Confections! (2006-2012)

[John DePaula]

I have made a silicone mold in the past, It's described earlier in this thread, post number 73.  My attempts to link it here were unsuccessful.  I bought food grade silicone, and it was really quite easy, just a matter of deciding which method to use to mold different items.

←

Not your fault, Kerry. The software has a bug: it figures out where the location is (in this case, a particular post) BEFORE it loads all of the pictures. Of course, after they load, the correct position has long since scrolled off the screen. If they added the width & height image tag attributes to the html code, I think this wouldn't be a problem...

[David J.]

Tammylc, I can hardly wait to see your finished "museum pieces"!  They are going to be quite extraordinary.  I realize you're not making the molds yourself, but it is something I have wanted to try.  I noticed that the San Francisco Baking Institute (where I've taken several courses) was offering a class on making your own molds -- I think it was supposed to be sometime this month?

Anyway, I love your chocolates!

Khilde

←

Making your own mold is quite easy. You can get food grade silicone casting materials at:

http://www.culinart.net/silicone.html

They have a little in the way of instruction, but more comprehensive instructions for molding can be found at:

http://www.hirstarts.com/moldmake/moldmaking.html

They show various techniques for copying different types of objects. While they use non-food grade materials the techniques are the same.

David

[LucyInAust]

Very hesistantly I put forward my first ever attempt at tempering chocolate and dipping: Salted Chocolate Caramels

I'm a complete amatuer, just LOVE chocolate! ... also take bad photos too! The chocolate was a mix of various 70% and 85% types ... does mixing different types of chocolate cause problems?

Lots of foot at the base of the caramels!!!! - even after reading everything I could find on dipping ... I did the touching it against the melted chocolate with no improvement, I tried wiping them against the edge of the bowl - and each time the caramel squished out chocolate from underneath! Do I just need to keep practicing?!

I bent my chocolate dipping fork as I'd read on here - luckily I had two because the first one snapped as soon as I bent it .... I'll be looking for better ones!

I also didn't have a way of keeping the chocolate warm whilst dipping and toward the end it was getting a bit thick - I put it in the microwave for a couple of seconds but that obviously ruined the temper and the following ones wouldn't set (I was using up some almond danish filling made into balls). Is there any way of rewarming the chocolate keeping the temper?

I tried moulded chocolates when I was about 13 maaaaany years ago ... but this is my first attempt at tempering chocolate and dipping ... I think it could be addictive - now I just need to find more people to eat my experiments!!

Sorry for my very amatuer questions - especially after following the fantastic creations on here (HeatherM's toads with red caramel amaze me!)

[tammylc]

Those look great! Congrats on a successful first attempt!

I still have problems with feet on the bottoms of my chocolate, but it's getting better. Practice makes perfect.

As for keeping the chocolate warm, before I got a melter I used a heating pad set on low. You put the heating pad in a larger bowl, then nest a smaller bowl filled with your chocolate inside of that one. It works quite well and improves your working time quite a bit.

And you're right - it is totally addictive.

[Kerry Beal]

Very hesistantly I put forward my first ever attempt at tempering chocolate and dipping: Salted Chocolate Caramels

I'm a complete amatuer, just LOVE chocolate!  ... also take bad photos too!  The chocolate was a mix of various 70% and 85% types ... does mixing different types of chocolate cause problems?

Lots of foot at the base of the caramels!!!! - even after reading everything I could find on dipping    ... I did the touching it against the melted chocolate with no improvement, I tried wiping them against the edge of the bowl - and each time the caramel squished out chocolate from underneath!  Do I just need to keep practicing?!

I bent my chocolate dipping fork as I'd read on here - luckily I had two because the first one snapped as soon as I bent it .... I'll be looking for better ones!

I also didn't have a way of keeping the chocolate warm whilst dipping and toward the end it was getting a bit thick - I put it in the microwave for a couple of seconds but that obviously ruined the temper and the following ones wouldn't set (I was using up some almond danish filling made into balls).  Is there any way of rewarming the chocolate keeping the temper?

I tried moulded chocolates when I was about 13 maaaaany years ago  ... but this is my first attempt at tempering chocolate and dipping ... I think it could be addictive - now I just need to find more people to eat my experiments!!

Sorry for my very amatuer questions - especially after following the fantastic creations on here (HeatherM's toads with red caramel amaze me!)

←

Those look pretty darn good to me. I still have a lot of trouble avoiding a foot on my caramels. If the surface tension thing doesn't work (perhaps because the chocolate is too thick) you can tap the fork on the side of the bowl to shake off the excess. Did you coat the bottom of the caramels with chocolate before cutting?

Mixing chocolates is not a problem. Particularly if they are all dark chocolates. When mixing milk and dark, temper as for the chocolate that requires the lowest temperature (ie the milk).

Reheating your chocolate with a hair dryer or heat gun carefully works well, keep a digital thermometer in it so it doesn't get too warm.

There is a demo on chocolate tempering here that shows using the heat gun to rewarm.

[zoe b]

Lucyinaustin--I love your chocolate caramels--I've been wanting to try them--and lavender caramels as well.

I'm such a novice I didn't even know that the "foot" wasn't a good thing--but really the only thing i dip is the occasional strawberry, and pretzel logs --where i encourage the foot as it means more chocolate in each bite!!

Zoe

[LucyInAust]

Thanks for the hints! They disappeared at work very fast (only negative comment was from someone who only likes milk chocolate ... can't work out why they ate one since they're obviously dark and I only buy dark chocolate!!) ... which means I can make some more! Going to try a different filling next time - maybe something lemon or I'd love to try a jelly of some sort.

Kerry I didn't coat the bottom of the caramels as I couldn't work out how to coat them without making a mess (do you coat them individually?) and keep the nice clean tops ... will it make a difference to the amount of foot?

[Kerry Beal]

Kerry I didn't coat the bottom of the caramels as I couldn't work out how to coat them without making a mess (do you coat them individually?) and keep the nice clean tops ... will it make a difference to the amount of foot?

←

I take the whole slab of filling, use a small offset spatula to spead a thin layer of tempered chocolate on one side. After it dries I cut the slab into the shapes I want. When you dip the layer of chocolate on the bottom prevents the fork tines from digging into the center, which makes it easier to coax the item back off the fork.

Somewhere there is a fork dipping demo by Alanamoana that does a lovely job of demonstrating the technique. I'll look for it later.

Here is Alana's fork dipping technique.

Edited May 18, 2007 by Kerry Beal (log)

[tammylc]

One hundred puma bars down, another hundred to go...

It turned out that I only got 2 molds of 6 cavities each, so I can only do a dozen at a time. I must have managed 10 turns yesterday, since I actually have 110 bars, and there were some that broke when I was getting them out of the molds.

My shoulders hurt a lot today - the molds are much heavier than the polycarbonate molds I'm used to using! And a lot of the bars have defects - air bubbles, mostly so I have to decide how much of that I'm willing to accept and how many I think I need to redo. It's really hard to get all the air bubbles out with the silicone molds - they're not rigid, so you can't bang them around, and the material of the mold tends to absorb the vibrations from the vibrating table. Freshly tempered chocolate at the top of it's working temperature gives a pretty good result, but as soon as it starts to thicken, it gets much more problematic. But I did learn to compensate, as my end of the day results are better than my earlier attempts.

Other learnings are that it's really important to work as cleanly as possible with the molds - any excess chocolate will flake when you're removing the chocolates, and fill your mold cavities with annoying little flakes of chocolate! But because you don't have to worry about scratches to the same extent as with a poly mold, I was able to use a brush to brush out the flakes between fills, and that worked quite well.

This weekend I'll start the foil wrapping, and oh, won't *that* be fun...

[gfron1]

Tammy those look super! And as far as not looking forward to the wrapping - its going to be a blast because HOW COOL IS THIS JOB!

[Kerry Beal]

Tammy,

Those are looking great.

I'm just wondering if there is some way to increase the vibration getting right to the chocolate, like maybe pushing down on the molds while they are vibrating? By the time you figure out the tricks, the other hundred will be done though. But it will be useful for next time.

Have fun with the foil wrapping!!!! Better you than me. Actually the culinary student I had helping me a few times had the knack. I wonder if she wants to take a long trip this weekend.

[tammylc]

Thanks, all!

In order to stiffen the molds enough to work with, I had to put them on cardboard, which further dampens the vibrations. So then I took off the tray on top of the vibrating table and was using the cardboard directly on the vibrating portion, but then I have to hold it there and move it around. Perhaps next week I'll try leaving the table on, but pressing down on the mold as you suggest.

The person I'm doing the work for is going to help me wrap, along with her 13-year old daughter. And I've got a couple of other offers for help. Hopefully at least one of us will have the knack!

[tammylc]

Tammy those look super!  And as far as not looking forward to the wrapping - its going to be a blast because HOW COOL IS THIS JOB!

←

It is indeed a very cool job. Today the email about the fundraising sale will go out to the mailing list. I'm very curious to see what the orders for that end up looking like, so I know just how crazy my next two weeks is going to be!

Oh, if anyone's curious, here's the special sale page on my website, complete with "add to cart" buttons for the very first time! I feel so modern.

Edited May 18, 2007 by tammylc (log)

[Trishiad]

Tammy, they make little cello bags that would fit those bars just perfectly. I slip my bars in to a bag and seal with a little sticker. Sooooo much easier than all that frickin foil wrapping.

Glerup has some

[tammylc]

Thanks Trishiad. Too late now, as I've already ordered the foil and started wrapping. I'll keep that in mind if there's a next time. It's not going too badly, and next weekend I'll be recruiting a bunch of friends for a wrapping party, should go pretty quickly that way!

While my website got over 100 visits from the mailing going out on Friday, I didn't get a flood of orders. In fact, I didn't get any orders at all on Friday! A few have started trickling in over the weekend, though. On the one hand, that's a bummer, but on the other, I was worried about the possibility of getting more than I could handle, and I won't have to worry about that!

[Fibilou]

i made my first foray into confectionery for several years on Saturday, made some rose marshmallows. I have to say, I am quite pleased with the result, which has all been eaten !

http://forums.egullet.org/uploads/11797562...470_1419161.jpg

http://forums.egullet.org/uploads/11797562...4470_612023.jpg

[tammylc]

I'm finally done with all the work for the whole puma event. It ended up being WAAAY more work than any of us bargained for. I had a huge problem with the filled pumas breaking on their way out of the molds, which meant that I spent a lot more time and resources on those than I expected. It wasn't until the very last round of 12 that I figured out that I was making the shells too thin - live and learn - I'll know for next time.

The neighbor who I was doing this for spent three nights this week foil wrapping puma bars with her 13 year old daughter. Today I hired a friend to come over for about 6 hours to label and package everything. And I've lost track of the number of hours I personally spent. I'm afraid to crunch the numbers and see how this all turned out (I'm getting paid for the materials for the puma bars, but the labor is a donation).

But in the end, I ended up making 257 of the puma bars, and I have 21 large boxes and 8 small boxes ready - some are pre-orders, the rest we're hoping will sell at the event itself. And if all those go, I'll be taking orders for later pickup. After working two weekends in a row on this project, I don't know whether to hope for lots of sales or not!

Large boxes:

All lined up:

From L to R: cardamom, salty caramel, raspberry, fresh mint. And a truffle puma in the back.

I'm thrilled with all my flavors. I've overcome the textural problems I was having, particularly with raspberry, and I'm really pleased with how they all turned out. I have about a dozen of each left that I'll take tomorrow and cut up for samples.

[Kerry Beal]

Looking fabulous Tammy!!!

I know what you mean about not knowing if you should hope for sales or not. But now that you've worked the bugs out of the puma they should go quicker.

[tammylc]

Looking fabulous Tammy!!! 

I know what you mean about not knowing if you should hope for sales or not. But now that you've worked the bugs out of the puma they should go quicker.

←

Thanks Kerry!

Unfortunately, with only 12 cavities and needing to let the ganache set before I back them off, there's only so quick the filled pumas can go, and it seems to be about 3 hours. Ugh! They are totally the limiting factor here - the other molded pieces I can make 32 and 40 at a time, so it's no trouble at all (relatively speaking) to whip up a batch of those.

[gfron1]

Tammy, I'm beaming with pride all the way from New Mexico - those are so pretty and you've really added to their fundraiser. You're super!

[Kerry Beal]

Looking fabulous Tammy!!! 

I know what you mean about not knowing if you should hope for sales or not. But now that you've worked the bugs out of the puma they should go quicker.

←

Thanks Kerry!

Unfortunately, with only 12 cavities and needing to let the ganache set before I back them off, there's only so quick the filled pumas can go, and it seems to be about 3 hours. Ugh! They are totally the limiting factor here - the other molded pieces I can make 32 and 40 at a time, so it's no trouble at all (relatively speaking) to whip up a batch of those.

←

Perhaps you could ask those ordering if they would mind if the puma was done in solid chocolate.

Or what about starting with ganache that is already set up, scoop it into the mold and push down with cornstarched fingers. Then you could back off right away.

Edited June 2, 2007 by Kerry Beal (log)

[tammylc]

Or what about starting with ganache that is already set up, scoop it into the mold and push down with cornstarched fingers.  Then you could back off right away.

←

I had no idea such a thing was even possible, but now that you mention it... Wow. That just improved my life immeasurably. Thanks Kerry!

[tammylc]

Just thought I should report back. Things went really well with the pumas yesterday. Even thought it was 90 degrees here in MI! I just put all the chocolates in a cooler with ice packs and that was fine. Things were very busy for the first hour, with lots of people coming up to sample and chat and buy boxes, but then a huge rainstorm came through and that slowed down the arrival of new people, and made the overall attendance smaller than it might have been otherwise. The 250 puma bars lasted for about the first hour, and I saw lots of kids with chocolate smeared faces, although most of the adults seemed to holding on to theirs for later.

The fresh mint was the big hit - "It tastes just like it came out of my garden!" - with multiple people dragging friends over to sample. The cardamom also got a lot of interest and appreciative "oooh" faces.

From a sales perspective, I had about the best possible outcome, which is that I had exactly enough chocolates. Some of my pre-orders were from friends and family, and they all gave me the go-ahead to take their chocolates to the event so I'd have more to sell, and they'd wait for the second round. But as it turned out, after what I sold at the event I had just enough left between the boxes I'd prepared, leftover samples, and some puma seconds to fill all of those orders. On the one hand, it would have been great for me and the museum to get a whole lot of orders, but my schedule is crazy and I wasn't really looking forward to spending all of next weekend in the kitchen too. The worst possible outcome would have been being one or two boxes short and having to make tiny numbers of a whole bunch of different flavors. So I'm very pleased with the way it turned out.

I handed out lots of flyers and business cards, had a few people sign up for my mailing list, and got my business name in front of a whole bunch of new faces. So I'm happy!

This week I have to make 5 dozen chocolates for a special party order, but then after that I've got nothing on the calendar until fall unless I get more special orders. It's just too much a pain to deal with the heat, so I'm not planning to offer any chocolate sales. I might do some wrapped caramels or some other kind of confectionary, though.

[aguynamedrobert]

Well I was feeling like I needed to make some truffles since I hadn't for a while...so I got my thinking cap on and tried a nice batch of raspberry truffles...I used real raspberries and reduced them down and then added that liquid to the cream and then formed the ganache...I coated them, old fashioned style, in cocoa powder....

So I thought I'd post some pics...

Edited June 5, 2007 by aguynamedrobert (log)

[tammylc]

Here's my artsy "chocolates in sunshine" photo attempt.

I had an order for 5 dozen chocolates for a 80th birthday party for an Italian man. His daughter asked me to create some chocolates based on Italian liqueurs. I ended up using Amaretto (purple), Frangelico (gold flecks) and Sambuca (yellow/red/orange). Production worked out really well, because I was able to piggyback a few other orders on that day. The biggest of which included 8 boxes of 4, which meant I needed a fourth flavor. In keeping with the liqueur theme, I made one of my favorite pieces, flavored with Patron XO Cafe, a coffee-infused tequila. That's the gold brushed Mayan embossed piece.

I thought the Amaretto and Sambuca worked out really well, but I was a little disappointed with the Frangelico ones. I wanted to mix the textures up a bit, so I put some ground hazelnuts in, and while they're tasty, you can't really taste the Frangelico. You can feel the alcoholic heat on the finish, so I don't thing more is the answer. Our current working theory is that subtle flavors of the Frangelico are being hidden by the more overt flavors of the toasted hazelnuts. Live and learn!