candy-making help... aka, paging obby...

[welfareloser]

'kay. so it's time to make the christmas candy again. my favorite is this evil coffee-toffee ring i devised last year... i place 6 good coffee beans in the bottom of each ring of a mini-donut pan, sprinkle with heath toffee bits, and then fill mold with melted chocolate. people inhale them. people being mostly me :D

so, my question... i like hershey's chocolate bars way better than the candy-making chocolate, like baker's squares. however, a day or two after hershey's has been melted and re-solidified, it gets that white crackliness on the surface - "ash," if you will. it makes it look old and nasty and unappetizing, tho there is nothing wrong with it. there has to be a way to prevent it, i just don't know what it might be... some sort of surface glaze? anybody know?

[Jeffbx]

You need to temper (http://www.baking911.com/chocolate_temper.htm) the chocolate to avoid this (thank you, FoodTV!)



***WARNING!**** Good information, but bad HTML, ugly colors and poorly laid out page!! Your eyes may bleed as a result of reading this page for extended periods of time!

[chrissy]

It's caused by too much humidity/too high of a storage tempurature. It's the separation of the cocoa butter in the chocolate.

Store around 60 degrees and less than 50% humidity

It's referred to as Bloom

(know I am not obby, but Aunt taught me a lot about chocolates growing up. Now if I can just get her to give me her molds :) )

[gear02]

You need to temper (http://www.baking911.com/chocolate_temper.htm) the chocolate to avoid this (thank you, FoodTV!)

good lord...someone needs to shoot whoever designed that webpage...

[whitak24]

good lord...someone needs to shoot whoever designed that webpage...
:stupid: :stupid: :stupid:

my head hurts from looking at it for just 30 seconds :eek:

[welfareloser]

ahhh, thank you, all.

and yes, that is an eye-stabber of a webpage. i finally managed to glean: melt. pour. cool. reheat just a bit. cool again. no bloom.

i should be able to pull that off...

[BrewMaster]

that website hurt my eyes but it did have lots of interesting information on it. i love chocolate, now i understand it a bit better.

[zippyjuan]

My eyse! My eyes! Can somebody please rub some chocloate on them for me? Oh yea, and more for my mouth too! Mmmmm- chocolate!

[Kim]

I thought that adding a bit of fat while it is melting would stop the white stuff????

[welfareloser]

mmm... extra fat can't be a bad idea one way or the other...

[BrewMaster]

i always add a bit of butter and that works for me. i guess that lends some evidence to the fat thing. of course, chocolate never lasts 24 hours around me, so I may not have given it time to bloom.

[oblongmelon]

I'm impressed people ! ..but I must say I no longer feel needed *sniff*...(lol) anyway..tempering the chocolate is good....but make sure when you are trying to do this-the boys aren't pulling on your legs for play time..working with chocolate is a precise and sometimes crappy science..definately use a double boiler but make sure no water gets into the chocolate or you batch is pretty much screwed..it almost gets a curdled effect..What your making sounds delish! Oh, and btw-do NOT refridgerate chocolate of any kind for long periods of time-it gets bloom from that as well.

[BrewMaster]

yes, refrigerating chocolate is a no-no. think about solubility curves when plotted versus temperature. the lower the temp, the less solute you can get into the solvent.

[Grubbie]

I love refridgerated chocolate fudge.... mmmm chocolate fuddge.... I need to go place an order with my grandfather.....