Inspiration Collection

The Inspiration Collection

We were fortunate to go to Paris at the end of 2025.  What did we do?  We went to chocolate shops, of course.  Paris abounds with small chocolate shops, too many to comprehend.  We focused on ones that were smaller in size (although many had multiple locations) and artisan in nature.   We focused on shops that sold pralines and bon bons rather than bean to bar but we managed to visit a couple of those too.  If you would like to see where we went, reference the map below.  For good measure a Madeline and a Macaron shop are also listed.  Let me know if there are any you think I should add for next time. 

Sin Confections Guide to Paris Chocolate

 What  has struck me with each visit to the chocolate shops of Paris (yes, we have gone on this pilgrimage multiple times), is that the chocolates for the most part are slabs of ganache cut on the guitar cutter and then placed through the enrober to be coated in chocolate.  There are few molded pieces, and even less use of color.  For those of you who are familiar with the chocolate case at Sin Confections, this is a polar opposite of how we make chocolates. 

 Jed Johnson, chocolatier at Denver Williams in Paris' 10th offered me excellent insight into why that is.  The French, he explained, consider color on chocolates "too much".  Likewise large pieces of chocolate; too much.  Use of color is considered to verge to more of a Belgian influence.  And he pointed out, titanium dioxide, a white coloring approved in the USA has been outlawed in Europe.  Without a white backing to  cover the inherent brown of chocolate itself, vibrant colors are difficult to achieve.  

In short, Sin Confections chocolates would flop in Paris. 

Paris' small squares and rectangles of different flavored ganache are distinguished by their coatings: dark, milk; and the pattern embossed into the still fluid chocolate as it emerges from the enrober: a circle, a line.  Some may have cocoa nibs or salt on top.  Some a line of chocolate on top.  Small, subtle pieces are the norm.  

Visually they strive for elegant simplicity.  Wherever we went, the almost unerring commonality among shops was the small rectangle.  Notable exceptions were with  C. Grolet and J. Genin whose pieces were molded and in the case of J. Genin, had some color.

The interiors varied, with each house having it's own spin on dark, caramel, etc.  Again, because of the size (small) and perhaps the Paris preference, it was a single flavor revealed in each piece.  There just was not room for multiple layers in the majority of the chocolates.  

We came away from the trip with many boxes of chocolates (for professional research, of course) and a profound sadness at what we considered a lack of visual and sensory stimulation with Paris' chocolate offerings.  

And yet... 

So many chocolate shops thrive there and stay in business and have customers come back again and again.  Customers agonize over the five specialty boxes they were gifting, and what flavors to put in each.  Stopping into the local chocolate shop was a weekly or daily routine (and as easy) as stopping into the local boulangerie.  People made having chocolate a part of everyday.  It isn't just for special occasions.  A simple end to a day that was tasteful and elegant and simple.  An affirmation that life was special and could be celebrated in this small way, every day.

And that was our ah-ha moment.  The epiphany.   The inspiration to not to use color and multiple flavors, but create a collection of elegant simplicity.  A collection that was affordable for everyday. 

The Inspiration collection consists of nine small pieces, a bit of joy for each day of the week, and a couple left over to share.  It's affordable elegance.  No pieces are colored, but quite a few are molded.  We could not restrain ourselves to only squares and rectangles.   The squares are lovingly hand dipped in 73% dark chocolate, and the molded ones in  both 73% and 61%.  Fillings run from white to 73% dark, depending upon the flavor.

We'll  keep making the multi layered painted molded beauties.  That's our passion.   But Paris taught that is not the only way or the best way.  And the highly painted pieces we are know for certainly do stand out when surrounded by the elegant simpler ones. 

 

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!

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!

Playing with Tape

Instagram is great.  So much inspiration and great energy from people we might never get to know otherwise.  I discovered Hiba Chocolates  and in this post she really got me thinking about what I wanted to accomplish with my chocolates this year.  I've decided it was the year to experiment and perfect my craft.  So with a big thanks to Hiba, I've started working away at it.  My friends are thankful to her as well, they get to eat all the rejects as I experiment.

I started with something simple, playing with tape.  I used both vinyl and paper, and have had much cleaner edges with vinyl tape.  Some of the tape is very thin, about 1mm.  Here's the output from playing with tape a bit.

Tape down the middle, and a toothpick to scrape away the paint for X&O

Criss Cross Tape, two different widths, and three dots using different width "dotters".

Criss-Cross tape, same width.

Thank you Hiba!

Meet Uny the Marzipan Pig

Next off the spray booth runway is Uny, the smallest piggy of them all.  But don't let Uny's size (about an inch high) fool you.  Uny may be the mightiest of all the marzipan pigs.  Uny's certainly the bravest.  That's because Uny is our transgender marzipan pig.

I made Uny in honor of my nephew, who used to be my niece.  Let's hope there is room in every family for every type of pig, regardless of how they identify.

Uny tends to get a little cold in winter, hence the sweater.  I believe it was a Christmas gift, given the colors.  Don't you think it  brings out the sparkle in the eyes?

Heidi the Marzipan Pig

The first Piggy out on the runway is Heidi.  She is the most traditional of all the pigs I made.  But when I make her next time, I will put a little gold disk in her mouth to represent a gold coin, a symbol of wealth.

Heidi has been at a Swiss spa in the Alps, munching away on a diet of sweet green meadow grasses and alpine herbs.  At night she got mud baths and massages, which accounts for her lovely glowing complexion.  You have to admit, that spa she went to really made quite a transformation from that leaden figure of just a few days ago, 

and that pale complexion she previously had.

With those lovely spots, I don't think that she'll have any trouble finding a dance partner to wallow around with, do you?

Marzipan Pigs - Ring in the New Year with Health, Wealth & Luck

As a child, winter time always included lots of great German ethnic food.  There was the lebkuchen that my grandmother and mother made in the summer and stored away for Christmas, the lightly sweet stollen that always graced the breakfast table on Christmas morning, and then there was the marzipan.  From Germany boxes would arrive, filled with the small fruit shapes of oranges, lemons, bananas and apples.  And in my Christmas stocking there was always a marzipan pig.  I made quick work of the candy, and was always on the lookout for when the adults would leave the living room where the open box of marzipan fruits were on display for guests.  It was amazing how fast guests seemed to go through that marzipan...

Now that I'm older, I still have a soft spot for marzipan.  Indeed, my brother sends me a huge box of those little fruit shapes every year to make sure that I am not without during the holidays.  I try not to open it.  So far that box has been sitting in the living room unopened for a week now.  I guess as an adult I realize why that box was always out for guests.  The commercial mass produced marzipan just doesn't make my adult taste buds happy.  But that doesn't make me love it any less.  I just had to learn to make it on my own.

So I did.  I could mold by hand the basic fruit shapes.  Still, I longed for the fanciful shapes of my childhood.  And then I discovered a person in Belgium that had been cleaning out an old factory, and came across boxes of old metal marzipan molds.  Heavy industrial molds that were (to me) in eclectic shapes (think crayfish and leeks).  Only problem:  he only shipped within the EU.  No problem: I have a brother who lives in the EU.  So they got shipped to him.  Since my brother comes to visit the States only every few years, I knew that I'd have to just buy ALL the molds.   New problem:  how to get more than 50 Kg of molds over in carry on baggage without paying a surcharge. Well, after much creative wrangling, the molds made it from Belgium to Copenhagen to Florida and then out to California.  Freight charge $85.

The seller had a LOT of pig molds.   Why?  Frankly I can't figure out why some of them got made.  I mean, I have pig molds of trotters and bacon and sausage.  As if they were custom made for a butcher.  But the stand alone pigs have been traditional gifts for the New Year because they are symbols of prosperity and luck and health.  So let's bring out the marzipan molds and make some traditional pigs to ring in the New Year with health, wealth, and good luck.

Here's what we'll start with.  A stand alone very dapper pig wearing a top hat, and carrying a purse (wealth) and some four leaf clovers (luck).   

Enter the Dragon

The largest mold I have is a dragon, that was made in Italy specifically for the Chinese Year of the Dragon.  But why use it for just that?  Dragons are too much fun to just take off the shelf every 12 years.  This dragon weighs in at 4+ ounces, and easily makes an entire meal  can be shared between 6 people.  While it takes a long time to paint these by hand and airbrush, they sure are a lot of fun to do.  Lately I've been filling them with a ganache that has PopRocks© in it.  Dragons are supposed to sizzle, after all.