Fine Chocolates 3 by Wybauw is a great book on how to extend the shelf life of chocolate confections. As per Daniela's post, I have never used lecithin for this.

http://www.amazon.com/Fine-Chocolates-Great-Experience-Extending/dp/9020990209/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1351052172&sr=1-1&keywords=fine+chocolates+3

You should use glucose or alcohol for extending shelf life in ganache. Lecithin is used in the chocolate formula as an emulsifier and it's added during the conching process

Hello!

I would like to introduce ourselves as we are new members here..

We are a new, artisan chocolate company in Victoria BC created by my mother and I. We are making Organic vegan truffles and other products like clusters and chocolate coated honeycomb. We use Cocao Barry Organic Fair Trade 71.7% dark for all of our products. To make our truffles vegan/dairy free, we use organic coconut cream instead of heavy cream. At this moment we are only doing farmers markets and events, and have no storefront. We are working out of my mothers home.

In our experience at markets, besides appealing to people who are vegan or lactose intolerant, we have also found that there have been quite a few people who are soy intolerant as well who are very happy to be able to enjoy our products. We want to stay committed to creating products that are dairy, soy and gluten free.

We have never used any lecithin before, but with Christmas fairs coming up, we are looking to extend the shelf life of our truffles a bit more in case they sit a while before being gifted. We found some Organic sunflower lecithin from a nearby supplier and purchased some. It is in liquid form, almost being the consistency as honey. As we have never used any sort of lecithin before, and from the limited info I found on sunflower lecithin which says you need a bit more than soy, I am hoping someone might have some info on how to use it properly? We tried it in a small batch, but it caused the ganache to break. Our standard recipe is 16 oz chocolate to 250ml coconut cream.

Any info on how much to use, and when and how to add it, or if anyone has used it before and can let me know any other tips, that would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks

updated by @pure-lovin-chocolate: 04/17/15 22:33:25