, à la Susanna Yoon. 
https://www.instagram.com/p/BdXxdFYBV2_/?igshid=w37n31ueril1

 

I decided that plus the wastefulness of the acetate made it a less attractive option for me. It is super helpful if you have a very runny filling, you’re in a rush and your ganache is still too soft, or if you overfill, as was mentioned above. 

[Tri2Cook]

1 hour ago, Pastrypastmidnight said:

If I cap without acetate and work really quickly I can get almost no chocolate running down the sides of my mold, à la Susanna Yoon.

That's pretty much the way I do it minus the fancy chocolate squirting machine. I'm pretty sure I've dedicated more time to figuring out ways to minimize the mess of chocolate work than I have to practicing techniques. I hate a big mess to clean up. When I do bars, there's no scraping at all involved. I toss the mold on a scale, add chocolate to the weight needed for that particular mold and just zero the scale and repeat for each cavity. I gave the acetate capping thing a try a few years ago and struggled mightily with it. I'm sure that was all me and I just needed to practice it more but I like the "just enough chocolate to fill the spaces" approach enough that I'll probably never get back to attempting the acetate again.

[JoNorvelleWalker]

56 minutes ago, Tri2Cook said:

That's pretty much the way I do it minus the fancy chocolate squirting machine. I'm pretty sure I've dedicated more time to figuring out ways to minimize the mess of chocolate work than I have to practicing techniques. I hate a big mess to clean up. When I do bars, there's no scraping at all involved. I toss the mold on a scale, add chocolate to the weight needed for that particular mold and just zero the scale and repeat for each cavity. I gave the acetate capping thing a try a few years ago and struggled mightily with it. I'm sure that was all me and I just needed to practice it more but I like the "just enough chocolate to fill the spaces" approach enough that I'll probably never get back to attempting the acetate again.

 

If I tried that I'd have chocolate all over my scale.

 

[Tri2Cook]

14 hours ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:

 

If I tried that I'd have chocolate all over my scale.

 

It's actually pretty easy to avoid that. It was a little slower than the flood and scrape method initially but I've done it enough now that it's almost as fast and probably faster overall if you account for cleanup. Even if it's still a little slower, it's a price I'm willing to pay to avoid some cleanup. In a well equipped chocolate kitchen with all the big machines that make life easier, it would probably be less helpful... but that's not the environment I'm currently working in. 

[Rajala]

I use guitar sheets all the time for this. I just clean them with some soap and as long as you mould good shells, don't over fill etc, I probably can use a guitar sheet 20 times before it gets thrown in the bin. With that said, I don't do production, just for fun, so cleaning them isn't a problem for me - but I guess it would be when you don't have all the time in the world.

[curls]

Does anyone have a video link of using an acetate sheet to cap a liquid filling? The links listed above are no longer available.
 

I would like to try this technique soon to cap some brandied cherry cordials. The last few times that I made the cherry cordials I lost too much of my batch to leaks. Hoping this technique solves the issue.

[curls]

On 12/1/2023 at 10:58 AM, curls said:

Does anyone have a video link of using an acetate sheet to cap a liquid filling? The links listed above are no longer available.
 

I would like to try this technique soon to cap some brandied cherry cordials. The last few times that I made the cherry cordials I lost too much of my batch to leaks. Hoping this technique solves the issue.

 

Just in case someone else needs this or I need to view it again, I found a video of Luis Amado capping chocolates using an acetate sheet covered with chocolate. I tried this out and it worked quite well. I even made less of a mess than I thought I would!

https://youtube.com/shorts/WdfBJ69kPk8?si=aHH_6LMOUhUV8fHY

 

 

[SweetandSnappyJen]

Thanks, @curls!  I've seen this done and am wondering what the benefit would be of filling the acetate sheet with chocolate beforehand vs pouring chocolate onto the mold directly then laying down the acetate sheet and scraping. It seems like the former would be a lot messier! And an extra few steps.

[Rajala]

4 minutes ago, SweetandSnappyJen said:

Thanks, @curls!  I've seen this done and am wondering what the benefit would be of filling the acetate sheet with chocolate beforehand vs pouring chocolate onto the mold directly then laying down the acetate sheet and scraping. It seems like the former would be a lot messier! And an extra few steps.

 

I can't think of any reason to do that. Like, I've done that when sealing a mold where the shells were filled with a super runny caramel to make sure the chocolate doesn't sink into the caramel - but for other reasons? I would like to know as well.

[pastrygirl]

17 hours ago, SweetandSnappyJen said:

Thanks, @curls!  I've seen this done and am wondering what the benefit would be of filling the acetate sheet with chocolate beforehand vs pouring chocolate onto the mold directly then laying down the acetate sheet and scraping. It seems like the former would be a lot messier! And an extra few steps.

 

Useful when you don't have a solid filling to support pouring chocolate on top.  Or in the Amado example, chocolate could run through the gaps in the lacy shell.

Edited January 11 by pastrygirl (log)

[curls]

14 hours ago, SweetandSnappyJen said:

Thanks, @curls!  I've seen this done and am wondering what the benefit would be of filling the acetate sheet with chocolate beforehand vs pouring chocolate onto the mold directly then laying down the acetate sheet and scraping. It seems like the former would be a lot messier! And an extra few steps.

 

14 hours ago, pastrygirl said:

 

Useful when you don't have a solid filling to support pouring chocolate on top.  Or in the Amado example, chocolate culd run through the gaps in the lacy shell.

My reasons are the same as pastrygirl. I tried this approach on my brandied cherry cordials because they have a filling that is fluid. Previous attempts to cap these chocolates with the standard pouring chocolate method have not been consistently successful and some attempts have been extremely frustrating. I have lost more than half a batch of these cordials to leaking bottoms. Using the chocolate acetate method worked a lot better. Still a few leakers but it was around 1/8 of the batch. This makes me hopeful that with practice this will be the method that I use for capping liquid fillings.

 

It is also appears to be a key technique for some of Luis Amado’s decorated shells. I envision using it on some of my chocolate Easter eggs… lace chocolate shell, light fillings. Could be fun. 😀