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Old 18 Sep 19, 06:55 PM  
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#11
Vanillapod
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Originally Posted by wanye View Post
heres ones i did last night. didnt use sous vide this time though. thats my plan for later today...



sous vide can control temps to within .5 of a degree so may be a better idea than the thermomix? (although looking at them now, i want one! but i just dont have room in the kitchen for another gadget... maybe after i'd had the kitchen redone, and there is more than twice as much counter top/storage space...)

what chocolate do other people use? can you get good quality bulk dark chocolate, or should i stick to melting half decent 100-200g bars from the supermarket? any tips on where to get supplies from? (being able to sample different types in advance of buying a large block would be useful)

being vegan-friendly would be a bonus too, i know the G&B stuff i like is vegan, so can give some to my best mate for an xmas present

*edit*
i just googled callebaut, thanks for the info, i think ill put an order in to try it

*edit2*
ive ordered a free 150g sample pack to try, although i wish they did sample packs of the whole range. just a few nuggets of each to try the different ones, i'd even pay for it if they did one!

for now though, i've just gone to lidl and got 6 packs of the ecuadorian 81% stuff which my vegan friend confirmed are ok
Where did you buy from.
I’ll look into sous vide but I think my husband would not particularly appreciate another kitchen gadget 😆
I have used the Ecuadorean stuff In cakes before for vegans. It’s tricky finding snuggling decent that doesn’t cost a fortune!
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Old 18 Sep 19, 09:56 PM  
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Originally Posted by Vanillapod View Post
Where did you buy from.
I’ll look into sous vide but I think my husband would not particularly appreciate another kitchen gadget 😆
I have used the Ecuadorean stuff In cakes before for vegans. It’s tricky finding snuggling decent that doesn’t cost a fortune!
i got the callebaut sample from here: callebaut/en-GB/free...-callebaut-811

i'll be trying a proper batch using the ecuador 81% lidl stuff probably sometime next week. sous vide was a great way to do it, and ill be doing it this way from now on!

so heres what i did...
vac seal the chocolate broke it up into blocks of four. i didnt realise G&B was only 90g, so i ended up two chocs short of what i was expecting (each tray is roughly 200g of choc)


melt at 115f until fully melted. squish around between fingers to help melt


add cold water/ice to the tub (i used cold water, as i ran out of ice yesterday and forgot to make more), bring it down to 81f. squidge it around every minute or so. set the stick to heat to 90f. keep squidging until it hits 90


left it in for half an hour at 90 while i finished some work stuff. cut the corner off the bag and squirt into molds


as i said, two less than planned, because the packs are only 90g and all the others ive worked with have been 100g, 125g or larger


to show how much wastage there was, i cut the edges off the bag, opened it up and scraped the choc off the bag. the scrapings in the corner was what was left in the bag

close up. mmmm... tasty scrapings!


i left them to set in the kitchen (inside the microwave so the cat didnt eat them) for a couple of hours before removing from the mold, putting in a tub and keeping in the fridge

the finished article. by far the smoothest ones ive made. nice glossy exterior, and nowhere near as melty as the dairy milk ones i tried...

Edited at 09:59 PM.
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Old 19 Sep 19, 12:00 PM  
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Originally Posted by wanye View Post
i got the callebaut sample from here: callebaut/en-GB/free...-callebaut-811

i'll be trying a proper batch using the ecuador 81% lidl stuff probably sometime next week. sous vide was a great way to do it, and ill be doing it this way from now on!

so heres what i did...
vac seal the chocolate broke it up into blocks of four. i didnt realise G&B was only 90g, so i ended up two chocs short of what i was expecting (each tray is roughly 200g of choc)


melt at 115f until fully melted. squish around between fingers to help melt


add cold water/ice to the tub (i used cold water, as i ran out of ice yesterday and forgot to make more), bring it down to 81f. squidge it around every minute or so. set the stick to heat to 90f. keep squidging until it hits 90


left it in for half an hour at 90 while i finished some work stuff. cut the corner off the bag and squirt into molds


as i said, two less than planned, because the packs are only 90g and all the others ive worked with have been 100g, 125g or larger


to show how much wastage there was, i cut the edges off the bag, opened it up and scraped the choc off the bag. the scrapings in the corner was what was left in the bag

close up. mmmm... tasty scrapings!


i left them to set in the kitchen (inside the microwave so the cat didnt eat them) for a couple of hours before removing from the mold, putting in a tub and keeping in the fridge

the finished article. by far the smoothest ones ive made. nice glossy exterior, and nowhere near as melty as the dairy milk ones i tried...

Brilliant
I’ve just realised we have a Cinestill photographic chemical warmer which looks exactly the same! Im going to investigate now and I may try it!
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Old 19 Sep 19, 12:29 PM  
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I use Cabbanult (cant spell it though) . Your choc look good. I also lust after a Thermomix and now also a Pacojoet…..
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Old 19 Sep 19, 12:30 PM  
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Great sheen on those Wayne, they look very professional
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Old 19 Sep 19, 12:51 PM  
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Back in my chef days, chocolate making was something we did in chef school. We made Easter eggs and were taught how to temper using a double boiler, thermometer and marble slab.The type of chocolate you need for tempering is called couverture chocolate.

Couverture chocolate must contain not less than 35% total dry cocoa solids, including not less than 31% cocoa butter and not less than 2.5% of dry non-fat cocoa solids, milk chocolate couverture must contain not less than 25% dry cocoa solids.

Compound chocolate is chocolate where the cocoa butter is replaced with vegetable oil. Compound chocolate does not need to be tempered.
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Old 19 Sep 19, 12:52 PM  
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Originally Posted by Vanillapod View Post
Brilliant
I’ve just realised we have a Cinestill photographic chemical warmer which looks exactly the same! Im going to investigate now and I may try it!
i just looked them up, and yeah, that's a sous vide machine!
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Old 5 Mar 20, 04:59 PM  
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*bump*

so i've done this a bunch more times since i started this thread and have had good results with kenji's SV tempering process (115f>80f>90f>pour)

absolutely gutted that lidl have stopped the 81% ecuadorian, so i've been using a mixture of their standard 70% and 85% stuff for now until i can find a better replacement i can buy in bulk. the callebaut sample pack never arrived

i now have 6 polycarbonate heart molds (7 actually, but one is broken so cant get a full tray) so can now make up to 1.2kg at a time if i wanted to. so far though, 4 trays is the most ive done in one go

now i've bought the 4 extra trays (they came last week) i'm gonna look at bulk-buying chocolate rather than paying £1.60 for a 125g pack from lidl (and creating loads of cardboard/paper waste) and doing 1kg or so at a time. that way i can do enough chocolate for the 2 of us to have 2 chocs every night for a month (in reality, youre looking at at least 2-3 months worth though as we dont have them every night)

by putting them into individual 10g chocolates and only having one or two of them basically means we have proper portion control. we'll have a couple for dessert, and not end up caning the whole 125g pack. so we're eating more chocolate (as its a few nights a week for dessert), but much less (no more than 20g rather than half a 125g pack each) if that makes sense?

they also make good presents!
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Old 3 Apr 20, 04:02 PM  
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here's the batch i made yesterday. lovely and shiny, perfectly tempered and ready to bag up and freeze.

still not found a bulk chocolate supplier yet. used the last of the lidl 70/85% stuff making these... its kinda hard to buy bulk if you cant taste it beforehand?! why cant manufacturers make sample bars of each one to try?
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Old 13 May 20, 09:51 AM  
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ok, ive done this a few more times, and discovered a couple of things. the main thing being not to take the chocolate out as soon as temp reaches 90f degrees, i did that with one bag in the batch in my previous post, and they came out with a sort of gritty texture. i can only assume this was because the internal temp hadnt equilibrised yet. leaving tham in the water bath for an extra half hour at 90 makes a difference.



ok, so first, i bought a 2.5kg bag online, as bulk buying in shops still gets you the evil eye from other people and comments about panic buying. so i finally bought callebaut callets. this one is a vegan friendly 70% dark "may contain traces of milk products" is the official title. i checked with a couple of vegan friends, and they are happy to eat these. but check with any vegans about it first should you so need to, you should mention to them that it has been made in a factory with milk products. most will be fine with that, but a militant vegan may refuse. if you let them know, at least they wont be angry at you later!





so yeah, a couple of bags (600g per bag) of chocolate chips, vacuum sealed, melted at 115f, water dropped to 80 (swap with cold water one pan at a time until its at 80f). raise slowly to 90f, squishing them around the bag until it hits 90f. leave until youre ready to pour - i left one bag overnight at 90f to see if it made any difference (it didnt)

pour into molds and leave to set. i stored them overnight in the microwave (so the cat didnt lick them while i was in bed)



twist the molds gently and tap on counter to remove. most came out fine, but there were 2 i couldnt remove, so i had to microwave it for 10 seconds to melt it a tiny bit, and pop it out.




my main finding is how thick this chocolate seems compared to the lidl stuff. do two brands of 70% dark choc have wildly different properties at 90f? is the cocoa butter in one less dense or something? not that it was an issue, but after pouring, i had to tap the molds down on the counter a few times to even them out and remove air bubbles, whereas the lidl stuff just poured as a liquid

is this a thing?!

anyway, yeah. lovely chocs, think i prefer it to the lidl stuff now 81% ecuadorian is a thing of the past. will be buying again in future, although i may experiment with some of their other vegan friendly types. this is the one i bought: amazon/Callebaut-C...nguag e=en_GB

Edited at 09:53 AM.
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