Confections! (2006-2012)

[David J.]

I had read about Kee's creme brulee truffle, speculated about how it was done, and finally decided to try it myself.

I didn't want to settle for a "creme" truffle but wanted to try for the sugar crust as well. There are several ways to get a thin chunk of carmalized sugar. For this attempt I carmalized in a pot, poured it between to silpats and spread it thin with a scraper. When cooled I broke the sheet up into smaller pieces. In the future I might try using a stencil to lay out piles of sugar to carmalize with a torch so I can get more consistent sizing with less waste.

Since the sugar would be sealed in the creme for several hours before it was eaten I decided to coat them in cocoa butter for protection. I melted a bit of butter in a small cup and dipped the pieces in and laid them out on a silpat to set.

The cocoa butter protected the sugar, but I didn't particularly like the way it interfered with the flavor. The next time I might try spraying it with an airbrush or dip in chocolate instead.

I made the creme anglese and cooled it in the fridge until it wouldn't melt the dark chocolate shells. It proved to still be pipeable, though it was a touch on the thick side.

I placed the brulee on the bottom of half the pieces before placing them back in the fridge to set further.

I had been worried about backing off the bare creme pieces, but they proved to set thick enough that it wasn't a problem.

Then I took several dozen pieces to work and conducted a survey. Everyone who wanted to sample had to try one of each and vote for "Sugar crunch" or "No sugar crunch". I didn't get any complaints about the requirement to have two pieces.

I was concerned about the cocoa butter being too thick on the sugar, but to my suprise the vote came out 3 to 1 in favor of the sugar crunch. So the result was people prefer the full "creme brulee" experience even when encased in a chocolate shell.

[Lior]

Well thank you! Just lovely! Did the caramelized pieces sink or float and did you place them on top of the creme anglaise? Thanks for the pictures!

[tammylc]

Great experiment, David! Looks delicious.

Here's my Mother's Day collection. The theme was "A Box of Flowers" - can't decide whether to get Mom a bouquet of flowers or a box of chocolates? - now you don't have to! I got a new wholesale customer and wanted to give them two full weekends to sell chocolates, so I made up a batch last weekend, and this weekend i'm working on the ones for my direct retail customers.

The purple ones are lavender caramel, and the pink one is pomegranate-rose, the brown/yellow one is honey-vanilla (milk chocolate), and the bronze stripe is jasmine tea.

For the honey-vanilla, i made a vanilla infused milk chocolate ganache, and substituted honey for glucose in the recipe. And I drizzled a little bit of honey in the top of each shell before filling with the ganache.

The pomegranate-rose are a variation on my passion fruit filling - butter ganache sweetened with honey and flavored with pomegranate juice concentrate and a few drops of rose oil.

The lavender caramel is my standard fleur-de-sel caramel, with the salt toned down and the cream infused with lavender.

The jasmine is just a straight up infused cream ganache.

Edited May 3, 2008 by tammylc (log)

[carol lang]

Great experiment, David! Looks delicious.

Here's my Mother's Day collection. The theme was "A Box of Flowers" - can't decide whether to get Mom a bouquet of flowers or a box of chocolates? - now you don't have to! I got a new wholesale customer and wanted to give them two full weekends to sell chocolates, so I made up a batch last weekend, and this weekend i'm working on the ones for my direct retail customers.

The purple ones are lavender caramel, and the pink one is pomegranate-rose, the brown/yellow one is honey-vanilla (milk chocolate), and the bronze stripe is jasmine tea.

For the honey-vanilla, i made a vanilla infused milk chocolate ganache, and substituted honey for glucose in the recipe. And I drizzled a little bit of honey in the top of each shell before filling with the ganache.

The pomegranate-rose are a variation on my passion fruit filling - butter ganache sweetened with honey and flavored with pomegranate juice concentrate and a few drops of rose oil.

The lavender caramel is my standard fleur-de-sel caramel, with the salt toned down and the cream infused with lavender.

The jasmine is just a straight up infused cream ganache.

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so beautiful Tammy

Carol

[David J.]

Well thank you! Just lovely! Did the caramelized pieces sink or float and did you place them on top of the creme anglaise? Thanks for the pictures!

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The custard was thick enough that the bruleed sugar stayed right where I put it. I piped more custard on top of some of the pieces to even out the levels after I had placed all the sugar, thus some of them are partially or fully burried in the photo.

[Lior]

Thanks! They look great.

[pastrygirl]

I tried to make turkish delight for the first time a few days ago, and need some guidance. I started with the recipe in Claire Clark's Indulge because it's perfect, right? I started by boiling the sugar to 230F instead of 245F because up here at 8000 feet water boils at a mere 198. But then I mixed the 145 grams of cornstarch with 9 oz water, which made a super thick paste that was basically solid and not amenable to whisking in the syrup. That's not going to work. So, for the next batch I increased the water and decreased the starch, so that when it got hot it was more of a gooey, vaseline consistency, which was able to be mixed with the syrup just fine. But then I was having a hard time finding a heat level that would bring the candy to a simmer without burning it onto the bottom of the pan. The recipe says simmer over low heat for 45 min to 1 hour, stirring frequently. It seems like if you are going to simmer this stuff it would really need to be stirred constantly. The end result is a little too soft and has a bit of a pasty texture, I imagine I did not cook it long enough and did not really get the cornstarch boiling, next time i will make sure to get the starch fully boiling instead of just thick before I add the syrup.

So, what consistency should the hot starch mixture be before you add the syrup? How much simmering and stirring does it really need? Are there other clues for doneness besides 'golden' (like a temperature)? Should one just expect that a lot of it is going to stick to the bottom of the pan?

I did just get the Greweling book, but of course have no thin boiling starch, so his recipe is not going to help. Also no glucose, corn syrup, or other liquid or invert sugars besides honey (and even honey is in short supply right now). For thickeners, I have cornstarch, gelatin, and agar, also glutinous rice flour and possibly some tapioca flour, and I'm hoping our buyer in Bangkok can track down some pectin, but that may not happen.

I am also interested in trying some pates de fruit. Does anyone have a good recipe for non-pectin PDF? If I want to try the interiors of Greweling's agar citrus slices, what could I substitute for the glucose syrup, maybe just a really heavy simple syrup??

Any advice? Thanks.

Edited May 15, 2008 by pastrygirl (log)

[Kerry Beal]

I tried to make turkish delight for the first time a few days ago, and need some guidance.  I started with the recipe in Claire Clark's Indulge because it's perfect, right?  I started by boiling the sugar to 230F instead of 245F because up here at 8000 feet water boils at a mere 198.  But then I mixed the 145 grams of cornstarch with 9 oz water, which made a super thick paste that was basically solid and not amenable to whisking in the syrup.  That's not going to work.  So, for the next batch I increased the water and decreased the starch, so that when it got hot it was more of a gooey, vaseline consistency, which was able to be mixed with the syrup just fine.  But then I was having a hard time finding a heat level that would bring the candy to a simmer without burning it onto the bottom of the pan.  The recipe says simmer over low heat for 45 min to 1 hour, stirring frequently.  It seems like if you are going to simmer this stuff it would really need to be stirred constantly. The end result is a little too soft and has a bit of a pasty texture, I imagine I did not cook it long enough and did not really get the cornstarch boiling, next time i will make sure to get the starch fully boiling instead of just thick before I add the syrup.

So, what consistency should the hot starch mixture be before you add the syrup?  How much simmering and stirring does it really need?  Are there other clues for doneness besides 'golden' (like a temperature)?  Should one just expect that a lot of it is going to stick to the bottom of the pan?

I did just get the Greweling book, but of course have no thin boiling starch, so his recipe is not going to help.  Also no glucose, corn syrup, or other liquid or invert sugars besides honey (and even honey is in short supply right now).  For thickeners, I have cornstarch, gelatin, and agar, and I'm hoping our buyer in Bangkok can track down some pectin, but that may not happen.

Any advice?  Thanks.

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Here is the Turkish Delight recipe from a professional book by Leon.

750 grams sugar

335 grams corn syrup

670 grams water

115 grams cornstarch

200 grams cold water

1/8 teaspoon cream of tartar

2 grams tartaric acid

1/4 teaspoon lemon oil

soak starch in the 200 g of cold water. Boil sugar, corn syrup in the 670 g of water. Gradually stir in starch slurry, mixing carefully the whole time you add it. Add cream of tarter and tartaric acid. Boil to 250 F degrees. Let cool a while, then stir in flavour. Pour out into heavily starched container. Roll in mix 3/4 icing sugar, 1/4 starch.

Hopefully it will give enough information to help you tweek your recipe>

[pastrygirl]

Hopefully it will give enough information to help you tweek your recipe>

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Thanks, Kerry, the different method and having a temperature to shoot for might help. When I get bored with daily production and management, I turn to confectionery for entertainment, but it is a lot more entertaining when it turns out right!

[pastrygirl]

OK, so I used the Leon recipe, but tweaked thusly:

675 g sugar

540 g water

90 g honey

1 TB lemon juice

Brought to a boil

150 g water

86 g cornstarch

stirred in, then boiled the mixture to 236F (for 8000 feet altitude) on medium heat, then added 70 g pistachios.

Nice texture, it did get golden without sticking to the bottom, and I didn't keep track of the time but it didn't seem like an hour (as specified in other recipes).

Thanks again Kerry, Bhutan now has Turkish Delight, they didn't even know they needed it!

[Kerry Beal]

OK, so I used the Leon recipe, but tweaked thusly:

675 g sugar

540 g water

90 g honey

1 TB lemon juice

Brought to a boil

150 g water

86 g cornstarch

stirred in, then boiled the mixture to 236F (for 8000 feet altitude) on medium heat, then added 70 g pistachios.

Nice texture, it did get golden without sticking to the bottom, and I didn't keep track of the time but it didn't seem like an hour (as specified in other recipes).

Thanks again Kerry, Bhutan now has Turkish Delight, they didn't even know they needed it!

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What are you flavouring with? I love my Turkish Delight with rose otto.

[pastrygirl]

No flavor really. The honey and citrus came through, so it tastes good but its not traditional. Being a Seattle-ite, I'm a big fan of Aplets and Cotlets (apple, apricot, and walnut more-or-less turkish delight candy made in Washington), so it's more of a childhood nostalgia for that candy than trying to create authenticity.

I'll have to look around for some rose water or orange flower water or oil, I might be able to get them here if they are used at all in Indian sweets, or I'll see if our Bangkok buyer can find something, but she is neither a chef nor a westerner, so she sometimes has a hard time finding odd ingredients.

Otherwise, I'll be back in the US in August and will have to do all my specialty ingredient shopping then, as international shipping tends to be expensive and still takes 3 to 6 weeks to get here. Where do you buy the rose otto? I really haven't done a whole lot of confectionery, I've been a restaurant pastry chef but there are still a lot of specialty products I haven't played with.

[Kerry Beal]

  Where do you buy the rose otto?  I really haven't done a whole lot of confectionery, I've been a restaurant pastry chef but there are still a lot of specialty products I haven't played with.

←

I buy mine through Appalachian Valley Natural Products . They carry a lot of essential oils and will send you little samples of other oils when you buy some. Rose otto is outrageously expensive - but you only need the tiniest bit. I dilute it about 1 part in 10 parts of jojoba oil and use just a couple of drops.

[confiseur]

I had read about Kee's creme brulee truffle, speculated about how it was done, and finally decided to try it myself.

I didn't want to settle for a "creme" truffle but wanted to try for the sugar crust as well.  There are several ways to get a thin chunk of carmalized sugar.  For this attempt I carmalized in a pot,  poured it between to silpats and spread it thin with a scraper.  When cooled I broke the sheet up into smaller pieces.  In the future I might try using a stencil to lay out piles of sugar to carmalize with a torch so I can get more consistent sizing with less waste.

Since the sugar would be sealed in the creme for several hours before it was eaten I decided to coat them in cocoa butter for protection.  I melted a bit of butter in a small cup and dipped the pieces in and laid them out on a silpat to set.

The cocoa butter protected the sugar, but I didn't particularly like the way it interfered with the flavor.  The next time I might try spraying it with an airbrush or dip in chocolate instead.

I made the creme anglese and cooled it in the fridge until it wouldn't melt the dark chocolate shells.  It proved to still be pipeable, though it was a touch on the thick side.

I placed the brulee on the bottom of half the pieces before placing them back in the fridge to set further.

I had been worried about backing off the bare creme pieces, but they proved to set thick enough that it wasn't a problem.

Then I took several dozen pieces to work and conducted a survey.  Everyone who wanted to sample had to try one of each and vote for "Sugar crunch" or "No sugar crunch".  I didn't get any complaints about the requirement to have two pieces.

I was concerned about the cocoa butter being too thick on the sugar, but to my suprise the vote came out 3 to 1 in favor of the sugar crunch.  So the result was people prefer the full "creme brulee" experience even when encased in a chocolate shell.

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Good idea, but these must be eaten immediatley? or within a day or two at most.

I am quite intrigued by the idea of a creme brulee truffle but it is it possible to get a decent shelf life ( 1-2 weeks) on a similar recipe?

[lapin d'or]

I am trying to work on some chocolates/petit fours that are intended to eat after a dinner. This is my attempt at a cappucino candy. The cup mould is lined with a 63% Weiss dark chocolate and then a layer of coffee ganache from Greweling and then a vanilla white chocolate ganache based on Scotts book.

I have been using the ganache checker spreadsheet posted by Schneich to tweak the recipes and this has worked very well for the first few I have done.

[Lior]

Just lovely!!!

[Chris Hennes]

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Those look great---do you have a mold for the cups, or are you making them with the "foam cylinder trick"?

[alanamoana]

I have been using the ganache checker spreadsheet posted by Schneich to tweak the recipes and this has worked very well for the first few I have done.

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can you point this out to me? thanks!

[lapin d'or]

do you have a mold for the cups, or are you making them with the "foam cylinder trick"?

Chris - I have a mould - I would never get them to look neat otherwise!

Alanamoana, I am testing my egullet skills now but I think this link will take you to the post where you can download the excel spreadsheet for checking ganache recipes.

schneich's balancing ganache post

The thread is titled Balancing your Ganache Recipes 2.0

You need to change the formulae to match the ingredients you are using ie cocoa butter percentages for your chocolate and fat percentages of cream etc. But I have found it quite fun to use.

[alanamoana]

do you have a mold for the cups, or are you making them with the "foam cylinder trick"?

Chris - I have a mould - I would never get them to look neat otherwise!

Alanamoana, I am testing my egullet skills now but I think this link will take you to the post where you can download the excel spreadsheet for checking ganache recipes.

schneich's balancing ganache post

The thread is titled Balancing your Ganache Recipes 2.0

You need to change the formulae to match the ingredients you are using ie cocoa butter percentages for your chocolate and fat percentages of cream etc. But I have found it quite fun to use.

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thank you so much for the quick response!

beautiful capuccino (cappucino?!) chocolates, by the way!

[pastrygirl]

I've been experimenting with the agar jellies from Greweling's book, they turn out nice, but I noticed today that batches made 12 and 14 days ago had some fuzzy white mold spots and also some tiny black spots that I assume to be mold. They were stored airtight at room temperature. Honestly, I was at another property and my staff made them, so I can't say 100% that they followed instructions, but they looked and tasted fine until I checked them today - except the pineapple ones caked with too much sugar, but those had black spots too.

I've heard that the shelf life of pate de fruit is quite long, so I was hoping the agar jellies would have a similar shelf life. Anyone have experience with agar candies and shelf life?

[pastrygirl]

beautiful capuccino (cappucino?!) chocolates, by the way!

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cappuccino!

[emmalish]

I made Kerry's caramel recipe from eGCI this weekend, and dipped them in dark chocolate today. I used the leftover chocolate to dip some pretzels.

I don't know what I was thinking, though. It's SO hot here this weekend, making the caramel almost melted me, and now it's taking forever for the dipped chocolates & pretzels to set up.

...huh... okay, I'm a little confused by the results of my dipped pretzels. It's the first time I've ever tried this, so maybe there's some trick I'm not familiar with? I dipped the caramels, and immediately after I finished those, I started dipping the pretzels. Everything seemed fine, until the chocolate had a chance to set and I could see that all the caramels were coated with a beautiful glossy apparently perfectly tempered chocolate... and all the pretzels are grey with bloom. It's like night and day – when I switched from one to the other, I continued placing them in order on the same silpat sheet, and the difference is drastic. And they're all like that.

And then, just to make it a little more interesting, after I finished dipping the pretzels, I poured the excess chocolate onto a piece of parchment to reuse. It set up beautifully.

Any ideas?

Edited July 1, 2008 by emmalish (log)

[tammylc]

Emmalish - is the chocolate on the pretzels thicker than on the caramels? Because I've had chocolate that was too thick bloom, I think because the heat generated as it starts to set drives the rest out of temper.

[alanamoana]

Did you stir the chocolate between dipping the caramels and the pretzels? Also, did you stir the chocolate before you poured out the excess the chocolate?

Temper requires: temperature, time and agitation. So, if you didn't stir between dipping the two different items, there could have been some over crystalization of your chocolate which caused the blooming. Then, if you stirred before you dumped the chocolate out, you could have redistributed the crystals thus bringing it all back into temper.

Kerry? Kerry? Any thoughts?