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.