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Gelatin Conversion


amccomb

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I have a recipe that says "12 g leaf gelatin". I have leaf gelatin, but no scale sensitive enough to weigh 12 g. My "leaves" are approximately 9inches by 3 inches. How many leaves do I need for this recipe?

Thanks!!

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In case no one can help you directly...

You may have thought of this, but is the scale sensitive enough to weigh several gelatin sheets or ten or however many you have?

You can then determine how much one gelatin sheet weighs and determine from there how much 12 g will be.

Eg. You weigh 10 sheets and they weigh 240 g altogether. Thus each sheet is 24 g and you will need a half sheet for 12 g.

Edited by ludja (log)

"Under the dusty almond trees, ... stalls were set up which sold banana liquor, rolls, blood puddings, chopped fried meat, meat pies, sausage, yucca breads, crullers, buns, corn breads, puff pastes, longanizas, tripes, coconut nougats, rum toddies, along with all sorts of trifles, gewgaws, trinkets, and knickknacks, and cockfights and lottery tickets."

-- Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 1962 "Big Mama's Funeral"

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Hmmm....good idea! It's hard to tell. It's not a digital scale and it looks like the whole package of 12 weighs about 40 grams, so 3 grams each. 4 sheets seems like a lot, though! I'm used to the little powdered packets. And again, I'm not sure how accurate the scale is...

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40 g is stlll pretty small. What is the max weight your scale goes up to?

"Under the dusty almond trees, ... stalls were set up which sold banana liquor, rolls, blood puddings, chopped fried meat, meat pies, sausage, yucca breads, crullers, buns, corn breads, puff pastes, longanizas, tripes, coconut nougats, rum toddies, along with all sorts of trifles, gewgaws, trinkets, and knickknacks, and cockfights and lottery tickets."

-- Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 1962 "Big Mama's Funeral"

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40 g is stlll pretty small.  What is the max weight your scale goes up to?

It goes to 5 lbs - the gram marks are tiny, so it's hard to determine exactly where the needle is.

Yeah, this sounds similar to my non-digtial scale, 20 g tic marks and up to 5 lbs. I usually like to measure at least 100 g.

Maybe aidensnd's advice will work.

"Under the dusty almond trees, ... stalls were set up which sold banana liquor, rolls, blood puddings, chopped fried meat, meat pies, sausage, yucca breads, crullers, buns, corn breads, puff pastes, longanizas, tripes, coconut nougats, rum toddies, along with all sorts of trifles, gewgaws, trinkets, and knickknacks, and cockfights and lottery tickets."

-- Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 1962 "Big Mama's Funeral"

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typical sheets weigh in at 2g each

use 6 sheets

Oh no! Well, I made the recipe (X4 - it's a big cake) last night and assumed 3g each. I am guessing it's not going to work....and I have no way to get more leaf gelatin before I need to have the cake done! Ack!!! :wacko:

I had really hoped to have this out of my hair by tonight - it's the last night I have left before the wedding.

I wish I had somewhere local I could by the leaf gelatin...Could I possibly reheat the mixture and add powdered gelatin?

Here's the recipe (I multiplied it times 4):

1 cup cream

1 1/4 cups water

2/3 cup sugar

2/3 cup honey

1 1/2 cups Cocoa Powder

12 g leaf gelatin

Bring cream, water, honey and sugar to a boil. Whisk in cocoa powder cook 2 more minutes, stirring frequently. Pour into a bowl and cool 10-15 minutes. Soak leaf gelatin in cold water until soft. Stir gelatin into cocoa mixture. Refrigerate until ready to use.

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typical sheets weigh in at 2g each

use 6 sheets

Oh no! Well, I made the recipe (X4 - it's a big cake) last night and assumed 3g each. I am guessing it's not going to work....and I have no way to get more leaf gelatin before I need to have the cake done! Ack!!! :wacko:

I had really hoped to have this out of my hair by tonight - it's the last night I have left before the wedding.

I wish I had somewhere local I could by the leaf gelatin...Could I possibly reheat the mixture and add powdered gelatin?

Here's the recipe (I multiplied it times 4):

1 cup cream

1 1/4 cups water

2/3 cup sugar

2/3 cup honey

1 1/2 cups Cocoa Powder

12 g leaf gelatin

Bring cream, water, honey and sugar to a boil. Whisk in cocoa powder cook 2 more minutes, stirring frequently. Pour into a bowl and cool 10-15 minutes. Soak leaf gelatin in cold water until soft. Stir gelatin into cocoa mixture. Refrigerate until ready to use.

I don't know for sure about reheating your mixture... but I would say it's probably not a good idea. Since you made it yesterday, when you look at it now, how does it seem to you? It has had enough time to set up, maybe it will just be a little bit looser than it should be, but fine to serve.

Don't waste your time or time will waste you - Muse

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I don't know for sure about reheating your mixture... but I would say it's probably not a good idea. Since you made it yesterday, when you look at it now, how does it seem to you? It has had enough time to set up, maybe it will just be a little bit looser than it should be, but fine to serve.

It's very runny, but then, it's meant to be a mirror glaze. I thought it would be quite a bit thicker, though. I don't think it would coat the cake at this consistency - it's like hot chocolate.

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I don't know for sure about reheating your mixture... but I would say it's probably not a good idea. Since you made it yesterday, when you look at it now, how does it seem to you? It has had enough time to set up, maybe it will just be a little bit looser than it should be, but fine to serve.

It's very runny, but then, it's meant to be a mirror glaze. I thought it would be quite a bit thicker, though. I don't think it would coat the cake at this consistency - it's like hot chocolate.

OK, well what if you soften a few more sheets of gelatin, melt them, and stir it into the mix? If your mixture is still runny, then it should mix in easily right? Good luck!!

Don't waste your time or time will waste you - Muse

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OK, well what if you soften a few more sheets of gelatin, melt them, and stir it into the mix? If your mixture is still runny, then it should mix in easily right? Good luck!!

Unfortunately, I don't have any leaf gelatin left and there is nowhere in town that sells it. I have powdered. If I bloom the powdered gelatin, heat it up, and then let it cool to lukewarm, I can probably add that to the cold glaze mixture, right? Should I temper the gelatin misture? I just don't want to end up with chewy gelatin blobs in my smooth glaze!

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use about 1tsp powder gelatin to equal 1 sheet gelatin

having used the gelatin in the mix, yes - you can warm some or all of it and add additional gelatin - in this case - I would make all of it more liquid to accept additional gelatin.

Bloom the gelatine (additional) that you requiore to meet the deficit

Then heat a small portion of your miroir mix so it is quite warm enough to melt that additional gelatin

stir that into the remaining tepid miroir mix - stir well to ensure even mix and distribution

chill to set

good luck

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  • 1 year later...

Tried to make a simple panacotta last night from a recipe in Silver Spoon which, you might imagine, should work, it being the Italian housewife's bible bla bla.

Bloody stuff came out like putty. The recipe called for 10grams of sheet gelatin dissolved in a little warm milk and added to 500mls cream with the usual vanilla and sugar. Simple enough.

It's got to be too much gelatin right?

Any tips, favourite recipes from you pro's?

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Hi,

I'm quoting directly from Martin Lersh's book on hydrocolloids (http://khymos.org/recipe-collection.php)

The most likely problem is that there are different strengths of gelatine depending on the type of sheet used.

The bloom strength is the gelling strength and it works as follows. The stronger the bloom strength, the lighter the sheet (to give approximately equivalent gelling strengths)

Name (Bloom Strength) [grams/sheet]

Bronze (125-155) [3.3]

Silver (160) [2.5]

Gold (190-220) [2.0]

Platimum (235-265) [1.7]

So if the recipe called for 10g of gelatin, it may have been 10g of bronze and if you used platinum, it would have been around twice as set.

Typically for Panna cotta, you'd use around 1% gelatin. For 500 ml of cream plus sugar, vanilla, etc you'd use around 5.6g or just over three sheets. For Bronze gelatin, this would be 3.3g x 3 ~ 10g, so that is the likely problem.

With different strengths of gelatin, it is somewhat complicated, hope this helps.

Nick Reynolds, aka "nickrey"

"The Internet is full of false information." Plato
My eG Foodblog

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Here's an update.

The gelatin I used was indeed the platinum grade so brilliant work Nickrey. That's why my panacotta came out like rubber.

However a quick browse of the shelves in my local Waitrose - that's in London by the way - yesterday revealed 2 brands of leaf gelatin and one powdered, none of which displayed it's strength.

So how do you know what's inside?

Second question therefore: Where can I get properly labelled Gelatin in the U.K.?

Thirdly: And what about agar agar?

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The way I understand it, most leaf gelatin manufacturers vary the weight of their leaves as a function of bloom strength so that one leaf of bronze gels the same amount of liquid as one leaf of platinum - the bronze simply weighs more than the platinum. In your case, since the recipe specifies weight, you'd have to find out how many bronze leaves it takes to reach 10g, then use the same number of leaves of platinum. Hope that helps!

Matthew Kayahara

Kayahara.ca

@mtkayahara

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I think your problem, martinwa, isn't the strength of the gelatin, but possibly the book not instructing you to bloom the gelatin before using. you mention that you had to melt the gelatin in a bit of warm milk. was the gelatin bloomed (in water or another liquid) before using? the amount of liquid the gelatin absorbs should be taken into account in a recipe, so if you didn't bloom the gelatin then technically you've used less liquid and the remaining liquid in the recipe wouldn't be enough to offset this and you'd have your dessert set up too firm.

Edited by alanamoana (log)
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Here's an update.

The gelatin I used was indeed the platinum grade so brilliant work Nickrey. That's why my panacotta came out like rubber.

However a quick browse of the shelves in my local Waitrose - that's in London by the way - yesterday revealed 2 brands of leaf gelatin and one powdered, none of which displayed it's strength.

So how do you know what's inside?

Second question therefore: Where can I get properly labelled Gelatin in the U.K.?

Thirdly: And what about agar agar?

agar agar will give you a completely different finished product than gelatin. agar will set up with a "crunchy" texture and while heat reversible, will stay set up at room temperature, unlike gelatin. you could try with different amounts of agar, but i don't know what the conversions are.

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