Forum Activity for @Edward J

I don't know what it is about chocolate that attracts all the scam artists. The first and last chocolate show I attended in Vancouver was a flop. Patrons were complaining about the entrance fees, and lack of vendors, but one of the major complaints was the scotch. One of the vendors had nothing to do with chocolate but was selling scotch, which he paired with chocolate. The show was coupled with a festival which was poorly run, for instance the organizer would call me up a week afte the festival started and tell me that "a photographer" would be at my shop that day, and I was to compensate him and his party of 4 with chocolate high tea @$25.00 p/p. I declined, and later found out from others that the "photographer" used his cell phone camera. Then there was the last minute call telling me to compensate a " well known blogger" with 2 of the same high tea packages because the blogger wanted to take his mother. This was to promote the festival--two weeks after it was launched. Rather than deal with the organizer, I e-mailed the blogger directly and told him I would be delighted, but he must state on his blog that it partly funded by me----I never heard back....

I'm also wary of "Competitions", in which small shops and producers are solicited to compete. I have "learned my lesson" and now will only compete IF the judging is open to the public-live--AND blind. y va

Greetings Fellow Chocolatiers & Chocolate Lovers

[ REDACTED :: Please refer to my comment, below. CLAY ]

Marisa Baxter
Truffles in Paradise

Thanks for that Mark. I'll give that a go. Makes great sense!

Colin

The ginger pieces are water, the chocolate fat. They don't like each other. Try precoating the pieces with something to act as an emulsifier "glue". Common is gum arabic solution or a quick coat solution (1:1 gum arabic:sugar). There are some modifiedstarches, low bloom gelatins, etc that will also work.

Once you get sufficient chocolate on for support, chill it down well to crystallize more of the cocoa butter. Then turn enough to warm up only enough to add the rest of your chocolate.

Have fun and enjoy

Has anyone tried panning ginger? I have done two batches - one dark choc and the other milk. Using Sicao chocolate so it's very good chocolate.

I tried it in my big pan (55Kg) but the ginger pieces flex and the chocolate breaks away. So I switched to my small pan (15Kg) and slowed it right down - same problem. Seemingly nothing is gentle enough to prevent the ginger flexing and breaking up. I thought that the milk chocolate may have worked as it's not as brittle as dark but it didn't work out

Am thinking of pre-coating with a thin layer of chocolate/cocoa butter prior to panning but that is a lot of work and I'm not convinced it will work. It works well with very light centers but I fear that the heavier ginger will simply break the layer up when I get to pan.

Does anyone have any thoughts please?

Thanks!

Colin

Can you help me determine the density, thermal conductivity, viscosity and prandl number of chocolate.

I have to do melting point of the chocolate wich I make and wait duplicator.

is it okay for truffles too? mine are shell molded or dipped, so truffle is completely enclosed in chocolate - if that matters

It's ideal. Refrigerator is too cold and more importantly the humidity there is too high. Just give it 15 mins to get back to room temp and you're good.

I have heard of people using a wine refrigerator for chocolate storage. Does anyone do this, and how does it work out. Thanks.

I use a chocoflex mold and it works great.

I prefer the slab to stand for 24 hours before cutting, but have cut sooner when needed. I want it at room temp.

Thanks! When do you fing it is the best time to do it?? How hot/cold?? That seems like the hard part.

Andy

The roller knife is not time consuming--just the opposite. I can cut perfect sizes in just minutes. Check out Savage.

Hello,

I have a question for all of you professionals. How do you cut caramel into exact sizes consistently?? I see the rollers with the blades, but that is time consuming. Do molds work?

Thanks

Andy

No need for anything like that.

What you need to do is warm the bowl, stones and nibs to about 115F and then add the nibs slowly until they start to release some fat. Once that happens you can go a little faster until all the nibs are in the grinder. This should take about an hour total to fill it up, and then in about another half hour you should have a batch of usable liquor. The Santha can fit about 8lbs total. Why do you not want to use cocoa butter?

Greetings all,

I'm looking for a way to make cocoa liquor from nibs to feed my santha grinder. After much investigation I purchased a spice grinder which grinds nibs into powder, but this also seizes up the Santha. Even when the ground powder is warmed it does not melt into liquor. Perhaps I need a different type of grinder, maybe one that produces more of a shearing grind rather than a rotor with blades which produces only powder.

I'm trying to avoid the use of cacao butter so I'm looking for some way to make cacao liquor ready for the santha grinder. Any suggestions?

Many thanks!

Adam

Some wineries do this. Glen Ewin Estate here in Adelaide where the cellar door represents several wineries. The wineries may even use same grapes but would be a hard job to tell.

There was a discussion a while ago where (I think) Sebastian suggested buyers for fine flavoured cocoa beans should considerpooling their buying resources to enable container load purchases to be made. Ie., Bar Maker A can't afford a full container, but partnering up with B, C & D, together they can buy a container load of beans from a growers co-op.

What about extending this a bit further: say Bean-to-Bar Makers A, B, C & D get together and are based relatively close to each other. They buy their beans in bulk together (cheaper beans). Once the beans are delivered they each go off and interpret the beans in their own way, on their own premises,and package in their own packaging and with their own brandname. But then have a co-op retail store where bars from A, B, C & D are all sold together and the retail store is owned by Bar Maker A, B, C & D.

The advantages seem to be better buying power (and potentially better access to beans given larger purchase quantities),each Bar Maker keeps their individuality when it comes to making chocolate andthere are better economies of scale on the retail side (ie., each only pays 1/4 rent, marketing, electricity, wages to retail staff, websiteetc). You could even make a marketing point that each Bar Maker has their own interpretation of the same beans.

SoI wonder why it hasn't been done before? Or has it been tried before/is it currently being done? Are the logistics of organisingmultiple business partners who have their own bar making factories just too hard? Or is it too hard to get agreement on a retail store front? - I wouldn't have thought so, but I've never tried to do it. Or is retail of bean-to-bar just too hard and most Bar Makers are aiming for wholesale clients?

Anyway, I am interested to hear what others think . . . it seems to be one way to consolidate some of the smaller parts of the market and benefit from economies of scale,but allow each Bar Maker to keep their individuality.

Hi Everyone,

My Name is Dennis Howard:

I've Had A chocolate Distribution Company In Honduras Central America For Over 25 years and I want to add and replace products like M&M type candy, chocolate covered biscuits or bars, chocolate balls and many others.

If You Have Any sources In Miami I will Be visiting this coming Saturday the 12th of January.

But if you have other good sources That I can Contact by phone or email please let me know.

I have an established customer base all over the country.

I may also be interested in Buying Equipment in the future To produce some of my own products as well as doing my own private label version.

I appreciate any help and want to thank you all and I hope to be able to both help and learn from others in this group!

Dennis

Also I'm interested in other Bulk type candy.

Thanks for the ideas, Clay -- I just might try the sunflower seeds and smoked salt. I did consider blending the Tanariva with a darker chocolate. Alas, I am out of Guanaja but I guess I could try blending it with E. Guittard's LEtoile du Nord, which I have plenty of. Cheers!

Emgee:

I know what you mean about the sweetness of Tanariva and I think that using it as a base for something with a salty/nutty inclusion is a fabulous idea. Try something weird, maybe a roasted/salted sunflower seed butter studded with roasted sunflower seeds (unsalted) and sprinkled with a smoked coarse salt. You could also consider mixing the butter with the melted chocolate to make a spread. Sun-duja!

Another thing that occurred to me would be to use the Tanariva as milk in a "dark milk" blend chocolate. You don't want to use something really fruity like Manjari, but using it to lighten up Coeur de Guanaja (or even regular Guanaja) could be really interesting.

And - on a complete other note - try pairing the Tanariva with Brooklyn Brewery's Pennant Pale Ale. Classic English pale ale malty/yeasty/bready - served temps in the 50s, not ice cold - goes extremely well with the Tanariva. I did this for a pairing event last holidays (2011, not 2012) and it was the dark-horse hit of the pairings.

I've got a nearly full 3Kg bag of Valhrona Tanariva -- but I'm not liking the Tanariva as much as I thought I would -- it's overly caramelly and cloyingly sweet. Any suggestions on what I can use it for? It's has too prominent a flavor to work as a couverture for any but the most neutral or saltiest of fillings. I'm thinking salty nut clusters or bark with salty inclusions. Please advise. Thanks!

I found incredibly great concentrated organic alcohol free extracts and wrote about them here:

http://www.thechocolatelife.com/forum/topics/incredibly-great-flavors-for-chocolate?xg_source=activity

they are from medicineflower.com

Those are actually really high in alcohol - minimum 70% (you can see the numbers if you click on the individual products). I have a couple of bottles and haven't found them useful in chocolate making. They are more for pastry.

You'll be better off with flavouring compounds - Sosa makes some nice ones. Mec3 makes the nicest strawberry compound that I've ever had.

Thanks for the 411 on Amoretti. It never came up an the dozens of Google searches I did.

And the perfume spray sounds amazing! It may be just what I'm looking for.

Greg:

Unfortunately, it's impossible to tell what the alcohol content of these are from the descriptions on the Chef Rubber site. You'll either need to go to the manufacturer's site or call Chef Rubber customer support. I had a tough sourcing problem that they were able to help me with.

Gold standard for flavors, though, is Amoretti . They are expensive but everyone I know says they are worth the difference when flavor is important. If you look at the details tab for their products it will let you know if there is alcohol.

They have generic extracts (e.g., rum) and often taste-alikes for premium brands (e.g., Amaretto, Kahlua) and often have both water and oil soluble versions of the same flavor.

Amoretti also makes edible perfume sprays - you can add aromas to the outside of pieces just before serving them. It sounds weird but it's way cool.

Does anyone have experience using alcohol concentrates like the ones at Chef Rubber?

http://www.shopchefrubber.com/Liquor-Concentrates/

My ganache recipe contains alcohol which is great except I can't sell it if it has over .005% alcohol. I'm wondering if I could use less alcohol with these and get the same flavor.

As a follow up, I was able to make a trip up to Quebec and visited Choco Musee Erico634 Rue Saint-Jean in Quebec City. They have a nice museum recounting the history of chocolate, a window to watch the chocolatiers (video available when they are not in production), nice selection of chocolates and gelato and even make a bean to bar chocolate that while a rougher texture is very tasty, I regret not bringing back more. Down the block is an historic grocery that is supposed to be the oldest in North America and they have a selection of chocolate bars.Chocolaterie de l'Ile d'Orlans196 Bout de l'Ile Ch, Sainte-Ptronille is also worth a visit if you have a car because there is no public transportation to there. They also have a small museum about chocolate in addition to a nice selection of chocolates, including casis and maple which are sourced locally on the island. They have a little patio where you can enjoy the chocolate, or walk down the road and you can have views of Chute Montmorency, the waterfall.

I prepared an itinerary for a travel and tourism program I am taking that was for a trip I would like to do to visit various chocolate places in Eastern Canada (Toronto, Montreal, Quebec, Halifax) and the French Island of St. Pierre. There are chocolate places doing bean to bar, hand made chocolates, gelato, etc. I could send the itinerary in PDF, or I could extract out the names and links (if available). I do have to disclose that I have not been to any of these shops, but in the future, if I have enough money, I would like to do this itinerary and visit them all.

Chocolates by Chloe is also in Montreal - just down the street from Au Pied de Cochon.

Daniel -

I had forgotten Christophe was in Montreal. Doubleplusgood recommendation to that.

Wow, his work is great! I had no idea, thank you

Thank you, I'll look it up

If I were to travel to Montreal, I would visit Christophe Morel. I have studied with him. His chocolates are fantastic and he is also a very nice guy.

Daniela:

Absent any specific recommendations (I haven't been to Montreal in quite a while), you might want to try Chocomap and ChocoLocate. Both are databases of chocolate stores. Coupled with a Google search (chocolate +Montreal) and Yelp that's at least a start.

Here is a list from Chowhound.

I was wondering if anyone knew some chocolate shops in Quebec worth to visit. I might have an opportunity to visit for a long time this year, so I also wanted to see if there was an opportunity to work in any good chocolate shop there. Any info would be greatly appreciated.

thank you!

Great - thanks for your response.

You are correct, that hole is where the germ had perforated the testa (skin) when it germinated. And generally speaking, this is bad. When you have germinated beans in a fermentation, they are almost always the first ones to get moldy (makes sense, the perforated skin allows the bean to fill up with juice/microbes during fermentation. If your cacao has more than 1% of these, the source is not cleaning their cacao very well.

Hi,

I've attached a photo of two beans that were in my current batch. Is this basically the same thing in both beans? The bean has germinated and sprouted - the sprout is in the top bean and the bottom bean shows just a hole where the sprout has fallen out of?

Can someone confirm/correct me on this? And also, is my terminology (germinated, sprout) correct?

The next question is then - what impact on the final chocolate do these beans have? Is a few making it through OK or will they negatively impact flavour pretty quickly?

Thanks for your help

Michael -

You are right to be skeptical ... he cosmetic stuff may be safe enough to put on skin, but it might not be safe enough to eat. ALWAYS check to make sure that you're using food-safe versions of ingredients. While the titanium oxide may be safe you also have to look at what's in the carrier medium.

Chef Rubber - it's simply white chocolate colouring. Link here - http://www.shopchefrubber.com/Powdered-Color-White-OIL-100g-3.5oz/

The cosmetic stuff doesn't seem to be as oil soluble - I tried it!

Does anyone know the best place to buy Titanium Oxide? I want to get some mostly for pastry work, but I have also heard it works pretty well for making white chocolate actually white. However, I cannot find it anywhere. The only place I see it listed is on Amazon, and then it is still hard to tell if it is the food safe kind, since it is listed under cosmetics. Thanks for your help!