Homemade Chocolate Bonbons

Hello everyone!

For some time I posted the results of attempts in mastering the work with chocolate to my Russian blog, at the request of people I write a detailed post on how to make candy at home and decided to translate it to English too to share with people who adore chocolates.

About me: I've been doing fan chocolate since November 2020, during which time I've been able to get into basic things and understand some of the intricacies of working with this product. See the result you can get out of this instagram link.
Previously, it took me about 4-5 hours for one polycarbonate mould, after several training sessions this time was reduced to 1-2 hours by 3 moulds.

Writing a post for the first time, comments and criticism are welcome.

So, to make chocolates will need such equipment:

• Polycarbonate moulds (I use moulds from Chocolate World)
• A snous-thermometer or infrared thermometer (I have Chinese for $10)
• Submersible blender (injected dye into cocoa butter)
• Microwave (topping chocolate 10-second approaches in it)
• Hairdryer (if the temperature of the mould is low, you need to walk with a hairdryer and warm-up)
• Plastic chocolate containers
• Pastry bags for toppings and chocolate
• Plastic containers for painted cocoa butter
• Glass or metal temper bowl
• Brushes
• Baking paper (we will pour the remaining chocolate from the mould)
• Spatula (can be construction but without rust and chrome, or confectionery)

And such ingredients:

• Cocoa butter
• fat-soluble dye (a couple of species depending on the idea)
• Chocolate (dark/milk/white)
• Fruit puree (depending on the filling)
• Nuts (almonds, hazelnuts, macadamia, pecans, anything from preferences)
• Sugar
• Glucose syrup

The thermometer is very important because, in order for the chocolate to be in the "condition", it needs to be melted and re-formed crystal structure - this process is called tempering.
Charts of temperature for different types of chocolate can be seen in the picture below, the main chocolate manufacturers indicate these markings on the packages (see the picture with the tempering curves)

Roughly speaking, you need to melt in the microwave chocolate to a temperature of 45C degrees Celsius, quickly cool in a metal/glass dish to 27C degrees, and warm up to a temperature of 29-31C degrees (depending on the type of chocolate) to work (because at 27C degrees the chocolate mass is already quite thick and the body of candy will be thick).

The temperature in the room should be 18-20C degrees to work with chocolate, at other temperatures the chocolate will be worse to crystallize and the result will be worse. You need to work in nitrile gloves, so as not to leave fingerprints on the mould and not to smear hands in cocoa butter.

I use polycarbonate molds from Chocolate World, there are also well-known manufacturers Pavoni, Martellato, Inplast, they are about the same, you can go with the Chinese, but they can be a problem - here as luck.

To work with chocolate, the molds need to be washed, dry to wipe with paper napkins, and to make sure that there are no residues of fat/cocoa butter to wipe with napkins soaked alcohol/vodka (not necessarily if properly washed).

The main rule - moulds should be perfectly clean without an erosive cleanser.

When this is done, the shape is ready to be stained.

You can buy any cocoa butter. There are a lot of manufacturers, such as Callebaut, Cacao Barry, CherRubbere, etc.

Cocoa butter is colorless, translucent. To work it needs to be painted in the desired colors. To stain you need 100 grams of cocoa butter, 5 grams of fat-soluble dye.

Since chocolate contains a percentage of cocoa butter, the principle of working with cocoa butter is similar. To start in the microwave, melt the cocoa butter to a temperature of 50-55C degrees. Pour the necessary amount of dye into the cocoa butter and punch through with a blender. I recommend pouring in and punching a little bit, controlling the color. After breaking through, the cocoa butter must be drained through a viscose napkin, so that no dye particles are caught when coloring the mold. Then reheat to 50-55C degrees colored dye and quickly cool to 26-27C degrees in glassware, heat the hairdryer to 29-30C degrees, and can use or pour into plastic containers for storage.

Colors can be picked up on this site

The principle is that we add parts of the base color, and see what will be the result, but for a start, it is possible with the basic.

Here we do what we want, open creative chakras, and do our idea.

(!!!) After each color, the cocoa butter on the mould should be crystallized, so that there was no mixing with the already applied colors, for this after applying a certain color you need to wait for a while. You can check with a brush or finger, if the cocoa butter does not smear and became matte, you can apply a different color.

Once all the colors are applied, what got out of the cells, on the outside of the mould should be cleaned, so that pieces of painted cocoa butter do not get into the chocolate, you can spatula, you can have a paper napkin.

A couple of useful tricks:

• You can buy a toothbrush, dip in cocoa butter and spray your fingers on the mold, get points.
• Dark colors shine noticeably better than light, if you want glitter-glitter, it is better to use dark contrasting colors.
• Clean sponge for dishes, you can trim and draw it
• In order for the colors to be brighter, the background should be applied white, because the cocoa butter is translucent, there will be a pleasant contrast (see pictures)
• Use your fingers, as shown in the attached video

When the shells are painted, you need to fill the mould with chocolate.

Chocolate manufacturers indicate fluidity on the packaging, as a rule, the cases need a turnover of 4 out of 5, but you can take any.

I buy Callebaut chocolate as pictured above, and I add 5% cocoa butter in callets

Chocolate in packages is also in callets (drops).

It takes about 300g of chocolate to close the mold.

Take the right amount of chocolate, mix with 5% cocoa butter, put in a microwave, and intervals of 15-5 seconds melt to a temperature of 45C degrees, after each iteration stir, so that some preeminated part is not overheated.

Then the container in melted chocolate put in a container with cold water with pieces of ice (on the principle of a water bath) and stir until the temperature falls to 27C degrees.

Check if everything is OK, you can drop a drop of chocolate on a cold ceramic saucer. In a minute the drop should become matte, if all is well, you can move on.

27C degrees is fairly thick chocolate, if you pour this into the mold, the body will be thick and will fit less filling, and the chocolate will go more. Therefore, this chocolate should be heated in the microwave to 30C degrees, just for a few seconds putting the chocolate in the oven.

Chocolate is ready, pour it into a condensed bag or in a collective-drain pour directly from the bowl to the mould caviars. When flooded, you need to knock the shape on the table, creating vibrations to tap the bubbles. Then we turn the shape over (!!!) And do not raise until we do all that next, pour the excess chocolate on baking parchment. knock on the mould of a silicone spoon or the type of fact to tap the excess chocolate. With a spatula remove hanging drops of chocolate.

Leave mould to crystallize for 10-30 minutes in a room with a temperature of 18-20C degrees. The inverted mould is left to keep the chocolate from flowing upwards and there is no accumulation of chocolate in the top. So it will drain on the edges evenly.

After that, you can put it in the refrigerator for further crystallization.

The shape cannot be turned over until the end of cooking (some shells can fell down from mould)

The whole pouring process can be seen in the attached video

The filling for sweets is ganache, marzipan, liquid liqueurs, etc.

IMPORTANT: The more water in the filling, the shorter the shelf life. The shelf life of solid toppings can be half a year, and all sorts of souffles based on eggs - a month. In general, I recommend using any candy within two to three weeks. Thus, you definitely do not make a mistake and do not poison spoiled products with almost any filling.

In industrial production, there are special devices that measure the amount of water and calculate the expiration date, the price of such a device from 500 dollars and above

Base Ganache

• 110g chocolate
• 18g glucose syrup
• 80g any fruit puree
• 10g cream 33-35%

Cooking steps: Combine the fruit puree and cream with glucose syrup. Heat to a boil and pour on chocolate. With a submersible blender, we break through to a homogeneous structure. pour into a pastry bag and roll on a cool table. You can store it in the refrigerator, before filling the mould heated to 29-30C degrees.

IMPORTANT: The most difficult skill here was not to pour the filling, it is necessary that a couple of millimeters do not close to the brim, as in the attached photo, if it happened that poured the fillings, remove the excess can be toothpick or syringe.

After the mould with the filling has cooled in the refrigerator and the filling has become thicker, we get the mould, let it heat up to room temperature.

From above on the cells pass a hairdryer, but not much, literally to warm up.

We prepare chocolate as described in step 4, pour it on top of the mould and remove the excess with a spatula. Leave for 20-30 minutes for crystallization and clean in the refrigerator for a couple of hours. In the cold, the cocoa butter is compressed, allowing it to move away from the mold.

All left to knock the candy out of the mould.