I've been on a major truffle kick here recently. Under
extreme pressure from the chocolate police, I even turned
my back on my beloved Nestle's semisweet chips and bought
some fancy stuff online, Guittard's classic bittersweet.

I typically dip in white chocolate. I tore myself away
from the Baker's brand and bought some from El Rey. My
question is how can I make the shells thinner without
making them softer? From what I read in the chocolate
descriptions, some chocolate melts thinner than others,
but I'm not sure exactly what this is a function of. I
don't see that many options in selecting white chocolate.

Thanks, Michael

Mmmm - thick white chocolate. Ok, you want them thinner though.
Either let your centers
get a bit warmer so that they don't flash freeze the coating, or work
in a warmer environment. The longer
the coating takes to harden, the more time it has to run off. Maybe.
That's all assuming your coating is warm
enough.

Greg Zywicki

Thanks for the suggestions, Greg. I don't have any fancy
apparatus to keep the chocolate a consistent temperature
while I'm doing the dipping, but I start out with it as warm
as I dare make it, around 120 degrees F.

And your suggestion to not let the centers get so cold is
valid, too. The only issue there is that I've been adding
more and more cream to the centers to make them softer
in the end product, so if they aren't really hardcore cold,
they tend to start bleeding into the dipping chocolate.

Playing around, I've come up with some orange truffles
that I'm really happy with. I will post a recipe for them
after I make them a couple more times.

Again, thank you for the comments.

Michael

at Tue, 08 Mar 2005 11:59:05 GMT in <1110283145.249577.102530
@l41g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>, (Michael) wrote :

>I've been on a major truffle kick here recently. ...
>
>I typically dip in white chocolate. I tore myself away
>from the Baker's brand and bought some from El Rey. My
>question is how can I make the shells thinner without
>making them softer? From what I read in the chocolate
>descriptions, some chocolate melts thinner than others,
>but I'm not sure exactly what this is a function of.

You need to add extra cocoa butter which is what determines, in the main,
the viscosity of melted chocolate. More cocoa butter = lower viscosity. You
can get cocoa butter from http://www.chocosphere.com. Don't be tempted,
however, to get the cocoa butter you can usually find in drugstores and
other locations for cosmetic use. It's very low grade (= tastes terrible)
and may have been processed in ways that make it unsafe to eat.

Icoa is 34% cocoa butter (and 37.8% total fat) - a relatively high-
viscosity formulation. You want about 45% cocoa butter for a thin coating,
so you need to add cocoa butter in a ratio of 5 parts chocolate to 1 part
cocoa butter.

--
Alex Rast

(remove d., .7, not, and .NOSPAM to reply)

Alex wrote:

You need to add extra cocoa butter which is what determines, in the
main,
the viscosity of melted chocolate. More cocoa butter = lower viscosity.


***********
Ah! I see now! When I first read your post, I was confused, because
I thought that cocoa butter is what the white chocolate I'm using is
comprised of, but sugar is a main ingredient in white chocolate, too!
So I need either white chocolate with less sugar or else I need to add
the pure cocoa butter that you mention.

I will get some from Chocosphere. I've just about finished off that 10
lb bar of Guittard classic bittersweet I got, and I'd like to try about
a
half dozen of the other lower priced brands. I want to order before
the
danger of hot weather comes on. I don't want to pay extra for cooling.


Thanks, Alex!

Michael

at Wed, 09 Mar 2005 12:22:51 GMT in <1110370971.276260.201840
@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>, (Michael) wrote :

>Alex wrote:
>
>You need to add extra cocoa butter which is what determines, in the
>main,
>the viscosity of melted chocolate. More cocoa butter = lower viscosity.
>
>
>***********
>Ah! I see now! When I first read your post, I was confused, because
>I thought that cocoa butter is what the white chocolate I'm using is
>comprised of, but sugar is a main ingredient in white chocolate, too!
>So I need either white chocolate with less sugar or else I need to add
>the pure cocoa butter that you mention.
>
Keep using the El Rey Icoa white chocolate because it's easily the best
white chocolate on the market. And even if a white chocolate were to have a
lower sugar content that wouldn't guarantee higher cocoa butter content,
because there is a third component of white chocolate : milk. And almost
invariably if the sugar is reduced it's the milk proportion that would go
up and not the cocoa butter proportion.

The Gourmet Bittersweet you got is the best value-for-money proposition in
chocolate and you won't be able to buy a better chocolate pretty much at
any price (the only, possible, exception : the Amedei Chuao). But as for
experimenting with cheaper brands for the sake of seeing the differences,
go for it. My recommendations for the top 6 "cheap" chocolates:

Lindt Excellence 85%
Dolfin Chocolat Noir 70%
Cote D'Or Noir de Noir Intense 70%
Guittard L'Harmonie 64%, 275g bar
Cafe Tasse Noir 59%
Callebaut Dark 500g Bloc 55%


--
Alex Rast

(remove d., .7, not, and .NOSPAM to reply)