Bacon Bourbon Pecan Bar

Disclaimer:  I am not a big fan of eating chocolate.  I love making it, but eating it, well I am ambivalant.  When I'm developing a new filling or bar,  I taste to make sure the flavor is what I am going for.  When I hit that spot, I record the recipe, and that's it.  I am not sneaking samples.  I mean, there are only so many calories in a day, right? 

But this bar - well I eat this bar.  And when I make it I package it up right away and hope that it sells out so I can't be tempted.

The Bacon Bourbon Pecan Bar started out as a search for flavors that would not just work well together, but really sing.  This bar delivers on that goal and more, a harmony of flavors that reveal themselves layer by layer to make a savory bar meant to be, well, savored.

Organic cacao nibs from Ecuador were soaked in bacon flavored bourbon for days, as were organic pecans.  Then the nibs were slow roasted for hours and ground into a dark chocolate.  The pecans were likewise roasted in butter and maple syrup.  And the leftover soaking bourbon?  That got used to make a maple syrup brittle that was added back into the ground chocolate.  Put some of the pecans on the back of the bar, and this bar was so many things:  savory, sweet, salty, smoky, and layers and layers of depth in flavor.

Our first small batch sold out in 8 hours.  So thank you for eliminating my temptation!  We will make it again.

Making your own colored cocoa butter

Painting chocolate molds allows another dimension in creating chocolate confections, and beautiful colour combinations are fun for both the person who makes them and the person who eats them. The cost of commercial cocoa butters can escalate quickly depending upon your appetite for a varied and expanded color palette and the quantity you are making.  

Make your own colors.  It is simple to do, saves money, and gives you the flexibility to produce your own custom colors and quantities.  Let's go through the materials you need for basic colors.

Colored cocoa butter requires just two ingredients:  cocoa butter and FDA Lake pigments.  Let's talk a little bit about what to look for in these ingredients.

• Cocoa butter should be deoderized.   You can also get bleached cocoa butter, which will have less of a yellow color.  However if you are looking for organic, you may have a hard time finding that.  A 20Kg block (I prefer block form as it keeps better) from Cocoa Supply costs, including shipping to CA, roughly $300US.  That comes out to $1.50 per 100g.
• Lake pigments are made by using an aluminum salt, and they disperse in fat.    Dyes release their color when encountering water, and they "bloom".   Commercial dyes start out as powders, but they will not color a fat based product (cocoa butter).  So do not buy a dye, buy a Lake pigment.  When you buy a Lake pigment, there will be a percentage number after the word Lake.  This tells you the percent dye content (even though technically Lakes are not dyes).  Again, do not use a dye, which requires water (except for Violet #2, but that is not approved for food).   Lake pigments will give you the color that you see, unlike dye powder.

for example, a label may read: FD&C Blue #1Lake 28-31%

this translates to Food, Drug & Cosmetic Blue #1Lake with 28-31% "dye content".  The higher the dye content the more color it has.  In this case, the 28-31% is on the high side for content.  You may be tempted to use D&C Violet #2.  This is a powder, and makes a beautiful purple, and unlike other dye colorants also is fat dispersible.  But it is not F (for Food) approved. 

I buy bulk FDA Lakes from Flavors & Colours.  While their web site sells perhaps a bit more than you will need in this lifetime, you can also get smaller quantities from them at reasonable prices on Amazon.  There are only 5 FDA approved Lakes, plus Titanium Dioxide you will need:

 FD&C Blue #1 Lake

FD&C Blue #2 Lake

FD&C Yellow #5 Lake

FD&C Yellow #6 Lake

FD&C Red #40 Lake

Titanium Dioxide

Perhaps you are wanting to use glitters and "natural" colorants.  You may then find this list very helpful: FDA List.  

Natural colors have their own set of challenges.  For example, reds can be made from the shells of insects and then your product may not be available for the vegan or vegetarian market.  Some colors wonk out with time and temperature.  Many don't store well.  And if you want yellow or white, please don't pay the fancy prices.  Yellow comes from tumeric powder and white, yup, it's titanium dioxide.  Also my experience with natural colorants is that they work reasonably well if used for hand painting, but not always so well for the airbrush as the vegetative matter from which many are derived is not ground up finely enough to keep the airbrush nozzle from clogging.  Try using a thinned down white chocolate for a backing color.  

Glitters and Lustre Dusts.  We all love shiny things, but while many are non toxic, many are not listed as edible by the FDA.  Again, take a look at the FDA List.   Edible lustre dusts are made and the big producers for the food industry are

Merck with their Candurin line of food shimmer colors are out of Germany

IFC with their ColorGlo pearlescent pigments are out of New Jersery USA

As far as I can tell, they only sell in bulk to large manufacturers, but most certainly these are resold by people like SugarArt, CK, Bakell, Chef Rubber, all at very high markups.  Perhaps the most "reasonable" priced source for this that I have found is Pfeil & Holing's Online Store when you buy the 50g size.  These luster pigments are made by plating mica platelets.  The smaller sizes are classified as "lusters" while larger platelets are "glitters".  Lusters don't add as much shine but they go through the airbrush a lot better because of their particle size.

One last comment on colors - please don't be tempted to buy colorants that are not FD&C classified, or EU classified.  There are lots of beautiful inexpensive colorants out there from Asia.  But there is no way to know the manufacturing standards or ingredients that went into them.

Equipment:

To make your colored CB it is handy to have:

• lidded glass jars - glass jars don't stain like plastic, and are easy to clean, put in the microwave or melter, and let you see the color and how well you have stirred the pigment into the cocoa butter.  I tend to work in 100 g increments and a 4oz lidded glass jar works well for me.  
• Bakery sheets - plain bakery sheets for working on and to pour cocoa butter out on
• Immersion Blender 
• Very very fine mesh sieve 
• Gram scale
• Tall metal or glass mixing container (I use a milk shake container)
• Metal spoons for the Lakes
• Dust Mask - The pigments are very fine and nasty, so be sure to wear a mask.
• Glass measuring cup to melt and pour cocoa butter
• Pyrex clear glass bowls

Process for 100 g colored butter

Transparent - good for airbrushing when you will back later with white chocolate or Titanium Dioxide

For each 100 g of cocoa butter, figure 5-12 grams pigment, depending upon how dark you want your final mix to be.  Less is lighter, more is deeper, darker.  I like to go dark and then add more cb later to bring it to the shade I want.

To each 100g melted cocoa butter, in a high sided container, place 10 g pigment and blend with immersion blender.  Strain through the sieve into a pyrex container.  Store. 

You can make more CB than what fits in your jars and store for later use, especially helpful for colors you use a lot.  Just pour the excess cocoa butter onto Bakery sheets (paper sheet pan liners), let set.  Break up when set and put in a plastic bag and store for later use. 

White - To each 100g melted cocoa butter, in a high sided container, place 10 g titanium dioxide pigment and blend with immersion blender.  Strain through the sieve into a pyrex container.  Add a few grains of Blue #1.  Just a tiny tiny bit!  The blue is going to counteract the yellow from the cocoa butter.  And in concentrated form it will have a barely blue hue.  But once you spray it on it will be white.

Opaque - good for airbrushing and when you are going to paint by hand and another color will be covering it 

Simply add white to the transparent color to get the tint you want.

A simple approach to making many colors is to mix up 5 transparent colors in each of the 5 lakes, and mix up White.   Say 500 g of each.  With these colors in liquid form, mix them together to obtain the colors you want.  This is much easier than playing with the powders to get your colors.   

Cost breakdown for 200g colored CB is $5 (prices include shipping, your shipping charges may be less)

• Jar with lid 8oz $1
• 200g CB $3
• 20g Titanium Dioxide (at .05 cents/g includes shipping price) $1 

   

 

The story of Rose Gold

Maybe you'd guess it, but maybe you wouldn't -  a lot of thought goes into making up these little chocolates, and the story behind the Rose Gold that is a limited edition debuting on Valentine's is one of those little love stories with a big back story.

Those of you who have been over to Sin Confections have seen the gardens in the front, and maybe seen the roses in bloom.  Sin is housed in a Carriage House, it was built in 1903 before there were cars and the Carriage House was built to hold the carriage.  The horses were in the yard, or stabled nearby.  In keeping with the theme of staying historic, we decided to plant roses in the front of the house that were around in 1903.

Antique Roses may not be as big or as showy as modern roses, but they sure smell great, and I got to thinking that it might be interesting to see how roses could be used in a confection.  Most folks just candy the rose petals, which I've done, but I wanted to take it a step further.  I made a couverture out of rose petals which tastes mighty amazing.

Dr. Jaman is the name of the antique rose that was harvested for the couverture.  This rose has a very heady scent, a beautiful color and thankfully was a prolific bloomer.  Sin grows organically.  We compost with yard waste and fertilize with worm castings from our worm composter.  We don't spray, period.  I say this because most roses are sprayed or have systemic pesticides and artificial fertilizer used in their growth, which makes for beautiful roses but not so nice for being edible... So, it not for the worms, we wouldn't have these special roses to make into couverture.

Petals are collected in the morning hours when they have the most flavor and scent, frozen, dried and powdered.  An entire season of petals yielded less than 5 ounces of powder.  This is the key ingredient for the couverture that makes up the outside of the rose gold bon-bon.  There are no artificial flavors or colors.  What you see and taste is Dr. Jaman.  It didn't make much.

The gold on the outside of the confection is 23K gold leaf that was left over from when we did the restoration of the interior of the house.  We have compo molding running around the bottom of our tin ceilings and when we stripped the paint and restored,  the craftsman who had worked in the national cathedral and palace in Mexico City was very excited to gild the molding as he had done years ago in La Cuidad.  I got to watch him do the painstaking work of gilding the molding, and learned a bit on how to work with the gold leaf.

Finally, the terrific shine on the chocolate to complement the gold was a technique I learned just a few weeks ago at a class in Las Vegas.  Take a good look at the top photo, and you can see my reflection in it when I was taking the shot.  By mixing cocoa butter with the couverture and spraying the mold under the right conditions, the beauty of the rose petal color has a shine that compliments and competes with the gold leaf.  It is a wonderful confluence of nature and beauty that makes up this special couverture for Valentine's Day.

Pumpkin Patch

The  Pumpkin Patch

 Fall Holidays always feature pumpkins, so why not go all the way out with a chocolate pumpkin that is filled with seasonal candied fruit?  That was the thought behind the small pumpkin patch that we created this year.  

The pumpkin mold was first painted, then filled with chocolate to make a shell:

and finally stuffed with fruit dipped in chocolate:  candied orange slice, candied ginger, candied grapefruit rinds, cranberries, apricots and stroopwafels. 

After the two sides of the pumpkin were gently melted and glued together with the treats inside, they were decorated with a marzipan leaf, glued on with chocolate.  The mold for the leaves was one of the antique marzipan molds that came out of a warehouse in Belgium that was found when it was cleaned out.  

Not all pumpkins are created equal.  Diversity comes in all colors!

Easter Parade

Well, that time of year is rolling around.  The time when we get out all the Easter Molds and go to town.  Sin Confections has a fair amount of antique Easter Molds, made for molding chocolates, marzipan, and ice cream.

Going into the stash of molds that came from Belgium for the marzipan, a few Easter themed figures were made up in almond marzipan.  Since marzipan is so rich, the molds are small.  The exception to that was the nest, which is quite heavy.  No problem.  We all want to eat marzipan around here.

These little lambs are in bright pink and a luster pink for Easter.

These rabbits are about 2 1/2 inches high.

Here's a closer look.

These chicks just hatched!  About 2 inches high.

These singing birds are under an inch tall.

To be fair, the ice cream mold isn't specific for Easter, but it worked well as a nest for the little chicks molded up in the marzipan.  Next week we'll start posting some of the Easter chocolates.

Nuts about Marzipan

People ask "How do you stay so thin working with chocolate?"  Well, other than going to the pool and swimming laps most weekdays, I try to refrain from sampling what I make.  Actually it's easier than it sounds after a while.  That's not the case for me with marzipan.

Antique metal marzipan mold for walnuts

I'm nuts about marzipan.  Not the sickly sweet creamy smooth paste that can enrobe cakes or what you buy at the grocery.  No, I'm talking about homemade marzipan that I grind up myself, often to the consternation of the food processor that frequently smokes and shuts off.  I have to wait for it to cool down and then start grinding over again.  Someday I'll get a professional processor or in my dreams a melanger, but that day is not here yet.  Unless people start appreciating marzipan in this country and I start selling lots of it and have to make many batches.  I'm hoping!

The final walnut from mold above, once painted.

I like to make my own because I like it not to be too sweet.  It also has a little texture.  A processor will never get it perfectly smooth (that's where the melanger comes in).  But I'm OK with that.  And you should be too.  Why settle for mass produced commercial marzipan when you can have something better?  OK, I'll get off the soapbox now.

I lucked into some antique marzipan molds in Belgium, and am having a great time putting them to use.  I got about 40 of them, so you'll see them pop up from time to time.  Quite a few are Easter themed (a future post), a bunch are pigs (a future post and some shown in the 1/1/18 post).  But beyond the traditional fruits there are some that are rather eclectic (crayfish, feathers) and quite a few animals.  I molded up some animals this past weekend when I made the Easter selections.  So I thought I'd share them.

This little bear is just about 2 inches high.  Not so easy to mold, his little feet didn't want to release from the mold.  So I just made one.  All that fur, and the detailed pads on his paws are part of the mold, not just painted on.    I've named him Gary, in honor of my friend who has "Bear" as his nickname.

Here is another small mold, this time an owl.  Her name is Yvette.  She has a very nice backside, too. 

While she is modest, Yvette did agree to turn around so you can see the detail of her wings and feathers, again part of the mold, not just painted on.

Most folks that buy these little marzipan figures don't eat them.  They put them on the shelf!  While they do last a good long time, and I am happy to think of them as art, I certainly don't have the discipline to resist biting off their heads and munching down.  I can always make more...

I hope you give marzipan a try!

Handpainted Transfer Sheets

Port Ganache Praline with hand painted transfer sheet design

For those of you not familiar with the term "transfer sheet", it's nothing more than a piece of acetate that has pigmented cocoa butter covering one side of it.  I say "nothing more" but the transfer sheets one can buy vary in quality and colors and there are a multitude of designs for almost any idea, holiday or whim.  Check out Chef Rubber and Chocotransfersheets for two sources of beautiful sheets.  Basically, they make their sheets with a specialized silk screen process that uses pigmented cocoa butter as the "ink".

Custom Painted Transfer Sheet designed for Valentines Day

Some times I want a specific design that I can't get from either place, and I only want one or two sheets.  Since I'm a long way from being a big production house pumping out zillions of chocolates, I make my own.  I find painting a transfer sheet can be very meditative.  I guess we all have our thing.  Some days painting transfer sheets is mine.

These lemon-mint pralines used the transfer sheet shown in the  next two photos below.

Anyway.  Just how does a transfer sheet work, you ask?  Well, you place the acetate sheet paint side down on liquid chocolate.  And the heat of the liquid chocolate acts like a sort of solvent that melts the cocoa butter.  As the chocolate and the cocoa butter cool, they become one (see, that zen thing going on here?).  Once the chocolate has set, the acetate sheet is peeled off of the chocolate, and the cocoa butter design that was once on the acetate has now magically transferred to the chocolate.

Mold seen from Back with transfer sheet and magnets

There are some special mold that have a removable bottom into which one places the transfer sheet, and then places the bottom back into the mold.

Mold seen from Front with Cavities

The mold and the bottom have magnets that hold them fast together, and keep the transfer sheet in place.  If the sheet moved, then the transfer would get all muddy looking and of course you would have to feed all those chocolates to your partner and kids...

Filled Mold (can't see transfer sheet)

That's only one way to use transfer sheets.  You can also just cut pieces of the sheet and place it on top of liquid chocolate, and make sure it doesn't move.  That's the process used here.  I made some wasabi-lime truffles, and made up a transfer sheet in greens.  I wanted to give the impression of sushi.

It's also a great way for people to decorate their own chocolates.  My friend Judi, a beautiful fine arts painter, came over the other day and we played around in the studio.  She painted up her own transfer sheet, then we made up a box of chocolates with them for her to take home.  Edible art!