Making bonbons
Jun. 23rd, 2014 10:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
janestarzAfter ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
dolphirl's hen party I thought making chocolate bonbons was easy. I bought supplies to do some hobbying with chocolate last week, and yesterday I set out to make some bonbons.
Well, let me tell you: it was HARD.
And I'd done it before!
At Winters, where we had the workshop, they had large machines rolling chocolate over and over, everything was molten and ready. The chocolate was dark and creamy. It was also very fluid.
I prepared the white chocolate au bain marie, but even though the water beneath the chocolate was near boiling point, my chocolate didn't become fluid. Even stirring it with my new "chocolate ladle" didn't help. I added some cream, but it just became a solid paste of white chocolate.
I decided to make it into the bonbon filling, added more cream and chopped vanilla. Then I started over, using milk chocolate. I use chocolate pastilles especially meant for melting in a chocolate fountain or for making bonbons, so I had the right stuff to work with.
The milk chocolate worked better, but it wasn't as fluid as the chocolate at Winters. Stirring it helped a lot. I managed to ladle the chocolate into my silicon mold. With some trouble I had enough chocolate to fill all the flower-shaped holes, but because my chocolate wasn't very runny, I couldn't easily get it out again. I wanted to make a small layer around the bottom and sides as a coating, but if I were to turn the mold over, the chocolate would probably just stay put. I ended up using a teaspoon to ladle the superfluous chocolate out. I skipped the part where you use a vibrating thing (I only have my electric toothbrush, believe it or not) to vibrate the mold so the bubbles go out of the chocolate. I doubt that would have worked with a silicon mold. That will probably work better with a plastic mold.
I cooled the chocolate in the freezer for a bit and filled the bonbons with the white chocolate, cream and vanilla mixture.
After about an hour and a half of fiddling with sticky, gooey, half-molten chocolate, I ended up with one whole batch of chocolate bonbons. There are 15 of them, and it took forever to make!
It sure makes me appreciate the local bonbon store a lot more. I hope the next batch will be more fun to make. I could always use the mold to make chocolates, without filling. That would go a lot faster.
dolphirl's hen party I thought making chocolate bonbons was easy. I bought supplies to do some hobbying with chocolate last week, and yesterday I set out to make some bonbons.Well, let me tell you: it was HARD.
And I'd done it before!
At Winters, where we had the workshop, they had large machines rolling chocolate over and over, everything was molten and ready. The chocolate was dark and creamy. It was also very fluid.
I prepared the white chocolate au bain marie, but even though the water beneath the chocolate was near boiling point, my chocolate didn't become fluid. Even stirring it with my new "chocolate ladle" didn't help. I added some cream, but it just became a solid paste of white chocolate.
I decided to make it into the bonbon filling, added more cream and chopped vanilla. Then I started over, using milk chocolate. I use chocolate pastilles especially meant for melting in a chocolate fountain or for making bonbons, so I had the right stuff to work with.
The milk chocolate worked better, but it wasn't as fluid as the chocolate at Winters. Stirring it helped a lot. I managed to ladle the chocolate into my silicon mold. With some trouble I had enough chocolate to fill all the flower-shaped holes, but because my chocolate wasn't very runny, I couldn't easily get it out again. I wanted to make a small layer around the bottom and sides as a coating, but if I were to turn the mold over, the chocolate would probably just stay put. I ended up using a teaspoon to ladle the superfluous chocolate out. I skipped the part where you use a vibrating thing (I only have my electric toothbrush, believe it or not) to vibrate the mold so the bubbles go out of the chocolate. I doubt that would have worked with a silicon mold. That will probably work better with a plastic mold.
I cooled the chocolate in the freezer for a bit and filled the bonbons with the white chocolate, cream and vanilla mixture.
After about an hour and a half of fiddling with sticky, gooey, half-molten chocolate, I ended up with one whole batch of chocolate bonbons. There are 15 of them, and it took forever to make!
It sure makes me appreciate the local bonbon store a lot more. I hope the next batch will be more fun to make. I could always use the mold to make chocolates, without filling. That would go a lot faster.
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