Cherries

Practice starts soon. I'll be making chocolate covered cherries for Valentines day.

I made 3 jars of cherries. One has sweet cherries in brandy, one sweet cherries in cherry vodka, and on the far right is sour cherries in brandy. Each has a cup of sugar added.

I'm thinking until they are ready I would practice on some purchased candied fruit .

done for the night.

Ellen finished packaging at midnight.

They look really nice!

More pictures than text.

I made an order of Pretzels and potato chips from a request.

The potato chips messed with my cocoa butter but I got it done. I would rather not do that again because now I have some chocolate with a weird tempering degree. Eutectics is very important in chocolate and confections. It's the way fats respond to temperature when one fat is mixed with another. On with the order of the day. Pictures.

more new picts

Packaging night. These are the caramel boxes ready to go.

This is an order for chocolate covered pretzels and potato chips. It's the first time I've had this and it's pretty good! The small square ones are the peanut butter filled ones. I'll add stripes to the rods, bows, and chips tomorrow.

new flavor

I tried to replicate a childhood favorite. Cream sickle.
The white vanilla is on the outside and the orange is the center.
That's the piping bag with the leftover ganache. There is just a slight bit of alcohol in it it form the liqueur. The center is very soft right now. It should firm up slightly but not too much.

a few more picts

The "Espresso love" came out very nice!

The candy cane dark tondo's are popular so I made more

This is the shell for the mint. I'll fill it tomorrow.

leftovers!

I decided to use the leftover ganache used for the normal fillings. I have some pyramid molds I've been wanting to use. They are really big! Ellen put a penny next to them. They all have different fillings so I'm thinking of calling them the "mystery of the pyramids".

picture night

My feet are done. We got a good start on the Holiday orders. Ellen was in packaging and I was in production for 9 hrs. We both started getting the "dropsies" so we decided to call it a day. This is a new product. I roasted hazelnuts this morning and they smelled amazing during and after the roast.

This is Dark milk chocolate with a dark walnut center. Notice the color. Just the bit of white chocolate in the dark turns it a reddish color. It's very much like coffee. Some beans like a dark roast, some a light roast. A light roast on these beans leaves them a deep red.

This is the salted caramel. One of my favorites.

I'm thinking of putting a box together with a variety of caramels. I have a recipe for a pumpkin caramel that uses a ginger bread spice combination. I'm thinking that would named the Jacqs.

This is the smaller tempering machine with milk chocolate in it.

This is about 20 lbs. It just looked like a cool shot.

new grinder

I needed 10 lbs of chocolate really fast. I didn't plan on using the new grinder so soon but I'm very happy I have it. I took it apart and cleaned it, got it wired with 220. It has a 3 phase converter to adjust the speed. The picture is the beans after 5 hrs of grinding. After using the smaller grinder this one is kick'n! I can't wait to see it at max capacity. It will process 4 times this amount.

salted caramels

Decided to get going on salted caramels for the holidays.

Holiday

I'm in the Holiday spirit today . I got a good start on some dark chocolate and the new white chocolate with crushed candy cane. They look really festive. Next time I'll use some green candy cane too. I'm going to try and make salted caramels today too.

The white turned out really nice. I forgot to put the soy lecithin in it but it seems to be fine. I might just continue to leave it out. My equipment is beeping me to come back and work.

Chocolate room PT II

I need another room. I have been making the room next to the chocolate room my hot room. When I mold I need a room temp of 66-68F. If I roast and winnow it heats the room up. I called food safety and was told as long as I make it like the existing room that it would be fine. I've got it ready for kitchen paint so tomorrow I'll spend the morning painting. In the chocolate room I'll get the dark chocolate tempered. That usually takes about 3 -4 hours to do that. I have to isolate the room from the paint smell because chocolate grabs smells. It's a getter!

The smaller Santha grinder is being used today for a white chocolate batch. The last batch was a bit hard to work with. It was thin so I tempered it a bit more and had issues with the speed that it crystallized. The areas of the mold that had more mass would transfer the heat quickly so there was an uneven thickness of the shell. Last night I started another batch of white and added the mass. Bob's Red mill non fat milk powder. Love that stuff! Sugar. Lecithin. Why lecithin? Chocolate and sugar do not get along chemically. Like the same ends of a magnet. Soy lecithin steps in to calm down the fight. They both like soy!

So on with the recipe development of white chocolate. I put the recipe together and boosted the sugar and milk product. The grinder was not happy. I added cocoa butter until it was just happy. Wheels turning nice. Then on refinement it started to choke up again. I added a bit more. I'm not a big white chocolate fan but I am now. Wow. Really good white chocolate. I'll add the real Vanilla bean at the end for the added punch and for the fun of seeing the specs of it in the chocolate. It's almost smooth enough right now but since it's going to need a few more hours I'll just let it grind overnight. It will be super smooth by then.
I just got some fresh eggnog. I can make a eggnog ganache with that, possibly spiked? I'm thinking a milk chocolate shell. Possibly a coffee shell. Stay tuned!

Today's delivery

This is what went out today.

Coconuggets, white pistachio, salted caramel, espresso love, dark/roasted macadamia, to name a few. I'm thinking of using a candy cane sprinkle on something for Christmas. Dark, milk or white?

packaging

Ellen is packaging tonight. The pistachios needed a bit of salt so I did a little sprinkle of French grey salt. That's fine but now the ingredient label needs to be changed! I will include that in the next process meeting to make that change and notify production/packaging.

First day of being LLC

The LLC paperwork came today. I have a embossed seal. How cool is that! Now we can get the merchants account and be able to accept credit cards. Then the shopping cart will be up and running!

I made "Tondo's" today. Dark Conacado. Organic fair trade/rain forest certified. Milk chocolate. Also organic with the same chocolate. I made some with Dark and Roasted macadamia nuts, white organic (with madagascar vanilla beans and you can see the specs of it) with pistachios, and one with dark milk chocolate with roasted cashews.

Ellen packaged up some coconuggets for "Dalai Java" in Canandaguia

for their grand opening this Saturday! Congrats to them!

It's here!

Another good day! The larger grinder came! Woo Hooo! Good thing because I was just told I have another big order. This is the grinder, and it's heavy because of the granite base and grinding wheels. 260 lbs. I was able to remove the wheels and lighten it up some and get it in without too much trouble. I'll wire it in and get it going tomorrow.

Started grinding the first batch of 100% organic chocolate. It smells quite nice. Very fruity. The Conacado beans have quite a bit of natural cocoa butter in them so I didn't need to compensate with as much added cocoa butter. When I add sugar it increases the mass component of the cocoa mass/cocoa butter ratio. I only added 7% compared to 20%. That said, the flavor is not diluted. You get a high intense chocolate flavor balanced with the right amount of (organic /evaporated)sugar. I will get this bean again. The sugar is amazing too. It's from Fla. so fair trade is not an issue. It's evaporated cane juice. Fruity, vanilla something else I can't recognise.
Business progress. Had an issue with the meaning of the company name. It's not in English. Ha! Maybe next time I'll push #2 for Espanol. That is now being expedited, and I should have the LLC paperwork in 1 week. That's needed to open a merchants account so the shopping cart on the website can use credit cards.
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Getting ready for tomorrow

This is the biggest box of chocolate I have ever seen!

It's for my first of many. White cashew, coconut, salted caramel, coffee. I also added a few white discs with pistachio's and some dark discs. I'll get a picture of the display tomorrow.

Salted caramels

I'm making salted caramels today. It smells amazing in here. These are the shells.

It's more of a ganache than a caramel but it's called a caramel because of the ingredients.

The sugar is brought up to just the point of smoking and immediately hit with a mixture of hot cream and Madagascar vanilla bean that I scraped into it. I put the vanilla in at the last moment so that it didn't loose any aromatics. That mixture is poured over white chocolate and stirred after everything gets to a happy temperature. Then when it's cool enough, it's piped into the molds. So now the ganache is in the mold. It takes a while to set because it was at a high temperature and lost it's ability to crystallize with stable crystals. Feel free to e mail me with questions about that.

I forgot to mention the salt. It's a grey salt. I like the roundness of it. It's the balance to the sweet component.

It's time to go see if I can cap it yet. It has to be firm enough so it doesn't get pushed out of the shell and cause a mess. Yes, I have done that.

I made 100. 25 are sold. I'm expecting a few to have shell bubbles that will go into a future scratch and dent category on the website with a discounted price. Sometimes you don't care what it looks like, you just want good chocolate. If you would like to put in an advanced order before the website shopping cart is online send me an email with your request.

UPS just came! I love the sound of that truck!

I just got an order of organic sugar from Florida. Now I have all the components to make an all organic chocolate. All organic chocolate! Very excited!

Molding day

I made a coffee ganache with a white stripe in the shell this morning.

That was a bit tricky so I think I'll leave out the stripe next time.

Next are "Tondo's" the chocolate disc. I'll be roasting and chopping up some cashews and hazelnuts to toss on the back side of them for some added fun and yum.

The latest news is that the grinder has been ordered. I went with the Spectra 40 which will grind 40 lbs of chocolate at a time. My smaller grinder will be used for smaller batches of nut paste and white chocolate.

The shipping boxes were ordered yesterday so I will be able to ship by next week.

todays fun

I thought I'd add this to the list of choices. It's still being designed as far as how I'm going to stripe them. I think I'll use a small piping bag next time.

The web page is getting close.

I will be in production tomorrow with the choice of the ones listed on the web site.

I made these just for fun today to try them out.

These are peanut filled pretzels dipped in white and striped in dark.

At work

This is me hard at work! Can you tell I have a sore neck?

These beans are really nice. My cracker and winnower were very happy using these beans.

The cocoa butter content is noticeable on the nibs. They have a nice shine to them.

1st bag ready for grinding

I just finished roasting, cracking and winnowing an bag of sur del lago beans. Next is grinding, then molding. It already smells good and it's not even grinding yet. I'll keep the lid on (while grinding) for this one to contain the smell. Roasty caramel is what hits me about this bean. It has a big chocolate smell compared with others I've had.

I need to invite some engineers over that like chocolate. The tool that I use to crack the beans is going to be obsolete soon. I used a food bin from a local restaurant supply store to hold the roasted/cracked/winnowed beans. They are now called "Nibs" These nibs will go into the large grinder that I purchased today. Yes! 500 lbs of mostly granite, 220 volt, will soon be here. I have another bag of fair trade/organic/rain forest certifed beans that I will start processing tomorrow. Then the fun starts! Included for your future enjoyment a picture of the bin nibs that I slightly underestimated on the bin size.

Thanks to Ellen the blog has a new look and the website is almost ready. Check it out and if you have any thoughts please feel free to comment.
I've been cracking the roasted beans and winnowing them for 3 days now. I built something to winnow the beans but the cracker needs a modification to keep up. I'm not sure how to go about that yet but it's annoying so I'll buy or make something soon.
Another load of beans from The Dominican Republic came today so it looks like a new and larger grinder will be in the near future.
I'm working on a new flavor for a ganache. I just got a very small bottle of white truffle oil that I'll be using to make a truffle truffle. It should be fun.
Another one is a peanut butter pretzel coated in chocolate. That should be out soon.

roasting

I'm roasting today. The beans are very nice. I'm hand sorting also. This saves time when I winnow them. I spread them out and look for defects.

Today's picture is of the roasted bean with the shell removed.

I got my first order even though the website is not up. I'm very excited about that because it was for 100 pieces. I'll be able to get pictures and descriptions for the web. The business cards will have the beans you see here plus the logo and contact info.

Break time is over and I'm off to tend the roaster.

cashew

I made cashew centers with white chocolate shell. I tried dipping but the cashew melts at the same temperature as the as the tempered white chocolate. So into a shell it went. I got raw cashews, roasted and ground them. The flavor is very similar to peanut butter. The white chocolate finished grinding this morning and I scraped some Madagascar vanilla bean into it. If you have had Green and Blacks white chocolate it is similar to that.

white chocolate

I made a batch of white chocolate. Now I can clean out the grinder and start processing the beans. My bean supplier told me he knows someone with a larger grinder that needs repair so I should be able to use the smaller one for white in the future. The white is done so I'm off to get that into containers. Some of it will go into the tempering machine to be used for the white shell and cashew center.

I also included a picture of the beans. I'll probably start roasting them today.

beans

The beans are here! Time to get to work.

More beans.

I 'm getting another 70 kg. of beans already. They are from the Conacado co-op in the Dominican Republic. They are Fair Trade Certified, Organically certified, Rain Forrest Alliance Certified. I will be getting a larger grinder soon.

hand dipping

Persistence paid off today. I finally got everything fine tuned and got the coconut centers hand dipped. They look much better than the molded ones.

It's time to start another batch now that I'm comfortable with the process.

I do have mistakes from yesterday I need to get rid of. Hmmmm what to do with them.

Today's treat

I ground up the last of the cocoa beans that I have. Fresh chocolate is amazing.

Today I tried hand dipping the coconut centers. That didn't work out so well so I used a mold.

beans

I just made my first large purchase of cocoa beans. My first Bag . It's from the tropical lowlands south and west of Lake Maracaibo in northwestern Venezuela. Wooo Hoooo! Back to work! I'll post picts when it gets here.

opening soon!

I passed inspection with Ag and Mkts. yesterday. Today I registered as LLC. Now one last stop at the Town offices to fill out some paperwork . Next is making some chocolate and taking pictures of it for the web page shopping cart. The first one on the list will probably be coconuggets, coconut hand dipped in dark chocolate.

equipment

The last of the equipment is ordered. 7-10 days it will be here and I'll be ready for inspection. Labels are finally done with much potential for ongoing improvement. After approval I can sell but I need to register as an LLC and get product liability insurance which will take about a week. At that time I will order a 70kg. bag of beans and start processing and selling.

Woot

Packaging is here! I think that is the one step that really kicked my A so far. Now for some labels. I need to have things on the label that satisfy health and safety so that is just rules . All info must be on them to get inspection so that is something that is determined by someone other than me. I'll get something drafted, call for an inspection, and then it's time to see the business attorney, insurance person, pay them, apply for a spot at the farmers market, then I can sell! If it were cooler I could sell online but it's too hot right now. So probably September I will take Internet orders so the website has to be a priority at some point. Ha, and I need to get a camera to take photos of chocolate! So I'll have to look into cameras too. Any help there would be appreciated.

Packaging!

Packaging is finally happening! It should be here next week. The last thing on the list is labels then it's time for inspection.

This week I think I've finally come up with some artwork for the packaging. I need the packaging in order to be inspected. Hopefully I'll have packaging soon.

This morning I got a piece of marble for working the chocolate on (tempering). It can also be used for chocolate decorations and making fondant. I got it for $40! so I'm very happy! It's got a retro shape that will complement the disco ball. I'm not sure how to make a stand for it yet. For now I'll put it on the stainless table.

Closer

Another step closer. Equipment: The new tempering machine is in place. Love it. Works great. It's a 12 kg Mol d'art. That the most chocolate I have ever had. Business: I'm looking at the advantages of being an S-corp, Sole P and LLP. If something happens I could loose everything including the house.
Sales/Marketing: I'm looking into a spot in the Public Market. I think it would be fun and I could also get fresh local produce to take home with me. While I'm there I can roast the beans and let the smell grab a few customers.
I'm also looking at the wine trails. Hmmm. Do people like chocolate and wine?
Packaging: I was thinking small 4 piece boxes or even a chocolate torte with a variety of ganache flavors. I really love making chocolate, making confections, truffles, and I like using the chocolate drizzled on toasted almond biscotti, a dark dense cake that only uses chocolate and eggs covered with a ganache that melts as soon as it hits your tongue.
Practice: Today I worked with fondant. I made mint piped into a dark chocolate shell. I made it slightly soft so if you bite it it will slowly run out. Fresh mint leaves chopped very small will be in the next batch for fun. I also made a cashew filling. If you like peanut butter cups you might like this very much. I roast the cashews, grind them silky smooth, add white chocolate and French grey salt.
Tomorrow I hope to get packaging finalized. That's tougher than it sounds. The package is me and my product. In order to get packaging, the smallest orders start at a few K. So when I place an order it's going to be large and thousands of dollars so it better be pleasing to the eye, easy to remember, simple and functional.
Inspection: A trip to the restaurant supply store for large approved food containers. Probably something like half sheets with lids. I'll probably need a sheet rack at some point.
Packaging, inspection, insurance, license, then it's time to have some fun.

espresso love

I just made the most fabulous espresso ganache! It's a recipe from a friend that has his own shop. He said it's very popular and I can see why. I'm letting it firm up a bit before I scoop it into balls.

roasting day

Since it started out snowing today I decided to do some roasting to warm things up a bit. The new melter/tempering unit came today. It's just to the right of the sink. It holds 24 lbs.

Back to roasting.

Equipment

I'm expecting a new piece of equipment tomorrow! It holds 24 lbs of chocolate! I decided not to get the tempering/depositing machine that I previously posted because I want to make confections as well as bars and that is just a single shot depositor. So, I'm getting something (Mol D'art) that will do the job for now and be useful in the future. When I get enough saved up I'll be ready for the ultimate chocolate machine which is quite a bit more $ that has attachments that grow with production demand. So now that I changed the business model, now I get to figure out a few more things, like should I have another packaging box, and should I do my own labels.

This weekend

This weekend I will be making samples for wedding favors.
Dark chocolate mint center,
Dark chocolate caramel center
Milk chocolate cashew
Milk chocolate espresso
Hope they like them.
My tempering machine crapped out so I'll be hand tempering the chocolate.
It's actually quite fun to hand temper and I get more consistent results.

New chocolate

This past week I've processed some new chocolate. I'm almost ready for my first tasting using my own chocolate. The first was Papua New Guinea. It has a citrus start and then a smokey hint to it. Another from Panama. I really like this one. It has the classic hot chocolate taste to it. Very nice. I just finished molding the Ghana. I roasted that slightly longer. That has nice roasted/caramel flavors and a bit bolder than the Panama. It comes from a Co-op. The last is Ivory Coast. Fair trade. That's currently in the grinder and should be finished tomorrow morning. I used the exact same recipe for each bean. It's 70% which translates to the weight of the roasted and shelled nibs, add 20% cocoa butter, to this total I add 30% sugar.

In the picture is some coconut treats. Ellen calls them coconuggets. I made some of them with a roasted macadamia nut in the center of the coconut. Then a dip in the chocolate. Yum.