Now Try This # 4 (b) Espresso Infused Cream based Filled ChocolatesThis recipe is for a cream based chocolate ganache (not condensed milk based) and the cream has been infused with espresso flavor. How is it possible to get the coffee flavor into heavy whipping cream and hence the ganache without making coffee? Chop up the roasted coffee beans and put them in the cream of course. But what if you dont want any coffee beans or grounds in the confection at all?Lets look at peanut butter. Which is most popular; creamy or crunchy? I like crunchy but that is not the question. I looked at the grocery store shelves and there was a great deal of space taken up in the peanut butter section by jars of creamy Jiffy. Someone likes creamy better, lots of people in fact.Some people just dont like crunchy espresso chocolates either. They would buy a nice creamy, intensely espresso filled chocolate truffle. I dont mean coffee with cream taste but dark, strong espresso that is smooth and creamy on the palate. How to do it?Heres a technique that I like and the nice thing; its variable. You can make the espresso taste stronger or less intense as you like. And, you can use decaffeinated coffee also.Lets just sum it up in one word: Quench.Thats it. Use the simple method that I showed in Now Try This #4 (a) to roast the green coffee beans in a hot-air popcorn popper like the Pop-Lite. Roast to the same level, not to overdone. And then, while the beans are still hot, dump them in a sauce pan partially filled with heavy whipping cream. This cream neednt be pre-heated as you would do with an infused cream because the coffee beans will be about 450 degrees F. when they hit the cream and it will boil up with the quenching process. I then cover the sauce pan with a sheet of plastic wrap to contain the flavor oils and steam. (For larger batches of coffee beans there are counter-top roasting machines made. Some operate on electricity, some on natural gas or propane.)Now, let the coffee beans and cream cool. When youre ready to make the ganache of chopped chocolate, re-warm the cream so it doesnt stick to the coffee beans. Pour into the espresso cream through a strainer onto the chocolate. And continue to process as you would any ganache.I usually dont at butter to my chocolate ganaches because the home roasted chocolate that I make still has all the cocoa butter in it and I even add several ounces of cocoa butter per 4.5 lb batch of nib liquor ; so I really cant taste any improvement if butter is added to the ganache. In your system, you may add butter if it helps.For decaf espresso, just buy decaf green coffee beans from the same source as regular beans (Now Try This #4 (a).What really amazed me with this method is the intensity of the espresso flavor in the cream. Its hard to describe how strong the coffee flavor is. Because the creamy ganache melts in your mouth you get a real rush of flavor on the first bite. Try it, youll love it.Until Next Time,Mr. WineCandyPS: on a second trail, I used Madagascar Sambriano Valley chocolate; what I call light milk which is 47% Cacao rather than the regular 55% Cacao milk chocolate. I used Sumatra Lintong Grade One coffee beans; about 2/3 cup of green beans then roasted and quenched in one cup of heavy whipping cream. This with the Madagascar chocolate did not have the intense chocolate/espresso flavor as with the Mexican chocolate. Also, the zingyness of the chocolate detracted from the espresso flavors. A less acidic chocolate than Madagascar would work best for this espresso cream method.

Now Try This: #4 (a) Franks Famous Chopped EspressoA friend and I have been experimenting with coffee beans in molded chocolate. Weve tried dark chocolate and dark milk chocolate shells; bite-sized molds and slightly larger molds ; one bean and two. So far, theyve not been flavored with anything else, just the coffee bean. And these are not confections coated with a hard sugar shell on the outside like some of the chocolate covered coffee beans or M&Ms. Nothing seemed to satisfy his desire for really intense coffee flavor; Ill admit, the chocolate having been roasted from the bean in my workshop is pretty powerful and so may have dominated the coffee inside.We came up with a solution; maybe two, that seems to solve the desire for really powerful espresso flavors in molded chocolate. Now this is off subject for Mr. WineCandy. For me its supposed to be all about spirituous jellies and ganaches inside molded from-the-bean confections. But, these coffee experiments have come out quite well and I thought I ought to share the unusual solutions.The objective here is not just to get a strong espresso flavor inside the chocolate for my friend, Keith (who has travelled the world, retired now, British Navy ; he has lots of experience savoring strong flavored foods) but also to get the crunch which is such an important part of the coffee bean /chocolate encounter. We dont want to do away with the bean, nor do we want to make it soggy or chewy inside the shell.Heres what I did to make the desired flavors and mouth feel. As you might have guessed; to get more coffee flavor, chop the beans into large pieces to more completely fill the shell. As you might not have known, cover the chopped coffee beans immediately after roasting them. And just as important to the flavor intensity, and what you really want; preserve the unique flavor of those unique coffee beans by not over-roasting them. You may have thought you wanted dark roasted beans to get the most intense espresso flavors, not so. These are oils in the coffee beans that we are dealing with, which carry the flavors. We dont want to burn off these flavor oils by over-roasting the beans.

Roasting coffee beans; easy. A small quantity, like half cup, can be roasted in 5 minutes in a hot-air popcorn popper. Presto Pop-Lite hot-air popper is the brand most often found at WalMart or the kitchen stores etc. For like, $20-$25. You can buy green coffee beans on-line, cheap; Sweet Marias or Coffee Storehouse or other sites have them. Or you could probably buy a half pound of green beans from your neighborhood coffee shop if they roast their own on site. The reason we wanted to roast our own coffee beans is that we wanted to get them sealed in the chocolate shells while flavors were still fresh. After about a day of resting the fresh coffee flavor of the beans will have out-gassed and will have been lost to the atmosphere.The important thing here is not to over-roast the beans. Heres how to roast just right. While roasting, coffee beans will first lose water content and you will hear a popping sound. Once dried out, the beans then heat up until the coffee oils begin to burn off and you hear a higher pitched snapping sound like RiceKrispies in milk. You want to stop the roast just when this crisping sound starts. Another way to tell when to turn off the heat is to look at the beans which will have been dark brown and dry on the surface then changing to a wet, actually oily surface and turning even darker when the crispy-snapping sound starts. Any given bean you use will lose its varietal flavor when roasted beyond this point. We used Colombian Huila Oporapa (from Coffee Storehouse) in our experiment and its intense flavor notes came through quite well , very strong and very espresso flavored at this roast stage. Not necessary , nor advisable to roast the beans real dark. Now, theyll have to cool.These coffee beans are about 450 degrees F. at the end of roast. I usually just pour them into a cool dish. We want to chop them up as soon as they cool enough to run through a mini-chopper and then real quick, put the chopped coffee beans in our chocolate molded shells and cover with the final layer of chocolate to seal in the flavors. We dont want to use our coffee mill to grind the beans fine, this would cause us to lose the desirable crunch of the beans. Ive got one of these little mini-choppers for small quantities of onion or parsley. It works great for chopping espresso.For this experiment we used Mexican Tabasco district, 66 % dark chocolate. If the chocolate shells have been made and chilled before we start the coffee bean roast; that would be best. I think youll find this espresso technique works very well for small scale confections. For larger quantities, a person might be able to buy hot, freshly roasted coffee beans from the coffee shop.Another method came to mind after doing the chopped espresso, this for times when you dont want crunch . I call it infused creamed espresso. Stay tuned.Mr WineCandyPS : Some people have tried the above chopped espresso and found it to be just too much coffee. Its easy enough to reduce the quantity of coffee in each bite to satisfy them.PPS: You could just as well use decaffeinated coffee beans if so desired. (Did you know that? It is the green coffee beans that are decaffeinated; the decaffeination process is not done to roasted beans.) You can order these from the above suppliers just as well.

Now Try This #3Bee SqueezinsThis will be a dark chocolate spirits filled ganache using in a light milk chocolate shell. My light milk is about 40%-45% cocoa, dark milk is around 55% in my workshop.A friend of mine who owns a caf/nightclub locally is also known for the mead that he makes . This is wine from honey. It sounds as if this wine might be sweet but to make it he uses a strong champagne type yeast and then ferments the wine until dry; no residual sugar. Big Al tries to get near 14% alcohol in his mead which is about all the yeast can tolerate before going to drunken yeast heaven.Once finished fermenting, Big Al racks the mead off the yeast sediment and lets it settle for several months to clarify. After this he freezes it ! Yeah, the mead is reasonably good tasting out of the glass jug after clearing but Al likes a stronger hooch so he freezes a bowl of mead and pours off the concentrated liquor which remains after freezing. This he calls Bee Squeezins.OK, so were going to take this and make chocolates out of it, naturally. Mr. WineCandy will try anything.Before deciding what type of chocolate to use for the ganache and shell we have to think about the flavors in the liquor (infusion). I suppose this is true for any filled chocolate confection. Youve got to think about flavor pairing so as to avoid clashes and disagreements on the palate.Example 1:For some liquor infused ganaches Ive tried to emphasize the caramel flavor notes by using evaporated milk instead of heavy whipping cream as the ganache base. The theory being, evaporated milk has a more caramel type flavor and boosts the oaky/caramel flavors of, for example, Jim Beam whiskey. They blend and compliment and reinforce each other. Once deciding to focus on the rich caramel notes of the filling, then you can think about the shell flavors desired and I have often chosen a dark spicy chocolate like a 66% Madagascar dark for the shell around a whiskey ganache. Now, being a bean head and roasting my own in the workshop; Im all about single bean chocolates. Since, in the example above I chose Madagascar dark for the shell, Ive got to go with Madagascar of some type for the ganache. This is where the experimenting starts. Ill try a whiskey in dark, dark milk (like 55- 60% cocoa) and light milk (like 45%) to make the ganache. All with evaporated milk to enhance the oakyness of the whiskey. Whichever of these ganaches seems to work best with the Madagascar dark gets the prize. Usually I go with contrasting flavor pairing : ganache to shell. That would suggest the light milk chocolate for the whiskey ganache. But you could argue against this in favor of complimentary notes just as well I suppose; ie dark shell and dark ganache.Back to the Bee Squeezins.Big Al doesnt ferment or age his mead on oak chips. I guess he could but Ive never heard of that being done with mead. So therell be no oaky flavor in the spirits infusion. For that reason Im going to use heavy whipping cream to make the ganache, not evaporated milk. The cream ganache is lighter, it doesnt contribute much flavor to the filling. Most of what well get in flavor will be Bee Squeezins and chocolate. The mead doesnt have a strong flavor and so the Squeezins dont either except for the heat of the alcohol. I would compare this spirits flavor to something like Vodka or Tequila as opposed to Scotch or rum. For this reason, Im going to try to compliment the spirits flavor with a milder chocolate, Mexican Tabasco, rather than the spicy Madagascar. Having made the decision that mead liquor will go best with Mexican Tabasco Im going to need to stay with the same for the shell.Just for the purposes of experimentation, Ill use a Mexican Tabasco light milk chocolate(40%)for the shell , a cream ganache using heavy cream and the dark Mexican (66%). Im going to try to use as much liquor as possible in the ganache without breaking it. You could use any combination of milk chocolate and/or dark in the shell and ganache but I came to the above combination due to the light flavors of the Bee Squeezins.Heres the recipe for Big Als Bee Squeezins in Chocolate(this is for quite a small experimental batch, youll have to scale it up for larger batches) :Warm 1.5 oz (45ml) heavy whipping cream in a sauce pan to boiling and add 2 Tbs (30ml) Bee Squeezins. Pour this warmed liquid over 2 oz. (57gm) chopped Mexican Tabasco Dark (66%) chocolate and stir until well melted and blended. Let this ganache cool in the refrigerator until well set; it can then be scooped into the milk chocolate shells and covered with a layer of chocolate for the shell bottom. Another method, after youre sure you have a ganache formula that will set solid, is to pipe it warm into the chocolate shell and seal.For a mild flavored spirits like this, its important to get the most liquor possible into the ganache so you can actually taste it in the chocolate. But you dont want to add too much spirits to the ganache blend.My way of infusing the ganache with spirits in the correct proportion is to make a ganache without spirits first, just cream and chocolate ; measure and record the proportions of each. Then subtract a quantity of cream in the formula and replace it with an equal volume of liquor to make a test spirits batch. Now make more test batches adding slightly more liquor each time until the ganache breaks (some of the liquor remains liquid after the ganache has set; or the ganache just wont set at all). The highest un-broken ratio is the one to use. This will give the most spirits flavor in the finished filled chocolate piece.Al tried these chocolate pieces and thought they were just the bees knees.PS I gave a bowl of the Mexican Tabasco light milk chocolate ganache with mead in it to Big Al for his Valentines Day dinner crowd. This was honey mead wine to replace some quantity of cream in the ganache (not Bee Squeezins) . His customers loved it ! They were dipping strawberries in it and pouring it over cake and raving about it. Problem was, I didnt make enough of it. Al needs to buy more honey and yeast.That's all this time from Mr. WineCandy

Now Try This:A molded chocolate with wine jelly center covered by milk chocolate ganache in a milk chocolate shell.Id like to try to post something here once a week during the North American winter months but Im going to be on a driving vacation to Florida next week so thought Id get this posted on the blog before I leave this Saturday. (Ill be staying near Ft. Myers so hope to stop by Norman Loves store there.)Ive been getting some good feedback from friends on this molded chocolate piece because it is so rich but its kind of surprising too, it has an unexpected solid jelly mouth feel after you bite into it. Ive not seen or heard of a combination of spirits based jelly covered by wine ganache in a chocolate shell. Again, like the previous post: this may be strong to the taste of some people so they ought to be forewarned that its grown-up candy before they bite into it.The technique used here is basically the same as my previous post, except I used Madagascar Sambriano origin milk chocolate instead of New Guinea. It probably would have been better to use a milder bean for the milk chocolate because the wine involved has a hard time standing up to the strong red fruit(raspberry) flavor notes of the Madagascar. But that is what I had on hand at the time. And because of its strength, I chose a red wine rather than a white. Any quality milk chocolate could be used here and you could use a white wine if your chocolate is milder.This milk chocolate was about a 45 % cocoa with 10 % milk. That is what I call a dark milk chocolate.The wine jelly was a Merlot , nothing special. I used one half cup brought to a boil with one Tbsp pectin (Sure*Jell) but not gelatin (Knox) and one Tbsp cane sugar. Follow the directions on the Sure*Jell insert, exactly. Then chill and let it set overnight. That is 120ml wine, 15ml pectin and 15ml sugar. This should give you a wine jelly that is nice and firm. But it is difficult to prevent a part of it from being watery. What you dont want is a jelly that is so solid that you can cut it with a knife, then it just would not have much Merlot taste.This wine jelly is put in the shell (I prefer a thin shell as mentioned in the earlier post) and then is covered with a layer of the milk chocolate ganache made with the same technique and using Merlot wine and chocolate as described also in the earlier post. I think the thinner the ganache you can get the better. That means that Im going for the most jelly possible in the center. This ought to give you the maximum wine flavor possible. The ganache just doesnt carry very much wine flavor; the jelly much more. Then top it all off with a thin layer of milk chocolate shell.The ganache is going to make a nice seal over the jelly between it and the liquid chocolate shell when poured or piped. This will prevent any liquid jelly from floating through the chocolate and leaking. I know I said make the jelly near solid but even then there may be a slight liquid to it.What you get is a rich chocolate piece which has a creamy feel when you bite into it and then a nice fruity/jelly taste following. Try it. Youll like it!A friend of mine: April, and her husband Shane, over at Chocolat Branson:http://www.handcraftedchocolat.com/came up with a new one called Bee Sting using honey and cayenne . Really nice !So another friend, Al who owns a restaurant called Big Als Place and who makes mead (wine from honey) came up with a way to freeze his mead and drain off the high alcohol liquid which he calls Bee Squeezeins .My next Now Try This will be Bee Squeezeins in chocolate. Should be fun !! But this is no Kiddie Candy !!All the Best Tasting to You.Mr WineCandyBy the way: Have you seen these photos of the work done by James Gallo on this site? What a Master; check it out !!http://www.thechocolatelife.com/photo/photo/listForContributor?screenName=3a256r2yh0gj1

Now Try This:Um ! Yum! Dark Milk Chocolate Port Ganache in a Dark Chocolate ShellI used Papua New Guinea origin chocolate for this molded treat. The Dark Chocolate shell was a 66 % cocoa with half vanilla bean per 5 lbs of liquor. After pulling off 2 lbs of dark I added enough sugar and milk to give me a 60% dark milk at 15 % milk.If youve not worked with home roasted chocolate, just know this: I used a good rich dark chocolate that was not too bitter for the shell. Not a real spicy/fruity chocolate like a Madagascar but a nice bold one. For the milk chocolate ganache it was pretty dark , with not a whole lot of milk. Ie, a dark milk chocolate that again was not too spicy. I think these go together well with port as it is not spicy like Sauvignon Blanc wine or a Vignoles wine jelly.For the ganache I used 2 oz of dark milk chocolate, 3 table spoons of vintage Port and, boiled evaporated milk cup . Not heavy cream. (That would be about 60 gm chocolate, 45ml of Port, and 75ml of evaporated milk. ) Why not cream? Some Ports are oak aged. Ie, they have an oaky/caramelized flavor and I think (just my opinion) that evaporated milk in the ganache blends better in flavor than a plain heavy cream.I brought the evap. milk to a light boil, poured in melted milk chocolate and added the port. Stirring constantly until all the chocolate was well blended. This is Fonseca Guimaraens 1998 vintage port. It was a gift to me and I dont know anything about it, could be expensive or could be cheap but I used it with chocolate and it turned out real nice. Im supposed to know about this stuff , the details of Port, as I grow wine grapes commercially, but I confess ignorance about Port. Makes a good ganache though.From the warm sauce pan I poured the liquid ganache into a cool glass bowl and covered with saran wrap and refrigerated overnight. I like to make my dark chocolate shells very, very thin as they are powerful single origin chocolate and I dont want the shells to overpower the center filling. So I made the shells pouring the melted dark into molds, scooped the milk chocolate ganache in and covered with a layer of dark chocolate which I tried to keep as thin as possible. The ganache was not broken, no liquid floated up so the pieces sealed well. These I chilled before taking out of the molds. They came out easily and I just had to bite into one right away.This is great tasting stuff !! It is not kiddie candy. Think about the fact that there adult flavors going on here. Its important that a person trying these chocolates doesnt expect sweet, sugary, birthday cake confections. No , no. This is an adult treat and is strong to some people if they dont expect a serious, flavorful molded chocolateYou get a mouthful of rich chocolate and a Vintage Porto beverage tooAnd I love it.Next Time : the same, with wine jelly to boot.