Spotted bunny

[eeyore]

I made a 3D bunny with tempered chocolate. it came out of the mold beautifully. It was dark and shiny with no bloom.

The next day he was a spotted bunny. The chocolate had bloomed I guess. Why did this happen? It wasn't hot or even warm that night. How should I have stored him?

thanx
eeyore

 

[thebighat]

That happens to me too. I think I hit the temperatures right and next day...bloom. I think it's because the chocolate was not stirred enough. Since it is an emulsion, if you look carefully, you can see an iridescent sheen in swirls on the melted chocolate. I had a Swiss instructor who used to talk about "purple haze" and I don't think he meant lsd or jimi hendrix. My guess is that when you can see that sheen, the chocolate hasn't been fully re-emulsified.

 

[isa]

I had the same problem once. When I melted the chocolate, the temperature was too high.

 

[w.debord]

You didn't have it tempered correctly because the room wouldn't have made a difference if it was. You were close...considering it took a while to show the bloom. When your temp. is way off you can barely unmold the item and the bloom shows up right away.

You can spread a thin layer of chocolate on your metal spatula. It will harden rather quickly (compared to waiting hours for you finished piece to harden) so you can see if you got your temper right. It will show white streaks or blemishes quickly if you over heated your chocolate.

I never temper my chocolate...there isn't a reason why I should unless I wanted to sell it or display it for a long time period. You don't have to either unless you are looking for the practice. I always use the refidgerator method.

 

[thebighat]

whenever I have to pipe ornaments for desserts I always temper the chocolate. Once I thought I could get away with piping untempered and refrigerating them till service. Now, I don't know if this is what made the difference, but I melted the little square chocolate chunks I put in the cookies and piped away. Next day the chef told me that they had to stand by the dining room door and give each one a little flick to make it stand up because they all fell over. Tempering is not that big a deal anyway, if you don't complicate it. I chop the stuff very fine, melt it to 113, cool it to 80 then reheat it to 90. I use a cordon rose thermometer and I can barely see the mercury, but it's better than digital.

 

[w.debord]

??????the chocolate wilted? That's determined by the consistancy of the item it's placed in. It as to be strong enough to hold the weight of the garnish.

Refidgerated chocolate doesn't change the chocolates firmness into anything capible of wilting. It makes it firmer than tempered.

 

[eeyore]

Thanks,

I thought that if it wasn't tempered properly it always showed up right away. **sigh....back to the lab!

refrigerator method? what is it and how far ahead can you do it?

Do you just mean piping and refrigerating right before service?

I cant do that. This is for display Easter. I wont have time the day of(or maybe even the day before.

Ill try again and let you know.

I guess all pastry chefs have to go through this process of bad tempers to get it down.

eeyore

 

[thebighat]

I think the chocolate ornaments wilted because I made them out of melted chocolate chips/chunks, not couverture or chocolate chopped off the big blocks of Callebaut I normally use. And I wouldn't sweat this tempering thing. Nail your temperatures, that is, melt to 113, cool to 80, reheat to 90 for use. And stir frequently. Just keep it simple. Don't table it, ice it, refrigerate it. Melt it to 113 and wait it out to 80. Gently,in 10 second increments, reheat to 90, stirring gently constantly. BTW, what kind of chocolate are you using? If it isn't couverture I would think it would be very thick to be pouring into a bunny mold. Properly tempered couverture is very fluid. If you go past 122, nfg, if you go past 95 on the warming end, you have to start over. There's not a lot of wiggle room. I have a ton of notes on handling chocolate on my old computer. If I can get them off and into this one and convert them to html, I'll put them on the web. There's a lot of little hints about how to handle chocolate, do's and don'ts.

 

[w.debord]

Follow thru melting your chocolate as if your tempering it (you still don't want to over heat it). Then you use your chocolate exactly as planned, molded, grained, drawn items, etc... BUT as soon as your done making your decoration you place it in the refidgerator for it to harden. It only takes a couple of minutes to harden and you can really work quickly this way on your time schedule.

Then I unmold and glue together molded items or what-ever. I make garnishes months and months ahead of time and store them in tightly covered containers. Although for very fine lace work it's too hard to store with-out breakage.

This is how I do all of my chocolate garnishes for my plated desserts (and holiday items). For small quantities I use those cheap "disposible" containers their marketing in place of tupperware...by the saran wrap in the store.

I have some left-over lobster shaped chocolates from last year in the cooler that still look great! I even make-up transfer sheets ahead of time and wrap them. When I'm really busy all I have to do is cut them amd place on my cakes.

With ONE CONDITION! You can't use a cooler that has ALOT of moisture to harden and store your chocolate in. It will ruin things... Actually you can if you work fast and wrap extremely well.

 

[thebighat]

my chocolate lab study notes, for what they're worth.

chocnotes

 

[eeyore]

Thanks bighat!

I printed them out but I have been so busy I haven't read them all yet.

Update: I tried again Friday. I tempered the chocolate (Callabaut) and poured into bunny mold and voila! Sunday he was still dark and shiny!! YAY!

I used the table method this time. Before I did the seeding method. Maybe thats the prob.--I guess it is easier but less reliable.

Thank you all again.
eeyore