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.