bob
Neophyte
Posts: 6
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Post by bob on Feb 22, 2010 17:57:45 GMT -5
As a budding small scale chocolate maker I have found a wealth of information on the net especially at Chocolatealchemy for which I sincerely thank you John. I’m living in Samoa where I grow passion fruit and as a hobby produce passion fruit wine, spirits and liqueur. I also have access to lots of premium cocoa beans (theobroma) and am thinking of small scale production of passion fruit liqueur filled chocolate but there is still some information I’ve been unable to find. Can you or anyone else give me the answers to the following: 1. How do you make a liqueur based filling for chocolate and how do get it into a chocolate? What equipment would you recommend? 2. It looks as though a Spectra 20 Malangeur 220V. would suit this project but all my emails to info@santhausa.com are returned as undeliverable. Is this or another similar machine available elsewhere? With this machine would we also need a tempering machine and if so what is recommended? 3. Is there a good reference book that a beginning small scale chocolate maker can turn to for advice and solving problems? 4. With an average daily temperature of 29 degrees Celsius and humidity as high as 94% would we have to work in an air conditioned space or could we manage without this. Bob Rankin
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gap
Apprentice
Posts: 390
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Post by gap on Feb 23, 2010 18:20:46 GMT -5
Hi, maybe I can point you in the right direction for a few things: 1. What you may be thinking of are called sugar-crusted liqueurs. If you do a search on making them (ie., google) or search for making them on eG Forums Pastry and Baking Section (http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?/forum/72-pastry-baking/) you will find some information. Also, good chocolate making books will have that sort of information. Generally the sugar crusted liqueurs are quite a tricky process and require some precision in your kitchem A better option is often to make the liqueur/sugar syrup solution and deposit into pre-made sphericle chocolate shells, let the syrup crust over and the pipe some chocolate on top. Gneerally this is something easy to do once you've seen it done but is hard to learn from a book or the net. 2. Can't help with the chocolate making machine, but you will need to temper chocolate to use it. You can buy a machine if you are doing large batches to temper your chocolate but you can also temper chocolate by hand. 3. Not that I know of for making chocolate itself (ie., from bean to bar). If you are after a good book about making chocolate confections (ie., truffles, ganache centres, caramels, liqueur centres, fudge, marshmallow etc etc etc) you could probably try www.amazon.com/Chocolates-Confections-Formula-Technique-Confectioner/dp/07645884434. You will need air conditioning and some sort of humidity control. Others around these boards know the exact numbers better than I, but generally tempering becomes troublesome for me once my kitchen temp gets to 24 degrees and high humidity can also cause issues. Hope that can get you started.
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Post by garth on Feb 24, 2010 20:14:38 GMT -5
Hi, I've done some alcohol infused ganaches and the problem I encountered was the alcohol migrates through the shell pretty quickly then collapses on itself. I really enjoyed the CIA's book on confectionery, an if you want to really go crazy, www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0442265212/ecolechocolat-20 has helped me quite a bit.
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bob
Neophyte
Posts: 6
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Post by bob on Feb 25, 2010 14:24:58 GMT -5
Thanks a lot for your input gap and garth - a great help - Bob
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