Notes: On a trip to Montreal this summer, I made a point of stopping by Chocolat-Chocolat, a store which I have purchased from online many times. Their retail building is a very cute house with a massive warehouse in the back. In the front is a well-stocked library of books and magazines, many in French. I had my eye on a shrink-wrapped book of macaron recipes as well as some of the Wybauw professional books. Another room featured various forms of packaging: boxes, inserts, ribbons. The warehouse in the rear had metal shelves stacked high with molds of all sorts, dipping equipment, transfer sheets.
I used some of those purchases from that trip in this weekend's chocolates. This was my first time using magnetic molds: the backs are made of metal and are removable so you can place a transfer sheet on the bottom. I made the Earl Grey ganache recipe from Recchiuti's book using a good-quality Nilgiri tea from CJay Tea. The large quantity of leaves yielded a prominent tea and bergamot flavour.
Unfortunately, the chocolates stuck to the mold and Dr. S and I banged on them for 15 minutes to get them all out. I think a number of factors led to this: 1) The tempered chocolate I used to line the molds was made partly from chocolate leftover from previous experiments; 2) The transfer sheets were damaged by heat and were probably unstable; 3) I chilled the molds briefly before sealing them so I didn't get a good clean scrape on the tops; 4) The star shapes were not completely filled and the air gaps might have caused problems.
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