Forum Activity for @Daniel Herskovic

Hi there,

I own both tools and if I were in your position, I would definitely choose the guitar cutter and leave the caramel cutter for another time. If you make a lot of ganache, nothing cuts like a guitar. I have a background as a savory chef and have very good knife skills. with that said, It is very difficult to cut hundreds or thousands of pieces of ganache evenly. Also, you can cut caramels with a guitar cutter. I know that there are a number of chocolatiers that say you can't, but it can be done. You must be very careful with the final temperature -- if the caramel is too firm, you will break the strings. If the caramel is too soft the caramels will stick back together after the strings go through. I find that cooking the temperature to 240-241 degrees Farenhite is a good temperature for my recipe. Recipes that a high amount of fat and a moderate amount of glucose hold their shape best when cutting in my experience.

Also, if you choose to buy a guitar I highly reccomend going with a Dedy guitar with a stainless steel base. The cheaper ones with the plastic base are not as good and they are very difficult to clean.

good luck with your decision!

Daneil

Ahh the power of marketing.

What i would classify as the 'best' chocolate, most people will frankly never see in their lifetimes.  I make it myself from beans that just aren't available to anyone.  Many times when friends or family taste it, they don't like it because it's so different than what the average joe believes to be good chocolate (ie what's avaialble on the grocery store shelves).  For me it's a wonderfully complex symphony of flavors and nuances and textures that have been carefully orchestrated.

"Best" is vague at best (bah-dum!) - what are the criteria for best?  Hershey's sells an *awful* lot of chocolate, making more money on it than anyone else.  Financially, they might consider themselves to be the best.  Mars has more technical knowledge than anyone on the planet - technically they're the best.  I'm guessing no one here would put either of them in the best category 8)

I suppose the old addage applies here - which wine is the best?  The one you like!

I'm afraid it's nearly impossible to trouble shoot with the info you've provided.  are you making chocolate from beans, or are you using cocoa powder?  both?  Do you have any sugar in your recipe?  The more details you can provide, the better responses you'll get (exact formulation, which country your beans are from, etc).

There are a *HUGE* array of flavors that are possible from cocoa beans - it could be that you've managed to get a batch that was acidified when fermented.  Does it smell like vinegar?  If so, keep conching it and use higher temperatuers with the lid off the unit.  If it's sour but doesn't taste/smell like vinegar, then you may be able to lower the sourness by adding a little bit of baking soda (1%) to try to neutralize the acids. 

Thank you for all your kind answers,

I ran into some trouble with my new patch of chocolate. First of all, after roasting my cocoa beans in my coffee roaster for 40 mins at 150C, my beans didn't smell like baking brownie and it tasted a bit sour. I tried to remove the cocoa butter from my chocolate , but my cocoa powder still taste so sour and very bitter. So I tried to mix them all together to make dark chocolate and conch it for 24 hours to remove the sourness but the sour taste still remain in my chocolate after dissolving it on my tongue.

Can someone pls tell me what have I did wrong? And how to remove the sour taste in my chocolate? Could it be the problem with my beans? My roasting? Or my technique?

Thank you,

I've given them several chances and every bar has been either "meh" or "nope". I just can't get excited about it. The packaging is really the biggest selling point. It looks nice enough that you don't need to wrap it if you are giving it as a gift. That has got to account for a large percentage of business. It looks good on a shelf in a boutique so you get wholesale accounts that normally wouldn't be stocking chocolate. I'm a bit of packaging design nerd and I think that many chocolate companies miss out on opportunity because they don't invest in quality design and packaging. That being said, in this case definitely the Emperor's New Clothes...or lipstick on a pig. 

Your point about the danger of Mast Brother's coming to represent "good" chocolate reminds me of the tyranny of Starbucks. We all know the coffee quality there is crap, but it's become the benchmark of "real" coffee for the masses. 

If you have to say you are the greatest about yourself, can it be true?

The "impressively bearded" Mast Bros were featured in a Vanity Fair article, See All The Mast Bros Chocolate Wrappers .

BTW, I know the Mast Bros are impressively bearded because the article's author, Joel Podolsky, goes out of his way to point it out, emphasizing that the bros are "the self-described poster boys for hipster to gourmet chocolate." The key there is self -described.

Rick Mast then "... tells it as it is: ' I can affirm that we make the best chocolate in the world . It's not the sort of chocolate bar you’re going to pound back one after another.'"

The second half of that statement is confounding to me, as whether or not you can pound something back is not an indicator of its quality. I couldn't pound back even one blood sausage. Personally, I don't think I could pound back a single Mast Bros bar either because I find, to borrow a paraphrase made famous by Forrest Gump, " I never know what I'm going to get." They might just maybe do a good job with one batch but the next batch of "the same" chocolate will be awful. When I go into the factory tasting room in BillyBurg it's all I can do to finish a nibble of each of the samples they put out. Calling out defects in beans as virtuous in chocolate. In other words, I don't think they've mastered the craft part of craft chocolate.

The wrappers are nice. But you don't eat the wrappers.

And that sums the whole thing up, for me. It's the Emperor's new clothes. Say it loud enough and long enough and spend enough money marketing it - and you can get a lot of people to believe. But, the fact remaing, saying it is so doesn't make it so .

The real danger, in my mind, with this kind of self-ascribed position, is that people will look at the underwhelming chocolate the Mast Bros produce and think it represents what good chocolate should be. And then when some other chocolate doesn't taste like the Mast Bros chocolate well, then it must not be "good" chocolate. And that is not a good thing for the growing from-the-bean craft chocolate movement.

I have been tasting chocolate professionally now since 1998 and I have had the great food fortune over this time to taste many of the world's great chocolates made by many of the world's great chocolater makers. In my list of the top five from-the-bean chocolate makers in the US (let alone the world), the Mast Bros don't even crack the top twenty.

Your thoughts?

Hello ChocolateLife Community, 

I discovered this project on Indiegogo. The goal is to create an inexpensive induction cooktop with temperature control so that it can also be used for sous vide cooking.

And maybe other applications as well - including some in the chocolate world.

I have requested ( on the product's forum ) a multi-step program that will allow you to increase, decrease and reheat the chocolate, and one of the engineers responded and said it was a great idea and said they'd like to hear more from the chocolate community. I obviously have an interest in seeing this product made - I want to keep the costs of my future chocolate business investment to a minimum as it's so expensive to get started in this industry. Beyond that, I have no relations whatsoever to the company.

We have until March 9th to tell the engineers what they should add to the product. They want to hear from the chocolate community.

Please add your feedback that will help bring us a product to market that we can use, especially for us beginners just starting out.

Luis:

From what I have heard - when you buy Pomati you don't get what you don't pay for. They are inexpensive -- and there are reasons. If you take a close look at the materials and quality of component selection you might be surprised at what you (don't) see.

That said ... in general, the rule of thumb you can use is that the maximum hourly production rate for a continuous tempering machine is roughly 3x the capacity of the working bowl. This assumes that you replace the chocolate you take out of the bowl in a way that does not interrupt the tempering cycle at any time. So, with a 5k working bowl you could expect to get up to 15kg/hr tempering capacity. This is a theoretical figure based mostly on the the rate of flow of chocolate. If you were to empty the bowl by one-third and then put unmelted chocolate pieces into the bowl it could take easily take 15-30 minutes for the machine to come back into temper.

Next, how long it takes to go from melted state to being in temper depends on the rate of flow as well as the difference between the melting point set in the bowl and the temper set point. So - it's going to take longer when the melt point is 50C and and the tempering point is 29C than when the melt point is 46C and the temper point is 32C. There are other things to take into consideration including the heating and cooling capacity of the respective systems. Looking at the wattage, the T5's heating and cooling capacity is not all that high, which leads me to believe it might take longer than with other company's models. But, rule of thumb from melted to tempered suggests that it should be 15-20 minutes.

Reviewing some of Anna's challenges with getting her T5 to work consistently there are two issues I can see without having to open the T5 up:

1) The length of the tempering pipe looks to be very short. This means that the chocolate is not in the pipe for very long. This can lead to inconsistent and incomplete crystal creation and mixing. This is, IMO, a critical design flaw when coupled with what appears to be a low-capacity cooling system.

2) The temperature probe is in the wrong place, so it's measuring the temperature of the chocolate in the wrong place. This is going to affect the feedback loop that governs the tempering cycle (and not in a good way, IMO).

All that said. The T5 is inexpensive. It might work for you, but it might not.

I'm looking at the Pomati T5, and was wondering if anyone knew the hourly production rate of the machine, and how long the machine takes to temper.

Thanks

Luis

I don't know where you are located (update your profile to include your country code!). Here in the US I just go online and look at restaurant supply web sites . (This is NOT an endorsement of this particular site - just an example search to show you what you are looking for.) You can get all the pieces you need at any one of them. But, price shop three or four because prices can vary widely.

When searching online search for " shop restaurant countertop food warmer " if you search for " buffet warmer " you will get a bunch of hits on things that won't do what you need.

Mark -

Also interested to know if you solved this. One of the challenges is to know where you are. MT is where, Malta? I would be hesitant to make specific recommendations available in the US as you may not be able to purchase them in Malta.

Jorge - I am guessing that you also want to know, but again, it's helpful to let people know that you are in Costa Rica.

Approach companies that install commercial central air conditioning units. They may have dehumidifier units sized for larger spaces and capacities.

As far as tips and tricks to save electricity. Where does sun hit the building if it does? Awnings can reduce solar gain. The second thing I can think of is insulation. Another is to keep hot air and humidity from coming into the space to begin with, so some sort of ante-room vesitbule where you can keep the temp much higher (30C) and start to reduce the humidity there will keep heat an humidity from enter the shop space in the first place. Then why 18C? 20-22C is fine for chocolate, and 55-60% humidity.

I want to introduce the "Association des Mordus de Chocolat", a chocolate lovers' club in Geneva, Switzerland. The association was founded in 2011 and by February 2015, we have got some 100 members. Our activities consist mainly in chocolate tasting with independent master chocolate makers in Switzerland and in neighbouring countries. In the past three years, we organised chocolate tasting trips in France, Belgium and Italy. Meetings are held nearly each month. We are also contributing to the setting up and running of the "Salon des Chocolatiers et du Chocolat" in Geneva: the next Salon will take place on October 9-11 with 30 exhibitors from Switzerland and elsewhere. You can check the history of past events and also this year's program on our newly created site: www.lesmordusdechocolat.com

Hola Mark,

Did you have any luck solving the problem. We are in the same situation.

Gracias,

Jorge

Hello All,

We are based in Costa Rica, in the rainforest. It is not the most chocolate friendly environment! We are about to start building our new chocolate kitchen, and already have an airconditioning unit, which does a good job of keeping the temperature steady but humidity is still a huge problem.

We wanted to know if anyone, in a similar climate has already dealt with this problem and had recommendation for the kind of specs we should be looking at / suggested models of dehumidifiers?

Any ideas are greatly appreciated! 

Jorge

Clay, thank you so much for the awesome response!  I'm especially stoked about the major potential for cost savings- I'm at an early stage in the business where everything is going super well but every dollar counts! Time to start hunting down a buffet warmer, hotel pans, lids and a temperature controler!

Thanks again!

 Chocolate Company for sale: Enrober & Cooling Tunnel apx. 19' 6"L, 18"W. 5" wide wire belt through enrober is 5" wide, & conveyor belt is 7". Two -2 hundred pound melters. Heated Dipping Pan.  5 bakery cooling racks w/ 4 boxed fans/20 wire shelves. 15 aluminum sheet pans 18"x 36". 1 aluminum bakery rack . 6' stainless steel work table. 2 rolling work tables. 2 credenzas w/drawers. 6 ft high glass showroom unit w/ glass shelves. 1 cherry cordial tumbler. 1 22 pound melter.3 glass lighted floor showcases 6'L x 2.5'D x 3.5T. . .together. 1 older glass display unit, not lighted 6'L x 2.5'D x 4'T. New digital scale. Stock boxes with dividers (apx. 150. 3 well stainless steel w/ tabs and long spray nozzle, Single stainless slop sink w/ taps and single hand sink (all slightly used) all. Buyer must have professionally removed. Sold alone equipment stated above is $26,000. Buyer pays all shipping, handling and removal fees. The whole store (items above) plus all contents; Store is ready for move in all newly painted to health codes, Gift shop is painted “Pink and Chocolate brown a must see”, with landlord approval (Rent is not included). This will include of flat, mini, multiplie molders, and 3 --d molds for EVERY SEASON AND HOLIDAY!. Also lots of additional I items and stock left. The Molds brand new cost $25,000, at the time they are well used, but will last a life time. Lastly we are in Clinton Twp. Mich. have been in business for 43 yr, the name and the signage and the customer base will be sold for $45,000(Waiver is sign for quality requirements of products to remain as is, or be upgraded.

Try an NSF-certified buffet warmer that does not require water. Use NSF-certified hotel pans to hold the chocolate. The buffet warmer should holds 8" deep hotel pans but only put 4" or 6" deep pans in it as you do NOT want the pans to touch the bottom as the temperature controllers tend to be not very sophisticated and if the bottom of the pan is touching the inside bottom of the warmer it can scorch the chocolate. Rather than using full-size pans, use third-size pans to make transferring chocolate easy. (You can also put in a new pan of chocolate when you take out a melted one during the day.) Make sure to cover the pans with lids overnight. You could also put an upside-down sheet pan over the top overnight to make it more efficient. 

Total cost, under $250 depending on the buffet warmer you get. Much less, if you already have the hotel pans and lids.

If you want to make sure that you don't scorch the chocolate  and get it to melt faster -- get a temperature controller and affix the sensor to the inside bottom of the warmer. Set the temp for ~140F (~60C). You can now set the temperature controller on the front of the buffet warmer to a much higher temperature knowing that the temperature controller will keep it from getting hot enough to scorch the chocolate - the external controller will cut the power if it gets too hot. When it cools down the power will come back on. After a little tweaking you can find the front panel setting that gives you the most efficient cycle.

Controllers that will do this are under $100.

--- edited to fix typos and grammar ---

No, the first baffle went badly uncalibrated one day (it registers like 6ºC less than it should), never worked again the same way as new and now it's unusable, if I tell the machine I want to work my chocolate at 25.5 (in order to be really at  31.5) it won't accept such low value. I did use a lot the extended temper mode with this one, so I used to have the machine running for 8 hours or so when it was working OK.

The second baffle (holey baffle) uncalibrated like 5 uses after it was new, but only registers 4ºC less than it should, this one also has never worked like new again, with this one I never had the machine on for more than 3-4 hours. I am still using this baffle with manual temper mode using my own values but I don't know if it is going to get worst someday. Also now I can't even use extended temper mode because once an hour the machine will try to reach 35ºC which will actually be 39º.

It may be some component inside or maybe I am just very unlucky and got two faulty baffles.

I've read in another forum of somebody replacing the delrin insert in the roller stone with custom machined teflon bushings.  I have this model melanger but have yet to fire it up. I'm going to be proactive and obtain a quote from a local machine shop. 

Hi, and thanks in advance for any wisdom you can share!

I'm currently using a Chocovision Revolation 3Z and I'm looking to get a chocolate melter to melt enough chocolate for an additional batch overnight so I can be more productive... Unfortunately the Chocovision and Mol d'Art melters aren't NSF certified, which I need it to be so I can use it in a commercial kitchen.  And the Savage Bros smallest unit is well out of my price range at over $4500.  Does anyone know of an NSF approved chocolate melter for under $1500 that can handle 30-45 lbs of chocolate?

Thanks so much!

I am working in a kitchen it is about 70F so I would think that would be optimal. Anyways I was trying to figure it out last night and came aross that if I put a blowdryer on it while it is still in the heating up stage then the temper came out perfect. In conjunction with what you are saying about the mixing it was helping it to mix a little more. I am not sure what the problem is but this is a fix for now. Have you experienced this problem with the larger ChocoVision machines such as the X3210 and Delta Series?

In an article ahead of Valentine's Day headlined  Valentine’s Day Chocolate Will Cost More This Year, as Cocoa Prices Rise (possibly paywalled), reporter Stephanie Storm writes:

"Criollo is also less susceptible to the diseases that strike the main type of cocoa, Forastero, which makes up about 85 percent of the world’s supply. The Trinitario variety, grown primarily in Latin America and Southeast Asia, ends up in high-end dark chocolate and is roughly 12 percent of the world’s cocoa."

Anybody who knows anything about cocoa knows that criollos are more susceptible to diseases than Forasteros are and that they produce significantly less than Forastero and Trinitario varieties.

And then Ms Storm quotes:

“The supply chain in West Africa is at the heart of the price problem,” Mr. Rollet [ed note: Mr Rollet is a co-founder of Alter Eco and serves as co-CEO] said. “Farmers are at the bottom of the chain, and they’re not getting any richer, thus they don’t see a future in cocoa,” he said. “So farmers there are planting rubber trees instead of cocoa trees.”

It's fair to say that this is a gross over-simplification of "the heart of the problem."

So - apart from spreading FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) and not revealing more about the true heart of the problem - what's the real value of an article like this? One written from what appears to be a position of a near-total lack of understanding of the cocoa and chocolate markets?

Perhaps Ms Storm might benefit from reading this post from the very early days of TheChocolateLife.

Your thoughts?

--- edited for typos and clarity ---

Victor -

I have no idea how you would test this, but I wonder if there is an electrical component inside the machine that is a little flaky. As you are having problems with more than one baffle this seems like it might be a problem. What if you open up the machine and blow off any dust inside and look for loose wires somewhere. Something is working okay when the machine is cool, but when it's been on a while and it warms up - that's when the problem shows up?

Without knowing more about what's going on I would say the issue is that the crystals are not evenly mixed in the chocolate. What you may be seeing is regions of different crystal formation.

This is a problem I had with a couple of smaller Chocovision machines (Rev 2s). It usually occurred at the begining if I didn't want a while after the machine beeped and said it was done for the crystals to spread (I usually helped it along by stirring) and at the end when there wasn't enough chcoolate in the bowl to maintain temper.

It didn't happen all the time - usually it was because I as working in the kitchen and it was either much warmer (late-afternoon sun) or much colder than normal.

HTH

The  article I mentioned appeared in Ars Technica today. It references a  paper published in the Journal of Advertising: Reexamining Health Messages in the Digital Age: A Fresh Look at Source Credibility Effects. Three authors out of Washington State.

Funny you say that - my wife's a professor who researches factors that impact credibility - i wonder if it's her study you read.

Although not obvious until you look really closely, the text links to the products she recommends are Amazon affiliate links. SO - FUD Babe is making money off all the direct sales of chocolate plus any other sales the buyer makes on Amazon until the affiliate tracking cookie expires or is reset.

There was a very interesting study that was released to day about the influence of commentors. Depending on the context, just saying you are a doctor (for example) even if you are not actually a doctor, can have more weight and influence on people's perception than an article actually written by a bona fide expert.

Fear is a fantasticaly effective marketing tool.  Opinion based advocates have used this approach effectively with their core group.  It's been pretty well established that most folks already have made their minds up about a topic, and leverage opion based advocacy to reinforce those pre-existing beliefs.  I've long ago stopped trying to fight that fight, precisely because the minds have already been made up, facts be damned.  As someone in the news once famously said - never let the facts get in the way of a good story!

I suspect she's making a comfortable living off this approach, which is why we continue to see it.  Sensationalism only calls more attention to her, which results in more money for her, which becomes a self fueling fly wheel that propogates it further.

God bless the internet, where everyone's anonymous, peer review is unnecessary, and you become an expert in everything simply by claiming so.

A colleague forwarded to me a link to an article - Are You Getting Conned by Cheap Chocolate ?

The problem I have with the article is that the author (anonymous Food Babe, or FUD Babe - Fear Uncertainty Doubt - as I will now refer to her) conflates candies and mass market confections with chocolate.

Is the Godiva ingredients list clean? Nope. Not by a long shot. And the author is right when she claims that the allure of of Godiva is good branding, marketing, and advertising — not that it is a quality product and it's never been advertised as being "natural" or "healthy."

But all of the products FUD Babe presents as being bad for you in this article are not rightly chocolate - they are all candies that contain varying amounts of chocolate. And, apart from Godiva, they are all mass market brands and products (Almond Joy, Ghirardelli Mint Patty, Russell Stover Pecan Delight, Butterfinger, plain M&Ms) and they are all candies. Not chocolate.

I also have a problem with the choice of "expert" opinion on vanillin. Rather than going to a widely-cited and referenced source, the link to explain what vanillin is goes to a hobbyist blogger . While the blogger might have a background in biochemistry, the 'nitty-gritty" is written from the perspective that vanillin is a villainous substance, and the article lacks background and nuance. Compare with the Wikipedia entry on vanillin .

My objection is that the article is sensationalist. It's headlined and written to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Not that the article doesn't make some good points about eating candy in moderation and looking closely at ingredient labels to understand what goes in to what you're eating.

Unfortunately, too many people believe that you have to be sensationalist and appeal to people's fears to attract attention and get your point across.

Brands are not out there trying to "trick" consumers into buying questionable ingredients. The list of ingredients is right there, out in the open. Consumers can choose to not read the ingredient labels and eat stuff that is not good for them. That does not make the products "despicable."

The comments are interesting. Some of the commenters show good knowledge of the issues surrounding chocolate candy and can distinguish between candy and chocolate though a lot of people are confused about what "fair" trade means.

What are your thoughts?

I took Callebaut classes in Montreal and found them to be well worth the time and money.

Some more photos.

I am getting issues with my molded bars looking mottled on the side open to the air. I am not sure why this is happening and it only seems to happen to about 8 of the 16 bars I can mold at one time. So not a great success rate.

I have been molding chocolate for some time now and have been doing it by hand until recently. I bought a ChocoVision Revolution 1 ( I think it is now called a Rev Mini) in July 2014. I have been using it pretty heavily and up until a month ago it has done great. No issues, it tempered fine and I never doubted it, but now I am loosing nearly half my batch each time I run it. What baffles me is that some may come out completely perfect and then others exhibit the streaking and mottledness seen in the photos. 

I have numbered the molds to see if it was in the beginning or end of the batch and they occur randomly, one mold may be fine, the next not fine. One bar out of my 3 bar mold may be perfect while the others look shotty. I am at a loss. I read somewhere that washing the baffle with the temperature probe on it in too hot of water may damage the reading of it, but I have checked the temper with 2 independent thermometers while it is tempering and everything seems to be spot on for the machine. 

Lastly, I can tell if the bars are going to be mottled or not after about 2 minutes of them being in the mold. So my workflow is I laddle the chocolate into the mold. Tap on table to release any bubbles, and use an offset metal spatula to scrap off the excess chocolate to make the bars flat. Then place them on the table while I finish my batch. When I pick them up to put them into a wine fridge (set at about 61-65F) I look at them and can instantly see which ones have the mottled look and can see where the others are going to getting the streaking...

Any thoughts? 

image.jpeg - 1.9MB

Hi David, I would like to see how you collect, store, transport, freeze the cacaohoney.

Also, do you allow visits to your farm?

Hi Francis, all boxes can be frozen but the plain thin cardboard type are more prone to absorbing moisture if not packaged well. You can consider a cardboard box wrapped in plastic. Or a plastic type box all together. Do you mean you want to sell them frozen to customers so they can also put in the freezer or frozen to businesses that will defrost and sell individually as needed? 

Hi Christian, I am actually looking into taking a course with them; I will follow up with you. But on a side note, you want to perfect your abilities? The only way to do this is to practice a lot. What exactly do you want to learn?

Sadly tried all the electricals with no strange results, baffles still uncalibrated. Seems like I will just have to pay for the new ones. 

Great thanks for the answer.

I received the following Tweet this morning:

Marcus: I am afraid the answer to that question is no, I don't.

One reason I don't keep lists of "good" pairings and make pairing recommendations is that I have learned, from doing pairing events over the past 20 years, that in settings as small as five people that at least one won't like the pairing. Some people just won't like the style of wine or the particular chocolate. Others will have come from a meal or brushed their teeth. If there is a cultural mix, I know that there are cultural differences in flavor preferences. Chances are one of them has had an argument that day with a family member or colleague or boss. Some are wearing heavy perfumes or colognes. All of these things affect the senses of smell and taste, and therefore affect the perception of the pairing. In other word, it doesn't really matter what I like.

When I do my pairing classes, I start from the presumption that at least one of the pairings (I tend to offer about five) is going to completely fail for at least one person in the room. Knowing that, I don't focus on matching a wine and a chocolate and saying that the two of them "go together." Rather, I guide participants through some basics of sensory evaluation, and specifically how combinations of aroma and flavor affect our perception of what is being smelled and tasted.

So, I know that if I make any pairing recommendations to Marcus there is a very good chance that he won't like one of them. And, if Marcus is turning around and sharing these recommendations with anyone then I am virtually guaranteed that someone will not only not like one of them - but they will hate one of them.

On a more practical level, it's also the case that Marcus may not be able to buy either the Port or the chocolate I recommend making any suggestions moot.

On a more generic level, the question is so vague that it is impossible to answer.

Let's start out with porto . By this I am assuming Port wines taken as a category. I know that Port is the oldest protected name in wine and it refers to a type of wine made in Portugal. I know that Ports can be made from a wide variety of grapes (though five varietals predominate), that there are several classes of Port wines, incluing Tawny Ports, Ruby Ports, Late Bottled Vintage, and many others from several distinct regions, and although people think of Ports as being sweet, dessert wines, they were often consumed by the British as aperitfis, not digestifs, and, in fact there are White Ports that are classified as dry and semi-dry (demi-sec). Even so, I headed on over to Wikipedia to refresh my memory .

So the first question we need to hone in on is, “Which Port are we trying to pair with?” And we haven't even thought about vintages yet.

The second question is even more vague. 70% chocolate? That doesn't tell me anything.

Origin? Blend? Made in France? The US? Italy? And why 70%? Seems kind of arbitrary. It rules out the Felchlin Cru Sauvage at 68% and the Elvesia at 74% and everything Bonnat makes and hundreds of other really quite wonderful options.

If I was forced to make recommenations I would say, "Go and purchase things that are easy for everyone to find and are not that expensive and taste everything against everything." Maybe focus on one brand - Taylor? - and get a selection. Then go to a local gourmet store and get a range of bars. Everyone knows Lindt Excellence, so get that - or something like it - at a minimum. And then taste each Port with each chocolate. What you will be surprised to find is how the aromas and flavors change. You will find that one Port tastes great with one chocolate and awful with another. The chocolate you love the most tastes best with the Port you like the least.

And that, my friends, is the fun of pairings. Not doing what you know "works" over and over again, but exploring new tastes, new combinations, on your own mission to taste where no-one has gone before.

I currently also use Calico and would love to not use them and make my own from scratch.  I have a savage Brother's Firemixer 14 and make toffee and caramel but can not locate a good recipe for fudge.  I pour the fudge into 8 oz containers and loaf pans.  Any recipes to try would be greatly appreciated.

It is referring to invert sugar. That is sucrose that has been split into its two components-glucose and fructose. It helps control crystallization.

I have one pound packages of dry fondant and on the label it also says 3% invert.

What is the 3% invert?

Thanks,

Joe C.