Does anyone know of any great websites that sell packaging particularly good for chocolate making...I am not going big here, just local markets and fairs....eco friendly preferable.
Hi Nat, Just wondering which island you are on. I live on oahu and am just getting started in the chocolate trade, still very much in learning mode and if you are on Oahu I might come check out your chocolate at farmer's market.
carrie
Nat,
You might want to try something like this:melt compound chocolate (which appears to have a melting temp of 110 or so) and soy wax together and mold. I tried this with some bon bons and they survived just fine for a few hours in the low to mid 80's, out of direct sunlight. They got soft but did not appear visibly melted and re-gained their shape when cooled. And, they look just like chocolate: 
Things to remember, that I did not realise with mould copy's, when doing market research is:
1. Some children will inevitably put the copy in their mouth.
2. People get really disappointed if the product looks different to the copy.
3. Colour and appeal are actually very important, an ugly copy will impact sales negatively.
I reckon mixing food grade beeswax with cacao powder may provide a similar sheen / lustre and also make the beeswax melt at a higher temperature. Whether the result is convincing and appealing will take experimentation.
Thanks for the tip, Clay. I've made some molds with silicone but the compound always comes in garish colors of purple or blue and as nothing sticks to silicone, trying to paint this is impossible. Paint peels right off. The mold companies won't explain how to color silicone to your preferred color. They'll do it for you if you order 50 lbs of mold compound but I don't need 500 sample bars!
Nat:
There is food-grade silicon used to make ... molds. It can probably be colored, too. Available through Chef Rubber, among others.
:: Clay
We sellchocolate bars every week at 2 localfarmers markets in Hawaii. Temp control isdefinitely an issue, especially in the summers in Hawaii. We keep all the bars in a cooler with ice packs, put dummy bars out on display (cardboard wrapped in foil & labels) that won't melt, and keep smallamounts of samples in sampler trays with ice underneath.
A bigger problem for us is that we want to display our beautiful molds, but unless we can make them out of some other material that won't melt in the heat, that's not possible.
If anyone has figured out a somewhat durable material that is also food safe and they feel comfortable putting in theirchocolate molds their using for other things, please, let us know!
Thank you, Clay. As always, I appreciate your comments and insights here. I have a shop, licensed commercially for wholesale (and retail is allowed) by the Ag Dept. In Minnesota, Ag usually licenses food establishments that are not restaurants. I will definitely call and ask my Ag guy. Would still value thoughts, experiences, etc from those who are farmers' market veterans.
Robyn -
The health department regulations are going to vary state by state, county by county, and city by city (where is Scandia?). The only way to find out is to go ask, or if you are lucky, go on-line. NYC government bureaucracy is messed up in a lot of ways, but the nyc.gov web site does an excellent job of letting any who wants to open a food business in NYC know that they need to know to open any kind of food business. Unfortunately, none of that applies to where I live in Westchester if I wanted to open up exactly the same business in Westchester.
The only way to know is to ask your local health department. Oh, and keep in mind that there may be state and/or county permits and/or licenses that may be required as well as local ones.
As for the type of mobile unit you're talking about ... decide what you want to do, then choose the vehicle (pun intended) that will let you do it. A small hot-dog cart may be good only for selling prepared items. A food truck would mean that you can prepare stuff to order ... if that's what you want to do. Another thing to consider is that except for storage (ingredients, finished product to be sold), a food truck, kitted out properly, could be large enough to produce product for a million dollar plus business and could cost less than the same amount of space in a commercial structure.
As for farmer markets, there are a number of ChocolateLife members who've started successful businesses at the markets and I will let them tell their stories ...
Hi all. I'd love to hear from those of you who have sold your chocolates at farmer's markets. I have some memory of a prior discussion about suggestions for keeping the temp constant, but can't recall specifics (point me in the right direction please if you know the thread).
I would also appreciate any sense of demographics/psychographics you might have formed at farmers' markets. For instance, for those of you who sell this way, what impressions do you have of the audience/customers? Where do you think they fall on the sophistication and price continuums?
Anyone doing a mobile chocolate unit yet? If so, are you using a hotdog-style cart? A catering pickup truck? A full size food truck? Something else?
And finally, anyone have a sense of health dept. regs regarding mobile units when no heating is required (i.e. chocolates only)?
Thanks very much! --Robyn
Hello to every one I am really getting a lot of useful information about chocolate and really
enjoy meeting new friends in chocolate.
On my web site www.candieman.com would it be possible for any body to please log on
to my web site and then click "like with facebook" that is if you like my web site I hope
that you do.
I have added a video on making a delicious chocolate cake on my site link, "recipies" hope
you bake the cake, if you do let me know how it turned out.
Thank You
Dennis Davis
P.S. I need more traffic to my chocolateweb site does anyone have any helpful suggestions.
Would anyone be interested in setting up a back link with my web site?
I didn't know melting cocoa butter with sugar and powder only causes a nice layer of butter over your sugar and powder....
So.... any way to get it all to mix so I can make my own milk chocolate? Is taht what "conching" does? If so, I'll throw 100lbs in my concrete mixer with a space heater blowing in.
ahh yes good call Melanie. besides, you'll need a heater anyways once used the first time after the moulds go through the cooling tunnel.
I think energy wise its much easier to quick heat your molds with a hairdryer to warm them than heating a room 24 hrs a day to use them for 5 min. At .45 a kilowatt hour, a rate 4x the mainland for electricity, Nat no doubt started this conversation over sticker shock of the energy bill.
What do you guys think of a heated room for mould storage only. keep the room at 30 - 31C. whenever type X mould is needed, the moulds would get trollied to the moulding section which has a perfect room temperature of 20 C.
Thoughts?
Perhaps generally not a bad idea, if you can immediately remove your filled molds or what have you to a much cooler area as others have pointed out. Otherwise, because of the warm ambient temperature, you will have the problem with latent heat of crystallization, and nothing would crystallize properly, and all your molded pieces would bloom. Also, even if you are holding properly crystallized chocolate in the 90-93F range, it will still continue to crystallize and thicken to a solid form (though still a very soft one) unless you are regularly doing something to break crystal down, like fluctuating the temperature to the upside occasionally.
I visited the Recchiuti operation in San Francisco two years ago, and he had made a "hot" room from a walk-in freezer by removing the cooling component and adding a heater. Basically, he kept it at somewhere in the upper 90 degree range and had large, painter size buckets of warm, liquid chocolate stored there. So whenever he needed warm chocolate, to say add to the enrober or other machines, he wouldn't have to wait for it to melt. He could just go in and grab a bucket of whatever type chocolate he needed. However, I don't believe he had the chocolate crystallized or "in temper" in old speak.
I work generally in a 62-67F environment and never have trouble with molding, with the exception of thick bars which have to be blown with a fan to remove the heat quickly.
I saw a factory that they did this. If you do it at home, I'd also suggest in the hot room a dehumidifier or that air is gonna get pretty anti-chocolate.
I also think having a heated room would be a good idea (and probably unavoidable in Australia 
.
You would need a heat exchanger for the exhaust of the AC.
Hi Nat,
I'm not so sure about the room temperature of 28C/32C. (88/90F.?), i think that it might take to long to cool down (wrong crystal formation, blooming or something else?) or the shock from 90F. to a cool room 55F. would be to strong with a texture, shiny loss.
I keep my studio at constant 20/21 C. (68F) so the chocolate when hit the mold has first cooling "shock" of about 10C. then goes in a cooling/storage room at 16C, so in theory another cooling shock of 5C.
It works perfectly.
Here in Cape Town i have tried to work chocolate when room temp was about 90F (i didn't have AC) and it was a drama...
Then another question: how you are going to deal with delicate milk choc. and white chocolate?
Cheers,
Antonino
Desideri Chocolatiers
We were just randomly throwing out ideas today here in Hawaii while makingchocolate, and we wondered why don'tpeople heat the room their temperedchocolate is poured in to the appropriate 88-92 F temp so that one doesn't have to worry about the molds being the wrong temp and shocking thechocolate, andyou also wouldn't need to worry about the batch ofchocolateyou have tempered cooling and becoming too thick to pour, and ifyou had a depositor,you wouldn't have to worry as much about thechocolate solidifying in the pipes & hoses.
We're not suggesting tempering in such a room since it would be hard to cool thechocolate on the downslope to 80 F, butyou could move the temperedchocolate bowl to a 90 room once it was tempered where the molds were waiting to be filled.
This may also not be easy in temperate places wherechocolate is usually made, but it'd be pretty easy in tropical areas like here in Hawaii! You could even have the exhaust of the AC for the tempering room feed into the heated molding room to save energy on both ends.
Let me know if youknow a good reason this wouldn't work.
Thanks,
We are a small company and have had a few inquires to have new products made for them. In what ways do you charge? Hourly + ingredients? A set amount?
Thanks,
Rick
Hi Wendy and Laura
I've joined the Sculpting with Chocolate Group and hope to show people some of my work soon.
I've seen "Chocolate Decorations" by Chef Wybauw so will be getting this soon. Are there any other books that you would recommend and would you say it was worth it attending classes to learn decorating with chocolate as well?
I would like to learn as much as possible but being on limited time and funds (I work full time - not chocolate related work unfortunately) I'm curious to see how others got to where they are now in building their knowledge about chocolate, whether it's their career or as a hobby.
Hi Janice! It is completely avoidable... You should check out the Sculpting with Chocolate Group! There are many ways to make chocolate decorations without using chocolate plastique. I make many chocolate decorations myself and refuse to use plastique. You may want to check out a book by Jean-Pierre Wybauw called "Chocolate Decorations". Chef Wybauw has a lot of helpful tips. I'm happy to help out how I can as well.
~Wendy
Hello all, my name is Janice and Im new to The Chocolate Life
Im looking to start a business incorporating chocolate cake decorations and confectionery here in the UK and I wanted to ask a few questions to the members here:
Have any of you had any experience with sculpting chocolate? I have researched this and the only information I could find on the subject involved adding glucose/corn syrup in order to make chocolate plastique which Im not really keen on doing if I can help it as Ive heard that it then makes the chocolate taste like a certain branded candy which really isnt the taste or texture that Im going for!
Ive managed to use up small batches of tempered chocolate by hand (by which I mean golf ball sized pieces at the most) to shape into a basic figure before letting this set and then carving into it but I wondered if anyone knew how I could go about turning chocolate into a putty/plasticine-like texture in larger batches without having to add any extra sugar/syrups; or is this unavoidable? I have been using Callebaut White Chocolate if this helps.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you!
Hey folks, greetings from London!
I'm a cocktail bartender in London and I'm looking to serve some chocolates or candies alongside 4 or 5 of my cocktails. The idea is, that the candies will have very similar flavours to the cocktail, but they'll be in solid form. The idea is for them to also have an alcohol content, even if its only a weak alcohol content. I have one idea already, to create an alcoholic jelly and fill a dark chocolate truffle cup with it. But I need more ideas, anything from fudge to caramel to hard boiled sweets to chocolates, anything that will fit the specifications, i.e. an alcohol content! Hope you guysare able to help withsome creative ideas...
Hi there,
i don't know if my way of work is 100% to the books, my working temperatures are more or less those:
-room temperature between 20/22C (constant), Humidity not superior of 60%.
-depending on the chocolate quality (dark) i bring the temperature between 45 and 48C (50C is already dangerous zone),
milk choc. or white choc should not go over 43/45C (burning of the milk solids)
-i store my chocolate in a room at about 16/18C and a air humidity of 55/60%
I hope is a little help.
Hi all i know that this seems very basic but i would like to know what peoples views are about temperature, i have read a lot and i keep getting different temps.
1 when first starting in the tempering cycle is it safe to go about 45oC ?
2 what is the best room temp for making chocolate in ?
3 what is the best storage temp for a finished solid chocolate or filled chocolate ?
look forward to hearing from you
