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wrote:
> Roy, thank you for your most informative post. Given that I have cocoa
> butter to hand, I shall try adding this to the couverture. I guess
> (wildly?) that adding 1% may be a good place to start, and iterate to
> a final quantiy from there.
>
> Janet, apologies for my continued poor typing. I wish to achieve an
> enrobed shell 0.5 mm thick. I also wish to avoid the couverture
> slipping down the sides of the chocolate, once it has been laid to
> rest, creating a thicker enrobing at the base of the chocolate. A
> problem that we colloquially call "fat arsed chocolates".
>

I am more of a feet and inches person, but if the ruler I just consulted is
accurate, that is a *very* thin shell for a dipped center. You would find it
much easier to achieve using a mold, I think.

If you are dipping centers, it is inevitable that the couverture will be at
least slightly thicker at the bottom, although you can certainly affect the
degree of this by the length of time you let it drip and the amount of
tapping you do, and so forth. The more liquid your chocolate, the thinner
the shell, but also the quicker it may run down to the bottom! <G> I would
think that extremely thin couverture may also lead to higher incidence of
the bottom of the center poking through the covering.

> On a new, but related theme, have either of you tried hand dipping (or
> otherwise enrobing) a tray of centres. I have tried this with only
> partial success, but read recently of someone advocating this
> approach. The article mentioned setting out a matrix of centres on a
> wire tray (similar to a cake cooling rack I guess) and pouring the
> tempered couverture over the top. When I tried this, my problems
> arose when trying to remove the freshly enrobed chocolates from the
> tray.
>
> Simon

I always hand dip, but what you describe is to me enrobing, not dipping. I
can't imagine that it would work for round centers, not only because they
will stick to the wires, but because it won't cover the bottoms. If your
centers are flat and you have already covered the "bottom" side, it might
work well if you can remove them from the grid fast enough. Doing only a few
at a time would be essential, I would think. (I think I'll try it sometime.)

For round, non-molded centers, one way to get a very thin covering with very
little "foot" is to roll the center in some couverture between your palms,
instead of dipping it. I occasionally use this method to "undercoat"
truffles. I think that you could do two coats this way, and get something
like the result you desire, although I doubt that the finished item would be
as smooth as a center dipped in the usual way. The other possibility would
be to use a mold, and to thin your chocolate as necessary with cocoa butter.
--
Janet

Dear Artemesia! Poetry's a Sna/Bedlam has many Mansions:have a
ca/ Your Muse diverts you, makes the Reader sad:/ You think your
self inspir'd; He thinks you mad.