Need Your Advice

[Kelleybean]

I am a simple house wife with a passion for chocolate and a desire to be a successful person. I want to make chocolates of high quality for friends and family and eventually add these chocolates to my web site along with the specialty foods & gifts that I have.

I love Lindt chocolate and I am wondering if you can use their chocolate as a chocolate to melt and pour into molds. Their Excellence Bars have some great flavors and I would love to use them if possible. Can anybody help me and share some of their great wisdom with a “Newbie” such as myself? This would be greatly appreciated.

TIA,
Kelley

[Blade55440]

I'm still a student so I'm not an expert on which chocolates are of the higher quality flavor-wise and such, but if you plan on chocolate work, then master the art of tempering your chocolate, it'll harden faster, have a nice sheen to it, and look so much better than if you just melted it down and poured it into a mold.

[Kelleybean]

Thanks so much for your advice. I though that I had the tempering thing down but after the chocolates for Christmas sat for a few days they were kinda grainy. Oh well, I guess I’ll just have to try again. Good thing I am using my family as test dummies. LOL!

[jessiquina]

help with tempering:

melt chocolate in double boiler. when you stick your pinkie finger into the completely melted chocolate and its hot- take it off the double boiler.

stir in small chunks of chocolate (about a third of the weight that you started with) until your pinkie finger says that its cold . take out any chunks you may have at this point.

return to a double boiler for about 10-15 seconds.

****keep stiring with a spatula the entire time.
no air/water should be incorporated into the chocolate.

molds should be dry and scratch free.

dont rush it!

USE A METAL MIXING BOWL!!!! glass retains too much heat.

[Kelleybean]

Hi,

Thanks for the advice on tempering. I have a tempering thermometer so I won’t have to use the “pinkie technique .‘ If my husband ever caught me doing that he would kill me. I have another question. I REALLY like Lindt chocolate. Their Excellence Bars have some wonderful flavors. Can I use them to make molds and such? If so, does that need to be tempered?

[foodpump]

Kelly, if you're serious about this, start looking into wholesale pastry suppliers for bulk chocolate. Lindt is one of my favorite brands, and I had the opportunity to visit their factory just outside of Zürich.

Lindt Couvetures (enrobing or dipping chocolate) comes in bulk 2 kg packaging (two 1 kg slabs) and will be cheaper than buying retail sized individually wrapped bars.

[Kelleybean]

Food pump,

Thanks so much for getting back to me. Yes, I am very serious about this. I really appreciate the advice on the Lindt chocolate. As I said before, Lindt is my favorite. I went to a Lindt store in Shomburg IL and asked if they had couveture but the woman had no clue as to what I was talking about. I am so envious of your trip to Zurich and your visit to the Lindy factory. That must have been extremely interesting. Feel free to share your experience with me. If you would like you can email me at kpklein@sbcglobal.net . Thanks again for sharing with me.

[louise]

Hi, any bulk, baking, commercial type of chocolates you buy in store are already tempered but as soon as you apply heat to use for your own creations, they will need to be tempered. It's extremely important to temper chocolate properly and precisely to maintain the taste, smoothness and texture. Depending on type of chocolates (dark, couverture, milk) the temperature will vary.

I have only had Lindt eating chocolates and not used for baking, but I am sure they are great. Since you are very serious about making this into a business, I suggest you try and compare different brands (from Valrohna to SCharffer Bergen to Ghiradhelli) to get the taste you really like.

[Kelleybean]

Hi Louise.

Thanks for getting bak to me. For the time being I'm just doing this as a hobby. I want to make sure that I have al the necessary skills down before I try to sell anything.

Thanks Again,
Kelley

[Kelleybean]

I have searched in every direction that I can think of and I can not find the Lindt chocolates in bulk I am getting quite frustrated. Would you be able to give me a site where I can find it? Thanks.

[jessiquina]

check at your local restaurant supply store. ask them if they/could they bring in some bulk couverture. i like the callebaut dark/milk/white chocolate. about $50 /11lbs.

[Kelleybean]

Thanks Jessiquina.

[foodpump]

Check out www.qzina.com. They carry a number of top quality couvetures in bulk, as well as a lot of other chocolate related stuff.

Hope this helps

[chrose]

FP I would like to thank you for the link to Qzina.com. I have been searching for the Barry Decor for a long time and all I have found is cases of it with exhorbitant freight costs, and they won't split cases to absolute dead ends. I could not find old receipts to see where I bought it a long time ago.
Qzina has it, I can buy 1 bucket and since I will be down in Florida in a month, I can drop by and pick some up and save the freight!
So thank you for that great link!

[foodpump]

Your welcome. They've (Qzina) got huge warehouse here too, chock-full of goodies. They even run classes and courses and sell small tempering units too.