Molded and Filled Chocolates: Troubleshooting and Techniques

[Kerry Beal]

3 hours ago, Chocoguyin Pemby said:

Hi all - I am looking for some tips to make geode style mendants - I know I have seen this done somewhere but now can't find the info on how to do it - anyone able to point me in the right direction?  TIA

 

Are you talking the sugar geodes? or mendiants?

[pastrygirl]

This chocolatier makes some chocolate geodes that look like chocolate splotched onto a painted acetate sheet then the edges touched up with gold:

 

https://www.instagram.com/artisanne_chocolatier/

 

yeah, here's another chocolatier trimming and painting the edges:

 

https://www.instagram.com/p/CstZ9burR2d/

 

Edited June 12, 2023 by pastrygirl (log)

[Darienne]

2 hours ago, pastrygirl said:

This chocolatier makes some that look like chocolate splotched onto a painted acetate sheet then the edges touched up with gold:

 

https://www.instagram.com/artisanne_chocolatier/

 

yeah, here's another chocolatier trimming and painting the edges:

 

https://www.instagram.com/p/CstZ9burR2d/

 

We really need a "wow" icon.  

[Jim D.]

I came across a (to me) very useful bit of information on the issue of unmolding chocolates and finding chocolate along the bottom edge of the bonbon outside the colored cocoa butter (mentioned in this thread and in many other places).  It is possible to scrape off this thin bit of chocolate and reveal the intact cocoa butter beneath it.  I follow a Facebook group on decorating chocolates and saw this post:

Quote

We had a similar issue. We found it’s was because the tempering of the colour and couverture was spot on and the chocolates were already moving (contracted ) before we filled them. The chocolate we capped off with seeped down the sides.

 

And the poster's solution:  

Quote

 

we run some heat gently and quickly over the filled chocs so they slightly ever so slightly melt

And then cap. It’s I’m sure not the right thing to do and I’m sure some experts in here will give me a hard time but it works for us 

 

 

This explanation (which has been mentioned previously on eGullet) makes sense.  The obvious, but not very practical, solution is to fill and cap the chocolates immediately after making the shells.  This would be disruptive to production.  I plan to try the "solution" mentioned above (heating the filled chocolates before sealing them) to see if it works.

[Chocoguyin Pemby]

Mendiants - I have seen some that look amazing. 

[Saltychoc]

I'm looking for a polycarbonate pumpkin mold that is not a jack-o-lantern and is relatively small. Under 20ish grams. It needs to fit in my boxes. I've looked at all the usual places but can't find anything. Lots of silicone and baking trays. Maybe it doesn't exist!

 

Any ideas?

 

[Kerry Beal]

5 minutes ago, Saltychoc said:

I'm looking for a polycarbonate pumpkin mold that is not a jack-o-lantern and is relatively small. Under 20ish grams. It needs to fit in my boxes. I've looked at all the usual places but can't find anything. Lots of silicone and baking trays. Maybe it doesn't exist!

 

Any ideas?

 

Single or double mold?

 

[Saltychoc]

1 minute ago, Kerry Beal said:

Single or double mold?

 

 

I would prefer single but I'll do double if it looks right

[Kerry Beal]

https://www.chocolat-chocolat.com/product/cw2376-double-pumpkin-mold/

 

They are few and far between!

[Saltychoc]

50 minutes ago, Kerry Beal said:

https://www.chocolat-chocolat.com/product/cw2376-double-pumpkin-mold/

 

They are few and far between!

 

Thank you, seriously, they are!

[SweetandSnappyJen]

Hi folks -

 

I'm trying out a new mold and wondering if anyone has experience with fixing cocoa butter issues after unmolding. Re-painting, perhaps some luster dust, maybe velvet thing?  As you can see, lots of CB was left in the corners (I see that this has happened with others with pointy corners in general, but I'm fairly determined to use this mold!) The CB and chocolate was tempered, though it's possible the dark chocolate was a bit overcrystalinzed. 

 

THANKS!

 

[Jim D.]

1 hour ago, SweetandSnappyJen said:

Hi folks -

 

I'm trying out a new mold and wondering if anyone has experience with fixing cocoa butter issues after unmolding. Re-painting, perhaps some luster dust, maybe velvet thing?  As you can see, lots of CB was left in the corners (I see that this has happened with others with pointy corners in general, but I'm fairly determined to use this mold!) The CB and chocolate was tempered, though it's possible the dark chocolate was a bit overcrystalinzed. 

 

THANKS!

 

 

If it's a small spot, you can temper a little cocoa butter of the same color and use a paintbrush to fix it.

 

In the online course I took with Andrey Dubovik, we had to use a mold similar to yours as a test of our ability to get complete coverage of a mold with multiple angles.  I haven't used that mold very often since.

[pastrygirl]

@SweetandSnappyJen Yikes.  I'd be making sure that flavor was one I could melt down and recycle

[SweetandSnappyJen]

4 hours ago, Jim D. said:

 

If it's a small spot, you can temper a little cocoa butter of the same color and use a paintbrush to fix it.

 

In the online course I took with Andrey Dubovik, we had to use a mold similar to yours as a test of our ability to get complete coverage of a mold with multiple angles.  I haven't used that mold very often since.

I can see why you don't use the mold often!  I'm guessing beyond making sure everything is tempered 100% correctly, there's a lot of air bubble tapping that needs to happen also. I just love the shape and really want to make it happen!

 

4 hours ago, pastrygirl said:

@SweetandSnappyJen Yikes.  I'd be making sure that flavor was one I could melt down and recycle

I guess!  How depressing:)

[Saltychoc]

So here is a bit of a quandary - I made this apple jelly the other day, let it set, beat it, piped, sat overnight, added miso ganache (white and dulcey chocolate), and pulled one out. I cooked the jelly well beyond what I would normally do - it got up to 255ish before I could pull it off. I didn't touch it as it set. And when I check it's 18% water, around 78 brix. Not as far as I would normally cook it but this is where I am now. Probably should have cooked it longer but the shelf life will be long enough to make it through Halloween. I am a bit worried because some of these are going off to a shop and they'll probably be in there 3-4 weeks.

 

The question - Is the moisture in here going to affect the temper on the shell? And how much should I take off the shelf life? I normally date well under the actual shelf life - 4-6wks vs 3 months but knowing how people are... This situation has convinced me to get an aw meter once I get into my own space but that doesn't help me now.

 

Recipe was something like, ratios might be a bit off I don't have my notes right now

280 cider jelly

140 boiled cider

140 apple puree - reduced for a few hours from fresh apples, macoun and honeycrisp, 5% sugar

440 sugar

150 glucose

 

Picture: it is staying together and not coming out of the shell.. it just seems.. wet

 

 

 

[Becky R]

2 hours ago, Jim D. said:

 

Good to see you on eGullet.  From our phone conversation I know you have already been down many of the rabbit holes on this forum, so it's too late to warn you about that pitfall.

 

Using freeze-dried eggnog sounds like an interesting possibility.  I'm currently swamped with Thanksgiving and Christmas chocolates and so don't have time to experiment, but I would like to do so after December 25.    After the post quoted above, I took a couple of Kalle Jungstedt's online courses, and he has a section on cookie layers.  Many people call them praliné layers, but they don't have to contain nuts.  So when I needed a crème brûlée bonbon for an October wedding (in my area October now sometimes seems like August), I tried Jungstedt's idea.  I had some of the ground caramel in the freezer.  I mixed that with melted white chocolate and cocoa butter plus a little feuilletine, then piped that on top of the vanilla ganache.  It worked surprisingly well--the caramel bits maintained some of their crunch and did not have a chance to clump together, and the "mouth impression" of the layer was close to the caramel crunch of the original dessert.  The layer, however, ends up on the bottom, rather than the top, of the bonbon.  Aside from that minor issue, the layer doesn't have the close approximation to a crème brûlée caramel layer that the ground caramel alone does.

Great, just let me know.  I just did a simple filling with white chocolate, cream cheese and freeze dried strawberry powder/pieces.  Some of the pieces are large enough that I'll be able to see if they stay kind of crunchy or not.  Might give us some clues...  HOPEFULLY my shell temper worked... still not very confident, but I did figure out how to Sous Vide my own silk, so that's something right?

Edited November 5, 2023 by Becky R (log)

[Jim D.]

7 hours ago, Becky R said:

Great, just let me know.  I just did a simple filling with white chocolate, cream cheese and freeze dried strawberry powder/pieces.  Some of the pieces are large enough that I'll be able to see if they stay kind of crunchy or not.  Might give us some clues...  HOPEFULLY my shell temper worked... still not very confident, but I did figure out how to Sous Vide my own silk, so that's something right?

 

The cream cheese contains water, so the strawberries probably won't stay crunchy.  There is a wall between ganaches/caramels and giandujas (and similar water-free fillings), meaning that if there is any water in an ingredient, anything crunchy won't stay that way.  Some recipes from professional chefs call for including nuts in a ganache (Peter Greweling has a recipe like that); the whole hazelnut he uses remains crunchy for a while but eventually becomes soft--or as soft as a hazelnut can get.

[Jim D.]

I have some bonbons shelled in caramelized white chocolate and, to counteract some of the sweetness, would like to use a dark chocolate to seal them.  Is there any inherent reason different chocolates can't be used for the main shell and the bottom?  I don't ordinarily use a heat gun on bonbons before pouring the sealing layer (with the exception of caramel fillings, where the slight melting seems to help stop any leaking), but I thought that in this case I would use that step just to encourage the two parts to stick together.

[Kerry Beal]

No reason not to use two different chocolates. I'm not a big fan of the heating thing though. 

[GRiker]

I have limited experience but from what I’ve read I can’t see why it wouldn’t work.  

[Jim D.]

15 minutes ago, Kerry Beal said:

No reason not to use two different chocolates. I'm not a big fan of the heating thing though. 

 

I'm interested in your remark on "the heating thing."  So many famous chocolatiers swear by it (Kalle Jungstedt, KIrsten Tibballs, just to name two) that I began to think I must be missing something.  It does seem to help with that phenomenon of chocolate running behind the colored cocoa butter in certain molds.

 

The reason I came to the idea of using a dark bottom on this bonbon was the filling.  I took your idea of pairing Amarula liqueur with dates.  I developed a recipe, measured its Aw, tasted it countless times with various chocolates, etc.  The conclusion was that the filling tasted best with caramelized white.  But today, when I got to producing these bonbons (and had already made the shells, of course), they tasted much too sweet.  It turns out dates are sweet--who knew?  I'm now mulling over my options for rescuing the bonbons--nursing a little Amarula on the rocks seems to help the process.

[Kerry Beal]

I have always suspected the the chocolate running behind the coloured cocoa butter is caused by the heating!  I've not been happy with the results most times I've done it. 

 

And yeah - dates and amarula - sweet! Maybe some lemon?

Edited January 5 by Kerry Beal (log)

[Jim D.]

6 minutes ago, Kerry Beal said:

I have always suspected the the chocolate running behind the coloured cocoa butter is caused by the heating!  I've not been happy with the results most times I've done it. 

 

And yeah - dates and amarula - sweet! Maybe some lemon?

 

I've already included lemon.  Perhaps some more is called for.

[Jim D.]

I used Felchlin's 72% Arriba for the bottoms, and it worked very well (I didn't use any heat).  The ganache had sunk a bit more than I desired, so the Arriba layer was thick and therefore is less than perfect for biting.  I suppose I should make sure my customer dental insurance is paid up.  But the gratifying part is that the dark chocolate counteracts the sweet date filling quite well, and I have made a note to use dark for the shell in the future.  Even though the Aw is very good, the ganache needs a bit more cocoa butter to firm it up.  It has an amazing quantity of Amarula in it; I think the ganache proportions work because Amarula is the only liquid (no cream) and because the dates add a huge amount of solids.  I am pleased with the date, lemon, and Amarula combination, and @Kerry Beal, I thank you for that idea. 

[RWood]

So, any ideas what would cause these fine cracks in only this particular mold? I had it happen the last time I used them, and I thought I maybe flexed the mold or something, but I know I didn’t in this last batch. Not all of them break like the other photo, but no other shape I have does this.