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Post by sugaralchemy on Jul 1, 2006 1:26:36 GMT -5
I'm curious if anybody has found any easy ways (on a small, home scale) to produce morsels of chocolate for use in like a cookie or similar baking application? The keyword here is "easy"! When you have delicious chocolate, you want to make cookies - but the techniques I've found for a small scale are, at best, painstaking.
Molding drop-style morsels works, except it is extremely viscosity sensitive, which means your chocolate has to be just right temperature and/or have just the right level of fat/emulsifiers. Even without concerns around the viscosity component, it still simply takes forever to make all those little morsels.
Molding a large sheet (very easy) then breaking up into "chunks" works fairly good, but consistency is hard, and there is a bit of "powdery" waste that makes a mess. This does seem to be the most efficient means yet, but it is still a major pain to produce much.
I'm sort of thinking about some sort of maybe a soft silicone mold that has many small divots, which you pour the chocolate into, then when it pops out you either have many small morsels or it cracks up into fairly consistent sizes. The idea is to reduce the amount of work required to produce pretty much any shaped morsel that has a moderately consistent size. But I haven't seen anything quite like this anywhere.
Thoughts anybody?
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Post by Brad on Jul 1, 2006 3:13:03 GMT -5
I was wondering the same thing - something that makes chocolate chips! I never thought of a mold though... That's a good idea. I'd love to use my own chocolate in my own cookies, but want the chips to be even in size.
Brad
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Post by sugaralchemy on Jul 1, 2006 11:15:05 GMT -5
I've got a custom-engraved silicone mold that make 22 gram bars. It works very nicely, just pour the chocolate (even a moderately viscous type) and run a silicone spatula over the top to spread the chocolate evenly over all the bars. Any excess easily comes off the edges. Silicone on silicone makes it a clean process. When the bars are cool, the silicone is flexible and very easily allows you to pop the bars out, despite the complex patterns and "deep" bars which would normally be very hard to get out. Furthermore, silicone does not readily conduct heat, so the chocolate you take off the edges is still fairly fluid and easy to mold again.
I am visualizing something about the size of a cookie sheet that is silicone with drop-morsel shaped holes packed as densely as possible together. Then you could simply pour a blob of melted chocolate onto the pan, use a spatula to spread it around, and in just a minute you've molded a pan of morsels and removed the excess. With several pans, one could make a great number of chips in a short time, and the consistency would be nearly perfect. The shape wouldn't quite be a perfect "drop" shape most likely (though you could get close, due to how flexible silicone is) but in cookies the little top thing melts away anyhow. Popping the chips out would be easy - invert the pan and push down, heck, even tapping might be sufficient.
The other option I visualize, more for chunks, is a mold that is similar to above, but actually many small cubes of chocolate. It would be even more efficient because squares are going to be possible to position more densely than circles. Furthermore, one could actually allow a little "extra" chocolate to sit on top, and when you pop the chocolate out of the mold, it would automatically break up beautifully. I think that in some cases, "chunk" type chocolate can be more desirable, and I would imagine you could probably mold 30-50% more chocolate for the same amount of surface area and time compared to the drop-type silicone mold.
None of this is very complicated, all you need is a custom silicone mold. There are companies out there (Google for "custom silicone molds") but I think the cost would be prohibitive for the average home application.
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Post by sugaralchemy on Jul 1, 2006 11:37:47 GMT -5
I stand corrected. I think I have found precisely the thing to make your own silicone molds. "CopyFlexTMLiquid Silicone" www.culinart.net/silicone.htmlI am thinking one could simply glue (hot glue?) down a bunch of chocolate chips of the desired size onto a baking pan, then pour this over the top. If the viscosity is sufficient, it would make a very nice chip-shaped mold. I'm betting a non-stick baking sheet would work perfectly, and while hot glue would hold chocolate chips down against the light force of silicone being poured, it wouldn't be impossible to remove. I'm sure that the silicone wouldn't stick to the pan either. Similarly, many small cubes or cube-ish chunks could be glued down to a pan in a regular pattern like the chips to make a morsel pan. I think plastic would be the most ideal, any ideas on what would work for this? I thought wood, but that could get powder and slivers into the silicone unless you sanded all the chunks. Maybe something plastic? Some more examples of more mold-at-home silicone: www.fxsupply.com/silicone/silicone.htmlThoughts anybody?
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Post by Howard on Jul 1, 2006 13:24:16 GMT -5
Found this while googling today: www.soapandcandlemolds.com/moldlarge.asp?prim=7d5-8chochipIt makes 100 chips at a time. I think its silicone, and I don't know anything about this company. Ooooooopsss I just went to their FAQ sectioned and it explicitly states that Question : Can your molds be used with foods? Answer : No none of our molds can used with any food products. Well, that takes care of that. Nevermind. Howard
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Post by Alan on Jul 1, 2006 13:40:17 GMT -5
I wonder why they say that you can make chocolate chips when their molds can't be used with food??
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Post by Howard on Jul 1, 2006 13:52:01 GMT -5
I wonder why they say that you can make chocolate chips when their molds can't be used with food?? The company makes soap molds and some of them are called "embed" molds. I think this means you can sort of add molds to molds for a layered, complex look. I suppose if you were making a soap mold that looked like a chocolate chip cookie...
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Post by sugaralchemy on Jul 2, 2006 5:29:00 GMT -5
I'm still betting one could make one's own mold, exactly the size and shape desired, through the above technique. Liquid silicone, sample shapes and a non-stick baking sheet as described above. A little release dit (sold by them) should ensure it releases properly.
I think I may have to order some liquid silicone and give this a whack unless somebody comes across anything else... now, I just need a few hours free to screw around with this!
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Post by Sebastian on Jul 2, 2006 12:56:40 GMT -5
That's probably the path of most resistance, anyway. Your yield value will be so high that it's going to be difficult to get the chocolate to flow all the way into the mould. And demoulding them is likely to be an absolute nightmare, especially if you're out of temper (yes, it will happen). You could, of course, use a very high fat chocolate to compensate for the flow issues, but then when you bake your cookies, you're likely to cause the chocolate to run all over the place because it's so high in fat. might want to think along the lines of a caulking gun with a nozzle that has 20 or so holes on it, such that when you squeeze the 'caulk' it flows through the holes and you can deposit them onto a cookie tray (or whatever) and put in the fridge to cool off. remember to temper it prior to doing this though folks.
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Post by sugaralchemy on Jul 2, 2006 16:17:46 GMT -5
I was thinking of using larger sized chips. I realize the molding wouldn't be perfect, but I have been surprised at how sharply the chocolate will mold. I am working with chocolate that has a pretty workable overall viscosity, including a substantial amount of PGPR which is excellent for yield value, and in some cases other emulsifiers (not currently legal for sale in food in the US - yeah yeah, but I don't distribute it.) I know the chocolate will be a little runny when baking, but depending on what you're doing, that may be desirable, creating the super gooey hot chocolate chip cookie experience.
As for de-molding, have you ever worked with silicone molds? They invert beautifully. Even the strangest shapes will pop out, because silicone can literally be tuned inside out. I would be surprised if it would be really very hard to get the chocolate out.
However, I also see applications where a caulking-type apparatus would be useful. Higher viscosity chocolates, etc. Any suggestions where I could find something with 20, 30 or more holes? That's the point of this thread... explore this issue further.
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Post by Sebastian on Jul 2, 2006 17:55:59 GMT -5
might have to make your own - should be easy enough with a drill press and a metal bit.
it'll be much, much, much more efficient than working with a silicone mould. the gooiness you get from fresh baked cookies is mostly a function of the amount of milk fat present.
that said, it's probably far easier to simply make it into chunks - spread out the tempered chocolate on a flat piece of sheet metal, put in fridge to begin to set it. prior to it being fully set (in a plastic state), use a pizza cutter and a straight surface to cut it into 1/2"x1/2" chunks. put back into fridge to finish setting and scrape off with a putty knife.
Both ways are going to be very tedious, there's no way around it. However, chunking is less so, and frankly your cookies don't really care if it's an 8g chunk or an 8g drop...
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Post by vivachoco on Jul 3, 2006 0:56:01 GMT -5
i was making some chocolate today and after i had tempered it and filled all the molds - i ran out of molds... chocolate was at that point of 'use it now or lose it' -- getting harder by the second. and i did not want to lose it so i had this flat metal baking dish that had been in the fridge and hence was cold. i started tapping the syringe with tempered chocolate on it, forming little droplets. i filled the syringe again... and who knew, in about 5 minutes i had a 100 or more chocolate chips forming on the baking sheet. after few hours on the fridge, the droplets came off without any effort. i guess you could make as much as you want pretty quick, in case your wrist does not get tired or if you have a few people doing the tapping... and i like the fact that the chips had the drop like look but were all kinda rustic and individual looking. not really an efficient way if you need thousands of chips / morserls - but certainly i made more than i will need for a few batch of cookies. and the trick is that the chocolate has to be in really good temper, so the little 'heaps' won't flatten.
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