Forum Activity for @Kerry

Excellent - glad it worked for you.

I've been using my EZtemper to help me make some favours for the wedding of a friend's son.

http://forums.egullet.org/topic/151520-manitoulin-if-i-can-make-it-there…/?p=2024956

Thrilled to hear it is working so well for you Danielle!

Results of experiments so far - http://forums.egullet.org/topic/151287-eztemper-the-help-you-need-to-achieve-perfectly-tempered-chocolate-fast/?p=2024120

You could make a nice thin transfer sheet under chablon piece and place it over the marks.

The EZtemper ships worldwide and works with all voltages. It's the only one of it's kind in the world in this price range!

I've found with things like honeycomb which are great insulators - that I get bloom if I don't get them in the fridge for a few minutes while the chocolate is crystallizing furiously. Milk chocolate seems to be the worst for this.

It is the 'big' flat surface. 8 by 8 cm flat is sufficient to cause a problem with a thermoformed mold which contracts differently than metal or polycarbonate.

You can make the whole surface look the same (however it will be matte not shiny) by using a badger hair brush (or my personal less expensive option - a Japanese varnish brush from Lee Valley). I suppose you could try polishing with ice water as well.

Water ganache using the EZtemper silk - http://forums.egullet.org/topic/151287-eztemper-the-help-you-need-to-achieve-perfectly-tempered-chocolate-fast/?p=2022800

Here's Rodney Alleguede (www.rodneyalleguede.com) at the FCIA event in NYC manning the 'cocktail table booth' for the introduction of the EZtemper. Lots of interest generated - and one lucky individual - Elaine Boxer of @voilaChocolat took one home!

If you are going to be at the FCIA this weekend - drop by the booth (cocktail table), say hey to Rodney and Jess - get them to talk to you about the EZtemper and put your business card in the draw for a free unit.  

https://www.facebook.com/FineChocolateIndustryAssociation?fref=nf

Further experiments with chocolate as seed in place of cocoa butter - using bean to bar chocolate.  http://forums.egullet.org/topic/151287-eztemper-the-help-you-need-to-achieve-perfectly-tempered-chocolate-fast/?p=2021063  - will just link rather than duplicating here.

Plugging away editing video for the website - finally got this one up.

Ganache with EZtemper

A bit of a challenge - but I made a video showing tempering and working with white chocolate using EZtemper - shows working with the chocolate at a much higher temperature allowing you to get a nice thin shell.

Wish there was a 'Like' button Sebastian! 

I can just picture how they discovered that technique led to better ganaches.  Someone screwed up - the ganache was clumpy and almost impossible to work with - someone added a bit more cream - beat the hell out of it and voila - the BEST ganache that was ever made!

Interesting though - Valrhona claims that is you mix your ganache the way that Frederick Bau shows in the video - that the aW will be lower. I have plans to test the theory!

So - I'm trying to make some video footage (can you say frustrated beyond belief!) - so this morning I had some ganache to which I had added silk and some that I had not.  The aW differerence was no more than 0.01 between them - but I'd love it if you would do some tests as well.

A little fooling around - I set one of my EZtemper units at 35 - put coloured cocoa butter in overnight and splattered and sprayed with my Fuji. Tempered some dark chocolate with the silk - added some silk to the ganache which allowed me to back them off in less than 30 minutes.

Forgot it was a holiday in that big country south of us today when I tried to call Tricor!

I'm not really in the hotbed of chocolate manufacturing - but a call to tricor might just find me someone not too far away. If I'm not mistaken Cadbury had something in Hamilton years ago - perhaps they are still close by producing.

It would - know anyone with one?  I tried to make my own tempermeter - but it was an abject failure!

Here's what those tests from last night looked like this morning. Much clearer that preseeding was badly out of temper.

I'm awaiting delivery of some bean to bar hopefully 'badly out of temper' chocolate to continue my experiments.

Both are based on a similar concept but without taking one apart I wouldn't be able to say if theirs uses the same technology. In terms of capacity there is not much to choose between them.

Ours does use multiple containers - you can continue to use generated seed from one container while you are waiting for the seed to generate in another container - rather than adding cocoa butter straight in to the already generated seed. And you can actually wash the containers after you have emptied them. Theirs has all the cocoa butter in one vessel and I'm not sure if you can take it apart for cleaning.

Doing some experiments today using chocolate as the seed rather than cocoa butter (for the bean to bar people who don't want to add any additonal cocoa butter). Makes a very stiff paste. Preliminary results seem positive. Bugger to stir in though.

. 

  Hard to see clearly in these but the left offset in before seeding and it marks with the heat of your finger, the test on the right does not.

Thanks Sebastian.

Thought I'd post a picture of some chocolate I tempered using the EZtemper - on the left I dipped chocolate that had been cooled to 33.5, on the right - the same chocolate from about 1 minute later after pre-crystallizing with 1% generated seed.

Of course tempering chocolate is a bonus - it's real super power is tempering ganaches, allowing you to cut them within hours instead of days. 

I'm pretty thrilled that it finally got off the ground - I've been using my prototypes to temper chocolate, ganaches, meltaways and coloured cocoa butters for almost a year now. Thought it would never be finished!  

Seems only fair that artisan chocolatiers get to take advantage of the same technology that industry uses to pre-crystallize but on a small scale.

Full disclosure - Ruth took one home and I hope she'll post here what she is doing with it. Funny - I've been keeping it a secret so long that I've been hesitant to post about it - but I guess I should get some pictures of what it can do here as well.  

How do I link to an album of pictures that I took at Potomac so I can add them here?

Several Chocolate Lifer's are in the Washington, DC area for the annual http://forums.egullet.org/topic/151277-report-eg-chocolate-and-confectionery-workshop-2015/

We took the opportunity yesterday afternoon to visit with Ben Rasmussen of Potomac Chocolate and have a tour of his compact basement chocolate factory. The man is a powerhouse! And a delight to meet.

I can't figure out how to add a link to a Gallery here - but if you look for the photo gallery 'Potomac Chocolate' you will find some pictures I took of Ben's amazing setup. 

Just one teaser photo - the roasting basket from his roaster that he had built from a convection oven.

 IMG_1070.jpg - 55KB

Get some little insulated bags with your branding on them - have the really tiny little ice packs available.  

Yup - if I'm not seeding I do.

A Cool Bot will control an air conditioner to make your own cold room.

How long are you leaving it in the fridge?  I generally put it in for 10 to 15 minutes when it is actively crystallizing to carry off the latent heat of crystallization - then take it back out to room temperature.  Too long, it gets too cold and moisture will condense on the surface causing sugar bloom.  

Room temperature may result in the latent heat causing some pieces to get thrown out of temper.

Anything between a couple of hundred grams and 5 kgs.

I cool the entire mass to 25 to get 'wild' crystallization, then reheat to 30 (which eventually will get raised to closer to 32 as it becomes overtempered) to melt out the undesirable crystals and leave only the form 5 crystals. 

I take milk chocolate down to 25 C when tempering by that method.

Prochoc is available for about 110 Euro from Libaire Gourmand - it's in french.  

Well - I've been chatting with a bean to bar maker who is having trouble with the tempering machine when the melanger is running - but not when it isn't.  The solution being tried right now is a EMI/RFI filter/surge supressor to see if that solves the problem.

Hubby say's unshielded motors can produce RF that will affect other equipment.  

I've often found I get white marks the first time I use a mold - they disappear in subsequent batches.

Victor - what sort of other electrical equipment have you got going around this temperer?  Anything with a large motor that might be producing RF.  

Pate de fruit pectin sold by Chef Rubber is the apple pectin if I'm not mistaken.  If you have a cheaper source of apple pectin just make sure it is the stuff for PDF not for jam as the jam version will not set up as you hope.  

The ganache does tend to stick to the blades as Tim has suggested above.  Might work better to mark the ganache with it lightly and use it as a guide to cutting with a knife.