Whats going on with my chocolates?? Quality Control-Appearance concerns
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I was hoping that some of you could chime in on what is happening on my chocolates. I have been in business for 4 years in the SAME location. I am still in my certified home kitchen.
What we are finding lately (the last 3 months or so) the chocolates have not been holding their flavor very long. Also, and the most concerning, is what appears to be a fast spreading "bloom". So much so that I have had to pull chocolates that are only a few weeks old (in some cases only a week) and sell them as seconds or use them as samples.
I am attaching a few pictures for you to look at.
Humidity: The weather has been changing from winter to spring. THere has been some rain so I know this is adding to the humidity.
from fridge to room temperature: I have always stored my "centers" before dipping and chocolate after dipping and wrapping in a typical refrigerator. We have 5 now. It has always worked in the past even with the "shock" it sometimes goes thru when we pull them out of the cold into room temperature (65-68 degrees). When choc's would start condensating we would immediately stop for the day but this only happened on the most extreme days (high rain or high heat outside).
I have since turned up my refrigerators as far as they can go to lessen the possibility of condensation.
Candy Pads: We store our chocolate with candy pads in between each layer. We have recently switched to regular food service film between layers. Lately wherever candy pads have touched the "bloom" (for lack of something better to call it) makes it look worse. However the 'bloom' is down the sides of the chocolate too where the pad didn't touch.
Tempering:We have a Rev 3210. We have only just begun making sure we are continuing the tempering process after dipping by leaving the chocolates out for several hours before they go in the fridge.
We think we have a moisture issue which is why we turned UP the storage refrigerators to lessen the condensation.
Swirls:As long as we keep the temperature consistently between 88-90 while dipping we are usually ok but in the picture you will see that swirls are also an issue. Especially over the last 9 months or so. As a matter of fact they have gotten worse until recently.
Any info you can give me would be greatly appreciated. Like I said, we have pretty much been doing the same thing with the same recipe for a few years but all of a sudden we are having this problem.
Thanks!
Jennifer Davis
The Great Unbaked
p.s. this is RAW chocolate if it matters.
updated by @Jennifer Davis: 04/12/15 03:48:17
