That depends on how much sugar you added.
Sugar won't dissolve in chocolate, and if you added as much sugar as cream, you're pretty much out of luck. My suggestion would be to melt it all down and use a hand mixer to dissolve the sugar. It will incorporate air into the mix as it cools and solidifies, but you can remelt it again and stir the air out and let it set.
In the future, dissolve the sugar in the cream first.
Cheers.
Brad
Sephra's Premium Dark Chocolate is made by Callebaut.
Cheers.
Brad
Ilana;
Youaddress a very interesting topic - one that I have debated with people for a long time. Unfortunately there are many food blogs (urbanspoon.com, chowhound.com etc) which allow people to post freely. Add to that the exposure via twitter and other social media vehicles, and we as business people really don't have any control over what gets posted about our businesses over the Internet - good, bad, or ugly.
Prior to getting into chocolate, I was an internet expert who even went so far as to takeone of mycompanies public on the NASD . I'm very aware of the damage that negative internet publicity for a business can create. Google "Choklat", and you will find a miriad of posts on us - some being terribly negative - calling us arrogant, over priced, etc, right through to "Oh my God! I've just found Heaven on Earth!".
As the Internet becomes more ubiquitous, people read the reviews, and many take them with a grain of salt. In fact, I've even had people come in specificially because we've been attacked in a blog post. (I chewed out a snotty customer, and she posted my reply. A few people read it and came in just to spite her! Haha!).
One thing I DON'T subscribe to, is contests, where a few high visibility, well respected community members judge a business's products, and then rate them. A lot of business is conducted on a trusted referral, and to have a trusted member of the community criticize a business for whatever reason, and have that criticism made public, that WILL have a damaging effect on the business. The bottom line for me, is I don't care about contests, or competitions where my chocolate is "judged" by a select few. God only knows what THEIR agenda's are!!! I care about what my customers think. After all, some hoity toity french chef with a name I've never heard, nor can pronounce, who's studied under another hoity toity chocolatier with a name I can't pronounce in a Belgian town I've never heard of, will never buy enough chocolate to keep my doors open. However the thousands of customers who already DO buy our chocolate will. My customers are more important than Mr. Hoity Toity.
Cheers.
Brad
Jim;
The person at Qzina I would start with is Tamara Fusick. Great service. Her contact information is below:
Tamara Fusick
Gourmet Account Manager
Calgary & Southern Alberta
Qzina Specialty Foods, Inc
CELEBRATING 30 YEARS OF INSPIRATION
FOR CHOCOLATE, DESSERT AND PASTRY PROFESSIONALS.
12547-129th st.
Edmonton, Alberta
Cell: 403-585-3488
Toll Free: 800-563-4315
Telephone: 780-447-4499
Fax: 780-447-2499
Mickey;
I don't want to sound like a jerk, so please don't take my comment here as such.
Starting ANY business needs planning and estimating up front. 80% of small businesses FAIL in the first 12 months because the owner is either "too busy" to take the time to plan, or is completely disillusioned as to the amount of work in starting a venture.
The spreadsheet I described in detail how to set up in my first post is an absolute necessity for the following reasons:
1. It creates a list of everything you are going to spend money on.
2. It keeps it organized
3. It provides you with a roadmap of goals.
4. It allows you to evaluate whether or not your business is going to be successful before you spend a single dime.
I've personally done a few proforma's only to find that the numbers didn't work. A little work up front saved me several hundred thousand dollars!
I may have the prior experience, and can do a lot of this in my head, but believe it or not, on Saturday evening I was out in the mountains camping, had my laptop by the fire, and was doing EXACTLY what I just described for you to do, in order to estimate the costs of opening my next location.
In my opinion, whether you're spending $1,000 or $100,000, you need to formulate a plan and some "what if's". The spreadsheet I described allows you to do just that.
The equipment list that Clay is asking you to provide is PART of that spreadsheet.
Cheers, and best of luck to you.
Brad
Ahhhh... Where to start??? Having done this before, started numerous entrepreneurial ventures (some successful and some not), the best place to start is with a spreadsheet and an "ideal" vision of what you would like your business to look like, including location. Columns = Months and Rows = costs and revenues.
Once you've got your spreadsheet laid out, brainstorm a list of ALL the equipment you can envision in your ideal business. Research the prices, and delivery times, and plot them in your 1st 6 months of your spreadsheet. Be sure to include such things as signage, business cards, your first packaging order, kitchen tools, sheet pans, molds, tables, fridges, ribbon, bows, labels, display cases/stands, tempering machines, a food processor, a mixer, bowls, and plastic containers for product, sheet pans, sheet pan lids, and the list goes on and on.
Then create a list of everything you will need to open your "store" - costs such as 1st month's rent, damage deposit, leashold improvements, signage, chairs, utility deposits (gas, electricity, etc).
These and your equipment costs go in your "up front costs". You can plot your expenses in the first 6 months as you incur them, for budgeting purposes, but you will still need to record them.
Plot your spreadsheet in such a way that your everyday business expenses actually "start" 6 months after you start spending money (expenses such as staff labour, rent, utilities, telephone, internet, permits, etc). You need to do this because, quite often chocolate equipment comes from different areas of the world, and can take as long as 3 months to arrive. Beans are often 2-3 months out (again depending on the size of the order). You also need to account for your time. Start "billing" your company the minute you start working on it, and this includes the 6 months prior to opening. After all, you can't live for free while you're getting started. You TOO need a salary/wage.
Plot out ALL of the expenses you can think of in your "IDEAL" business vision. Only then can you determine how much product you need to sell in order to create a sustainable business. Helpful "standard" numbers in the food industry are as follows: Labour cost: 35-40%, Food cost: 30% (Chocolate industry is a bit lower - say about 25%)
In my opinion this is the only way you are really going to know what it will cost to set up your business.
Once this is complete, you can then determine what you need to order, make, and sell as product. It will also give you an idea of how many staff you will need to do so.
If you are looking for investment capital from friends, family, or financial institutions, they will all want to see these numbers to make sure you're organized, and to make sure their money is going to the right place.
I did this for my first location, and have to do it for EVERY location I open. I'm going through this exact exercise this week for another location I'm opening. Every location has different costs to open, and this is why I have to do it.
Cheers.
I hope this helps.
Brad
Haha! Well said Omar.
I apologize if those reading this think I was being competitive. The reason I provided stats is because it's easy to hide behind anonymity and"talk the talk" on the Internet having not actually accomplished anything. At least Marco admitted that he doesn't actually "make" his chocolate. Thank you for your honesty Marco.
I too agree with not using any other fat than Cocoa Butter (well, except for the milk fat present in powdered milk for milk chocolate). I also agree with using an ingredient like lecithin if it's necessary.
As I've repeated, I believe that business is about making profit. If it isn't, then I challenge whomever questions this philosophy to stop being a hypocrite and stop charging money for their wares. Unless of course I'm missing something, and everyone out there in chocolate land is independently wealthy.
Cheers Omar. Thanks for the tip on Amonium Phosphatide.
Brad
One point we agree on is that education is key, and that is something we have incorporated into our business model in the form of evening chocolate tastings and wine pairings. I host an average of 10 per month - both private and public - and they are usually sold out a month in advance. Tonight it was for 12 people in my shop, and on Thursday it will be a presentation to 250 people at an awards dinner.
You've found your niche selling chocolate that has won European awards, and that's great. Others have found their niche selling what they claim to be "healthy raw chocolate". Good for them too.
What I know is that tonight (as is what happens during most of my seminars), most people who walk through our doors in love with Lindt 70% actually spit it out in disgust after tasting ours. Here's a link to a blog post:
http://laurenzietsman.wordpress.com/2010/12/28/a-visit-to-choklat/
Here's another quote from a customer review on www.UrbanSpoon.com :
" When I walked through the doors of Choklat, I thought Lindt Excellence 70% was a good bar. An hour later I was actually spitting it out into a napkin! It was terrible! I've NEVER spit out chocolate before!"
As you can see, education is a focus of ours. However, for us it still doesn't really matter how many awards a chocolate has won in another country and the +/-10 people who have "passed judgement" on it to grant those awards. Cumulatively, they'll never buy enough chocolate to float my business. What reallymatters to me as the business owneris the 38,000 customers who have purchased our products in the past 3 years. Those 38,000 customers pay the bills and spread the word!
My advice to any business owner thinking of entering their chocolate / confections into a competition: "Be careful. Your results can backfire on you. What if you lose? What if your products get poor reviews? What kind of damage can the words of amere handful of peopledo to your business? Is that kind of damaging publicity really worth the risk?"
Marco, you are a reseller of other people's creations, so it's helpful for you to use awards such as what you've mentioned as part of your sales pitch. THere are a lot of great confections, and chocolate out there made by people who don't enter competitions. In fact there's a lot of chocolate out there BETTER than those who have won the competitions you mentioned. A competition is only as credible as the entries, and if not all the worthy competitors enter, it's not that credible. However the average consumer doesn't know that, so it's easy to play on it as a marketing strategy.
In the end, it's nice that the market is big enough for everybody. However, I'd bet my fancy sportscar that if you and I were the only players on the block I'd win. The secret is STILL to find out what people want, and then give it to them.
Cheers and Best Wishes.
Brad
Marco;
I understand where you're coming from, but when it comes to recipes and the reasons for ingredients, who says the Europeans have it right? As a businessman selling my wares in Canada, I don't particularly care what other countries do with their chocolate. It's not personal. It's simply thatI'm not selling there. Here in Canada (and in the UK and Switzerland), people like a very creamy,not overly sweetmilk chocolate. The way to do that is obvious - lots of cream, whether it be powdered cream, or powdered skim milk with AMF. In our particular case, I get a fabulous, spray-dried product from a supplier here, and don't have to worry about extra care in the storage, as I would have with AMF. It's a dried product that lasts longer and requires no refrigeration. Our customers are so happy with the recipe I have tried, tested, and put into production, that they often send bars of our milk chocolate to their family in Europe, and return commenting that the recipientslike it better than the chocolate they can get in Europe and have requested more.
Case in point with regard to Italy: Is milk by itself "pure chocolate"? Is sugar by itself "pure chocolate"? What about vanilla? Nope. Nope, and Nope. Yet these ingredients have MUCH higher percentage counts in a "pure chocolate" recipe than lecithin at less than half a percent. Why then can't lecithin be included? It's no more"pure chocolate" than any of the ingredients you listed above. In fact, it's the only NECESSARY ingredientif one creates a recipe with low fluid fat properties (i.e. 70% cocoa beans, 10% cocoa powder, 20% sugar). Having said that, who's to say that Italy has it right either?
When it comes to dark chocolate, we use no lecithin. The CCB content is high enough to give good fluidity, and then we control the viscosity by temperature and crystalization.
Companies like Lindt however (lindt Excellence 70%) need to use lecithin because to increase intensity, they add cocoa powder to the bar on top of the cocoa content. Without lecithin it would be almost impossible to mold. (Note that I'm not saying Lindt 70% is any good. It just so happens to be widely recognized as a "premium" dark chocolate here in Canada.)
They're European. Did they get it right? I'm not sure. I DO know they sell a heck of a lot more every year than my company does! Yes, they're mass producers. However, business is business. Whether you're selling 10 bars, 100 bars, or 1 million bars, you're sellingyour chocolateto make money, and at that moment in time it's no longer about you, or your views. It's about the customer who's willing to PAY to eat your wares, and if they DO pay, then to them you've got it right.
I hope that makes sense, and doesn't come across confrontational. Having been in business for a long time, and been on many chocolate forums, I see all too often,small businesseswho get caught up in politics, terminology, or what "the other guy" is doing, or what "the industry standard" is.
The recipe in the end is very simple: "Find out what your customers want, and give it to them."
Cheers.
Brad
Thanks Kerry, but PGPR and ammonium phosphatide are different. One uses castor beans (PGPR)and the otheris derived fromrape seed oil. Same concept from each though.
I could probably call our inspector at the CFIA, but she's still on holidays for the next week or so.
Cheers
Brad.
Some milk chocolate recipes require a lubricant like lecithin as well - especially if the recipe uses high fat powdered milk instead of skim milk powderand anhydrous milk fat (clarified butter). In our case, we use a high fat milk powder (28.5%), so unlike a milk chocolate that uses the liquid AMF, that 28.5% in our case is solid, and makes the chocolate thick like sludge. The lecithin acts like a lubricant and makes the chocolate MUCH more fluid and easy to work with. Without it, we could not mold our milk chocolate.
Sure we could change the recipe, but people love our milk chocolate. It's very similar to a Swiss milk chocolate - very creamy.
As an aside, the term "emuslifier" is technically incorrect, although it's a common term that everyone uses. Technically lecithin, ammonium phosphitades, or PGP act as a lubricant between the solid particles and the liquid fats. As I've preached before, chocolate is a suspension of solid particles in a fat, and not an emulsion of two or more compounds with similar liquid properties. It's just that emulsifier sounds better than "lubricant" on packaging.
Cheers.
Brad
Interesting article.
Does anyone know if ammonium phosphatide is approved for use in Canada?
Harry;
You're partially correct. There IS a lot of poorly constructed equipment thatartisans are using to make chocolate. Most of it is originally designed to mash soft beans and other pastes for East Indian food. The belts fail, and the granite rollers are antiquated. (such as Santha and other similar models)
Roasting: "too many on the market" Really? Where can I get a roaster that will do about 40lbs of beans per batch for a reasonable price? Nowhere that I could find when I was researching my business. Oh.... wait! Cooking ANYTHING is about heat and air flow! Hey! A commercial convection oven for $3500 NEW does about 40lbs of beans per hour, 320lbs per 8 hours, 960lbs per 24 hours, is STACKABLE, so you can easily double this amount androast as much as 1920lbs of beans per 24 hour period. According to my calculation, for less than $9,000 one can implement a roasting solution which will allow a company to produce the following amount of 70% chocolate per day based on a 55% bean content recipe:
1920 * 0.8 /0.55 = 2792.7 lbs per day X $40 per lb = $111,708 per day in gross sales.
I actually charge MORE than $40 per lb for my chocolate - more like $55-60, and have been told by industry professionals with a lot more credentials than you Harry, that I should be charging more, as it's some of the finest chocolate they have ever tasted.
I've repeated this on many other posts: "Why buy a redundant, single use piece of equipment such as a modified coffee bean roaster (which is what a cocoa bean drum roaster is anyway and that's coming right from the mouths of the people at Probat Burns!) when you can buy a convection oven, and perform many tasksas well as roast beans.
Winnowing: A definite MUST HAVE to make chocolate, and currently the largest hole in the artisan marketplace. I own both a home made winnower, AND a large Jabez-Burns Cracker/Fanner, purchased from an auction last fall. My home made winnower cost me $1,000 in parts and an afternoon of work and easily (and effectively) winnows about 130lbs of nibs per hour. My Jabez Burns is spec'd to crack and fan (winnow) about 200lbs of beans per hour and cost much more.
Refining: Why spend $75,000 on a fancy rollrefiner (such as Netsch) whenit won't accept nibs? Yes, that's right.TheNetschrefiner needs to have the nibs pre milled into a paste. At least that's what the techs said when I was inquiring into the chocoeasy machine. Heck, even a MacIntyre conche/refinerat $30,000 will take ALL the ingredients (nibs, sugar,vanilla beans)and refine and conche it just fine without the need for a mill of any type.
If you look around, you can even find MacIntyre knock-off's for much cheaper (like, say... $8,000 per machine), which will work just fine 24/7 for a couple of years before needing maintenance.
Now you know whychocoeasy doesn't deal with winnowers or roasters : their machines are designed to accept liquor/paste, and NOT nibs.
So... Now the secret's out. A person can buy a convection "roaster" for $4500, build a winnower for $1,000, purchase a couple of MacIntyre knock-off's for $16,000 and be making about 150lbs of world class chocolate per day.
Total: $21,500.00
None of this is my opinion. All of this is my reality.
Based on my personal experience with equipment in the chocolate industry, the quotes I've received from them (their company is to the best of my knowledge a spin-off from "Bottom Line Processing Technologies" in Florida), and the equipment that I currently use to make several hundred pounds of chocolate per week, their prices are outrageous for the capacities their creations can produce.
...but that's just my opinion.
Cheers.
Brad
When I first started making chocolate in my home in 2005, I used a small version of the Santha, and pretty much destroyed it. The end result was a complete rebuild with a more powerful motor, fibreglass belts, and numerous changes to the bin where the nibs are ground.
I know there are artisan chocolatiers out there who are using the machines you refer to, but given their design and original intended design (not to grind cocoa beans, but rather grind soft beans into pastes for East Indian food), they will all inevitably fail. In the end, the question is: How handy are you? I guarantee you will be replacing belts, and having to add some type of heating mechanism to the machine to keep the chocolate warm enough to stay liquid.
I don't want to discourage you from starting your own venture. It's fun, and exciting, and rewarding, and scary all at the same time. And... Like I said, there are micro chocolatiers out there who are using modified versions of this machine. I'm just trying to tell you from experience what to expect from it going in!
Cheers and best wishes.
Brad
If you are going to be working with chocolate on an ongoing basis (ie all day), then you need a piece of equipment that will continually agitate the chocolate when it's in temper. The size of the machine will depend on how much chocolate you need to temper throughout the day. We currently usetwo different types of machines in our shop - Pavoni Mini-Temper machines for hand dipping (holds and agitates about 10lbs at a time), and Savage 50lb tempering kettles. Both are semi-automatic, meaning they cycle through the temperatures for your chocolate, and can be programmed to make tempering almost dummy proof. The Pavoni's are fabulous for that and completely automatic, whereas the Savage machines require manual intervention at certain points, but trigger a buzzer when each point is reached.Each Savage machine (we have 2) will easily temper 100lbs of chocolate every 8 hours.
In my opinion, if you are working with chocolate all day, you need machines that will step through the tempering cycle for you, and continually agitate the chocolate. This will allow you to do other things, instead of standing there, stirring, and babysitting your chocolate.
Cheers.
Brad
I've purchased a lot from this lady:
Cheers.
Brad
I'm surprised nobody has asked this question: Why do you want to? Can you provide some background to the reason why you would need this information?
Without seeing photos, and having worked with chocolate daily now for several years, if your chocolate had to spend hours in the freezer, I would hazard a guess that it in fact wasn't in temper - at least not enough of it to allow proper crystalization and the necessary shrinkage to come out of the molds. Set your chocolates out on the counter at room temperature. I'm guessing they'll bloom, or get very soft, or when you break the bars, the insides will be all grainy, like a bunch of little octagons glue'd together.
You need to understand how chocolate behaves when you are working with it. There is essentially ONE type of crystal which is ideal for confections. That crystal forms best at 31 degrees C. All of the undesireable crystals form in approximately 3 degree increments below that temperature. IF you warm your molds, and pour your chocolate into them (assuming it's in temper), the chocolate stops moving and the warm molds create a perfect environment to hold the heat in the wrong temperature ranges, thereby causing the wrong types of crystals to form. Essentially you want your molds cool - about 18 degrees C. Pour your chocolate into them quickly, and then pop them into the fridge quickly. You want the chocolate to cool quickly (but not too quick) so that the wrong types of crystals don't have time to form and seed themselves (creating bloom).
I would also NOT recommend that you put your chocolate in the freezer to set it. This rapid cooling effect can cause your chocolate to crack, and also allow condensation to form on the surface, creating sugar bloom just before it freezes.
Hope that helps.
Brad
I was under the impression that Tomric offered nothing but thermoformed molds, and not polycarbonate. I could be wrong.
Regardless, I suspect the challenge is that your chocolate wasn't properly tempered.
Did you test for temper before molding? I highly recommend this for people just getting started in working with chocolate.
Can you post a picture of the mold?
ChefRubber.com has some great stuff.
Pavoni has some AMAZING stuff www.pavonitalia.com
www.chocolat-chocolat.com also has some great stuff too.
I've purchased from all of them and had great service.
With regard to hand dipping tools, I would recommend have your own made. Every tool I've purchased has failed. Simply put, they are crap.They are tack-welded together and the welds inevitably fail. Plus they are all flat, and you have to bend them to get them to work properly. As soon as you start bending mild steel to make it do what you want you start to weaken it. They are a bad design - pure and simple.
Hope that helps.
Brad
Great article! Congrats on the press!
Excellent and very informative post Damion.
Thank you!
Brad
just curious....
What does chunky/grainy/gritty have to do with emulsification?
Further to the referenceof the chocolate being"chunky/grainy/gritty", the texture means that the cocoa hasn't been refined long enough to where the particles are small enough that our palletes can't detect the texture anymore. In my opinioin, one could get a better effect and the same health benefitsfrom a silky, well refined chocolate, with good quality nibs added to the bars.
With regard to the agave syrup, that would certainly be an interesting ingredient to try. I'm interested, but don't even know if we can get that up here in Canada.
Unless you have a refiner, you can't add sugar to it without it being grainy. Sugar simply won't dissolve in chocolate.
There are many things you can do with this chocolate, two of them being:
1. You can use this chocolate for baking.
2. You can blend this chocolate with other chocolate to create different intensities. It would be helpful to you if you knew the actual fat % vs cocoa solids %. However, you could definitely take a very sweet milk chocolate and add this to it to intensify it and reduce the sweetness.
Hope this helps.
Brad.
I have no reason to believe it's the best in the world either, I certainly make no claims to such extent, and I'm the one making the chocolate! Taste is subjective, and no single individual should have the right to pass judgement on anyone's creations but their own.
All I can do is proudly pass on what one of the most respected chocolatiers in the world has told me (and put in writing). His tastes are subjective too. However, as Barry Callebaut's Technical Director,at the very least he's one person who is certainly qualified to provide an opinion, and lend credibility to what I do - credibility which has been questioned many times on this forum.
Brad.
Clay;
Thanks for the reply. I'm not interested in debating anything with you either.
You're right about my comment referring to the "dufus". Sorry about that. I called him a dufus, because he sent me a scathing email when I politely said I wouldn't.
My posts here are strictly charitable and based upon my experience in the industry and in business in general. I gain nothing from my contributions, other than the satisfaction of giving back to the business/chocolate community and helping others out there who are having the same challenges with chocolate that I did when I first started.
Given that fact, and the fact that people HAVE benefitted from my posts, and you as the owner of this site have benefitted from my membership and posts (I help to enrich the content of YOUR site on my dime), why would you even fathom the idea that I would pay anything - whether it be money OR chocolate to enrich your business without getting anything tangible in return???
Wow....
You certainly do have a set of balls Clay! I'll give you that.
Brad
Interesting reply Clay.
You spend a lot of time wondering why I don't ship or deliver. The answer is VERY simple. I DON'T NEED TO. There's a million people in this city, another 600,000 in the immediate surrounding area.The business is growing exponentially with the customer base I have direct access to. It makes absolutely NO business sense whatsoever, to incur the cost of researching packaging options, researching shipping options, applying for the shipping accounts, purchasing packaging and labeling, and then setting up infrastructure in our shop to handle shipping, just to send a chocolate bar to the UK (and YES, some dufus wanted me to ship ONE chocolate bar to him in the UK! WTF????).
Why Derrick and Mark chose to fly to Calgary, and chose to spend an evening with me only they can answer. The fact is they DID. You seem to be buddy buddy with everyone in the chocolate industry. Why don't you call them up and ask them yourself, instead of hypothesizing their motives publicly via the rational that they flew here to buy a chocolate bar.
Your reply is a great example of why small businesses STAY small. They spread themselves too thin trying to cashflow unneccessary growth. Only when a business has completely tapped their existing market, or if they have excess resources to explore others, should they burden themselves with consumers outside of their immediate market reach.
As an FYI, in the next couple of days I WILL be offering delivery service, but only to the Calgary area. It's a convenience our existing customers have been asking for, and I've developed a relationship with a local courier company that will allow our software to interact with theirs, without any human intervention.
Hope this answers your question.
Cheers.
Brad
Hi Everyone.
For the past couple of years I have beenmaking various contributions to this forum. Some have had me take some heat. Some of the responses to my posts have been downright insulting to me. Others have asked some very pointed questions - questions such as "Who are you to be saying what you do?"
It's a valid question, seeing as I don't present people outside of Calgary with the opportunityto buy my chocolate and confections, and this is a global forum.
Having said that, I feel it's appropriate to, this once, blow my own horn, and provide some legitimacy to what it is that I do here in Calgary.
Here'sa true story:
On January 20th, I happened to be in my shop doing some last minute running around before going to the mountains for the weekend.
A couple of relatively unassuming gentlemen entered the shop and began talking to Charmaine, my head chocolatierat length. As I walked past, Charmaine handed me one of their cards. To my suprise, they were from Chocolate Giant Barry Callebaut. Not only that, but they were none other than Derrick Tu Tan Pho, Barry Callebaut's Technical Director, and Mark Pennington, Western Canada's Sales Manager!
They said they'd heard great things about my little shop, and had flown to Calgary tosee what I was I doing!
Holy Cow!
We talked at length, and I invited them to an event I was hosting this evening. They graciously accepted and spent the evening with 10 patrons, listening to me blabber on about chocolate, and what we do in our shop, and what makes our chocolate so much better than mainstream mass produced chocolate.
By the end of the evening, they were blown away with Choklat. Derrick paid me one of the biggest compliments I've had yet in my career as a chocolatier. He said that my chocolate is every bit as good as the finest chocolate in the world - chocolate made by artists like Cluizel, Amedei, and Valhrona!
He also provided some great tips with regard to our confections, and how to increase shelf life without compromising quality.
In a follow up email, Mark was quoted as typing:
"Sensational chocolate class tonight. I also really enjoyed your products.
In fact a Remarkable effort and some of the best bean to bars chocolate I've seen."
So, for those of you out there on the "chocolate net", who question who I am, or what I do, or the quality of that which I make,the fact that one of the most respected chocolatiers in the world makes a trip to little 'ol Calgary to visit ME, and then pays such high praise to my creations, I hope this nullifies any doubts you may have with regard to my skill with cocoa beans.
Cheers everyone, and Happy Chocolate Making.
I was going to suggest a cardboard cone, which can be found at many different craft places, but that looks real cool Stu.
If you choose to use the cone method, you can wrap your truffles in colorful foil (I'm a redneck and like shiny things), and then use "sticky dots" to fix them to the cone.
Another idea is to check out the website at www.sunflowersugarartusa.com They have edible glitter that we use in our shop for "blinged out" lollipops. You could roll your truffles in glitter too for your tree.
...but I DO like the one in the photo that was just posted. Probably the nicest I've seen yet.
Cheers,
Brad
Actually, in reference to lecithin being an emuslifier in chocolate, you are incorrect, and if Wikipedia says so, it's incorrect too.
Chocolate is essentially tiny pieces of cocoa solids (beans or powder), sugar, and vanilla bean all suspended in a fat (cocoa butter). The fat behaves in a very specific way - crystalizing in various forms at various temperatures. When it crystalizes, it suspends the solid particles in amongst the crystals.
An emulsifier is essentially a compound which "glues" two opposing compounds with similar properties, such as is the case with Mayonnaise, where oil and water are emulsified to form that condiment.
Cocoa solids, and cocoa butter do not have similar properties. One is always solid, and the other one is a crystalized liquid.
In the manufacturing of chocolate, lecithin is used as a lubricant, to make the chocolate more fluid. This is the case in most milk chocolates, where a significant portion of the fluid fat (cocoa butter) is reduced due to the increase of solid suspended fat in the powdered cream used. In some cases, manufacturers will use powdered skim milk and anhydrous milk fat instead of powdered cream. Either way, the reduction in crystalizing fat warrants lecithin.
In the case of high percentage dark chocolate, lecithin is also used to increase fluidity. Cocoa butter is considered the most expensive ingredient in processing chocolate, so any time a large manufacturer can mitigate it's use, they will. Lecithin allows them to use less cocoa butter in high percentage chocolate, so that the chocolate will flow through their molding machines.
In the case of our 80% bars, I would LOVE to use 80% cocoa beans, but it's so thick it's like tar. When coming up with the recipe I faced a crossroad. Do I use lecithin, or do I add cocoa butter. I chose the latter, reduced my cocoa bean content by 10% (to 70%) and increased my cocoa butter content by 10% - just enough so that we could mold it.
Either way, lecithin, when used in chocolate increases it's fluidity by gluing itself to all of the minute solid particles, and creating a slippery surface that the fat can't grab on to.
It's just unfortunate that our regulatory bodies allow it to be referred to as an emuslifier rather than a lubricant, on packaging. I guess "lubricant" doesn't sound as good.
Cheers.
Brad
crme frache is a hoity toity term for high fat sour cream, so unless you want sour cream truffles, I wouldn't use it. Whipping cream is heavy cream (BEFORE being turned into crme frache). There's also 18% MF cream, and (sometimes depending on where you are) a cream called "half and half".
My recommendation is to use whipping cream before it goes sour.
Cheers.
Peter Greweling's book is EXCELLENT!
I own a copy, have read it several times now, and every time I learn something new and get different ideas. Money well spent.
Heavy cream IS whipping cream. Usually anything with more than 30% Milk Fat is considered heavy cream, and your whipping cream is probably around 35%
There are some very fundamental chocolate confection making concepts you appear to be missing. I would recommend that you purchase a couple of in depth chocolate cook books which cover some of the "theoretical" components of working with Chocolate.
As an FYI, chocolate is arguably the most difficult confection to work with today, and can be the cause of significant frustration for you if you don't understand how it behaves as an ingredient in your confections. Once you understand it's behaviour, the outcome of your confection creations become almost predictable and you no longer really need recipes. You're able to create your own!
Cheers. Hope this helps.
Brad
Several months ago I told Clay I wasn't going to contribute to this forum anymore, but many people have contacted me privately and asked me to continue, so here I am.
My advice is as follows:
1. Don't spend a single dime on print, radio, or television media. They're dead ducks. You want to create buzz? Take the $3k you would have spent on a single foodie magazine ad, spend it on chocolate, and hold a big party! CREATE THE BUZZ!! Use Twitter and other social media platforms to carry the buzz and get people down there!
Word of mouth is the most powerful form of advertising. Period. End of story. People WILL visit you based on a friend telling them about you. $3k wholesale worth of product at the very least is $9k worth of retail product, and good for a party of at least 1,000 people. That's a heck of a lot more exposure and BUZZ than you'll get from a foodie magazine!
2. Unless you have buffet written on your sign outside, or "dot org" at the end of your website domain don't sample your products. Go into a fine wine store and ask them to start cracking $50 bottles for you to "try", and see how far you get. Does your grocery store let you start tearing chocolate bars open until you find one you like? NO! Be smarter than the idiots down the street giving product away. You're in business to make money. Your customer knows what they like. Give them the option to purchase a small amount and try what they think they like.
You may disagree with what I just wrote. That's fine. If you insist on sampling your products, then have your competitor's products handy to compare to. After all, your customer won't know whether it's better or worse unless they can taste it side by side. To them, it's chocolate, and it's all good.
3. Focus on educating the consumer. Host classes and other fun events for couples. I've been hosting events on Monday evenings for 2 years now. They are sold out 2 months in advance, create tremendous word of mouth, and every evening, people PAY to become my cusotmers!
4. Give back to the community. Sponsor events for women's and childrens shelters, where 100% of the admission proceeds go back to the shelter. Philanthropists with deep pockets LOVE frequenting businesses they know are out there helping the community. They will send a lot of business your way.
5. Social Media is HUGE. On January 14th we ran an ad through www.LivingSocial.com and sold 1145 boxes of 10 truffles in 24 hours. January is supposed to be one of the slowest, if not THE slowest month of the year in the chocolate industry. It's now one of our busiest.
6. Look at what your peers are doing, and DO THE EXACT OPPOSITE. The bottom line for any marketing campaign is to differentiate yourself from your competition.
7. Every week we get requests from charitable organizations for product for "silent auctions" and giveaways to attendees, with the promise for exposure at their event. DON'T DO IT!!! It's a total waste of money. People are at the event to socialize, and most won't remember where the chocolate came from or the wine, or whatever else is comp'd. Remember: CREATE BUZZ! As a silent auction item, offer the gift of "Chocolatier for a Day", where the winning bidder gets to come into your shop and help out for the day. The organization gets some money from the auction, you get an extra set of hands for the day (yes they will do REAL work), and the purchaser gets an experience of a lifetime. Everybody wins and you have created the buzz. Imagine how many people they are going to tell about their experience!
How much do any of these ideas cost you up front? Zilch, Zippo, Nada, Nothing.
Hope you can put them to work for you in any city but the one my shop is in! HaHa!
Cheers.
Brad
Louise;
There is a big difference between corn flour and corn starch. I don't use corn flour.
Brad.
