hi all-

i currently use guittard gourmet bittersweet as my all-purpose chocolate.
however, i find that it is too viscous to use in a chocolate glaze. my
glaze, now matter which recipe i use, inevitably turns out too thick. it's
pourable, but definitely leans toward the gloppy side. can anyone recommend
a comparable chocolate (in price and flavor) that is less viscous?

thanks,
dexygus

at Tue, 13 Jul 2004 01:50:13 GMT in
> ,
(dexygus) wrote :

>hi all-
>
>i currently use guittard gourmet bittersweet as my all-purpose
>chocolate. however, i find that it is too viscous to use in a chocolate
>glaze. my glaze, now matter which recipe i use, inevitably turns out
>too thick. it's pourable, but definitely leans toward the gloppy side.
>can anyone recommend a comparable chocolate (in price and flavor) that
>is less viscous?
>

It's vital to see what recipe you wish to use for your glaze.

Generally, for low viscosity you want a high cocoa butter content. Be aware
that Gourmet Bittersweet is already a low-viscosity formulation, so you may
have more difficulty than you think getting any better. It's possible to
get higher cocoa butter contents from, e.g. Domori, but not so that they
meet your price criteria. On that score Guittard is hard to beat - being a
domestic product, they're much cheaper than the imports.

As to flavour, it depends a lot on what you mean. If you're asking for
similar profile, you can find chocolates that meet that goal, but they're
not going to be an exact match. For instance, Lindt 85% is similar, but
considerably less sweet (as one would expect for 85% vs. 63%) and more
nutty. If you want similar strength, that's pretty easy, although Gourmet
Bittersweet is very intense for a 63%, and in general you need to up your
percentage to the 70%-class to get similar intensities. If you want similar
quality of flavour (i.e. you like the flavour a lot and would like one
equally good), that's hard because GB is really one of the best chocolates
on the market.

But for the fact of its considerably lower sugar content I'd go with the
Lindt 85%, because it's got a similar, and similarly outstanding flavour, a
very high cocoa butter content (typical for an 85%, btw), and a decent
price. In fact, in a glaze, usually a lower sweetness is desirable so this
may be your chocolate of choice. However, I can't emphasize enough how
important getting your recipe is, and also what you're trying to achieve,
to make an accurate recommendation. At this point you've got a blind stab
in the dark.

There's also the possibility that your technique suffers from problems.
High-cocoa-butter chocolate is tricky to work with and if you do anything
even slightly wrong your results may be poor. A gloppy texture is
frequently the result of using a bad thermal profile when melting and
tempering.

--
Alex Rast

(remove d., .7, not, and .NOSPAM to reply)

dexygus wrote:
> Hi Alex-
> Thanks for your response. Sorry it's taken me so long to respond.
> Also, I wasn't able to respond to your message because it's
> disappeared from my newsreader.
>
> Here are a few glazes i've been using:
>
> 1) Alice Medrich's Sarah Bernhardt Glaze
> 8 oz. bittersweet chocolate
> 6 oz. unsalted butter
> 1 Tbsp. light corn syrup
> 5 tsp. water
> Heat everything in a bain marie until melted. Stir until smooth.
> Use glaze at 88-90 degrees F.
>
> 2) Alice Medrich's Glace a L'eau
> 8 oz. bittersweet chocolate
> 4 oz. unsalted butter
> 1/2 cup water or strong coffee (I've used both at one time or another)
> Pinch of salt
> Same procedure as above.
>
> 3) Francois Payard's Chocolate Glaze
> 12 oz. bittersweet chocolate
> 1 cup heavy cream
> 1/2 cup light corn syrup
> Bring cream and corn syrup to a boil. Pour over chocolate. Stir
> until melted and smooth.
>
> I'd been using the Medrich glazes with partial satsifaction. I liked
> the flavor of both. According to the recipe, the glaze should keep
> some shine even after refrigeration, but it never really did that for
> me. Plus, the glaze was never thin enough to just pour on the cake,
> or pour and tilt the cake to get it all covered. I would like to
> have a glaze thin enough to not have to use an offset spatula to even
> it out. I thought I'd try another glaze. The Payard one looked good
> to me because I thought with all the cream and corn syrup, the glaze
> would surely be quite thin. I was wrong. It turned out even thicker
> than the Medrich glazes. So then I thought the problem could be my
> chocolate which I noticed was quite viscous when melted.
>
> So I guess I'm looking for advice here. I'd like to figure out if I
> should try another glaze, or try another chocolate with the glazes
> I've been using. So to be clear, I want a glaze that's thin, that
> preferably keeps some sheen upon refrigeration, that isn't too fussy
> to make, and that tastes good. Any suggestions?
>
> -Renee

I would suggest that you try the glazes in Rose Levy Beranbaum's book The
Cake Bible. There's one with cream and one with butter. I've found
everything in that book to be both delicious and reliable.
--
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.


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at Mon, 19 Jul 2004 06:19:26 GMT in
>,
(dexygus) wrote :

>Hi Alex-
>Thanks for your response. Sorry it's taken me so long to respond.
>Also, I wasn't able to respond to your message because it's disappeared
>from my newsreader.
>
>Here are a few glazes i've been using:
>
>I'd been using the Medrich glazes with partial satsifaction. ...
> I would like to have a glaze
>thin enough to not have to use an offset spatula to even it out. ...
> The Payard one looked good to me because
>I thought with all the cream and corn syrup, the glaze would surely be
>quite thin.
>So I guess I'm looking for advice here. I'd like to figure out if I
>should try another glaze, or try another chocolate with the glazes I've
>been using. So to be clear, I want a glaze that's thin, that preferably
>keeps some sheen upon refrigeration...

Part of the problem is that all the glazes you have there have a fair
amount of water, which will stiffen the mixture. Payard's is essentially a
corn-syrup-thinned ganache. The Medrich glazes are closer to traditional,
with the first one being the most typical "standard" glaze.

One thing you haven't mentioned is how hard you want it to be once set. Do
you want it to be a hard shell, like an ice cream dip? Would you prefer a
hard icing-like consistency (still hard, but has some give so that it
doesn't completely splinter when cut into?) Or do you want more of a soft,
fudgy consistency?

The first thing you'll want to do is get rid of most of the water, so that
you're dealing with pure chocolate, sugar, and fat. Then, you'll need to
adjust mostly the sugar types and amounts to match your desired final
consistency.

The standard icing-consistency glaze that I use is dead simple to make -
simply melt 1 tbsp of butter per oz of bittersweet chocolate together in a
double-boiler, stir, and pour. It comes out of the pot extremely fluid (I
use Guittard Gourmet Bittersweet), although you can cool it so that it
becomes spreadable and use it like a traditional icing. This is a good one
for coating cakes that you want to keep for a while because it will seal
the cake inside a hard shell while remaining just pliable enough that you
can cut elegant slices without icing falling everywhere.

To modify this recipe to produce a truly hard shell, you need to add some
hard sugar. What you do in this case is make a sugar syrup using again
about 1 tbsp sugar per tbsp butter and just enough water to dissolve it.
You boil the syrup until it gets to hard-crack stage (300F), and then
quickly pour it, stirring constantly, into the chocolate/butter mixture.
Adding a small amount of corn syrup (I'd say perhaps substituting 1 tbsp
corn syrup for 1 tbsp sugar in a recipe using 8 tbsp sugar) will improve
the texture (especially the smoothness) somewhat. Since you're adding
sugar, you may want to use a stronger chocolate such as Lindt 85%. All the
amounts I mention here are approximate. You should adjust depending on the
consistency and sweetness level you want.

Of course the other way to get a hard shell is to use pure chocolate. Then
you need to melt it and temper it, at which point it should be ready for
use. Tempered chocolate, however, isn't genuinely thin, although it should
pour and smooth without a spatula.

Going the other way, to make a soft glaze, the best thing is to add a
liquid sugar to the basic chocolate/butter mixture. Corn syrup will work,
although better still is invert sugar. I'd try 1/4 cup of the liquid sugar
and see whether the consistency was what you wanted. At some point, you'll
reach chocolate syrup (it will never solidify at all) although by then it
would also be extremely sweet. If you use an unsweetened chocolate such as
Michel Cluizel's Noir Infini (which also has more cocoa butter, making it
still more fluid), you can reach the highest fluidity levels.

The classic soft pourable cake topping is pouring ganache - 1 oz heavy
cream per oz of chocolate. You grate the chocolate, scald the cream, and
pour the cream over the chocolate. Then you stir with a spatula and pour
right over the cake. It's very fluid, but it doesn't set hard - it sets
into the consistency of a very dense frosting. However, it has a classic
sheen and excellent rich taste.

Finally, it occurs to me that you may be heating your mixture too much.
Chocolate, if overheated, will lose fluidity and become grainy. This could
be what you're experiencing. You only want to use the bare minimum of heat
necessary to melt the chocolate at all.

--
Alex Rast

(remove d., .7, not, and .NOSPAM to reply)

at Mon, 19 Jul 2004 06:19:26 GMT in
>,
(dexygus) wrote :

>Hi Alex-
>Thanks for your response. Sorry it's taken me so long to respond.
>Also, I wasn't able to respond to your message because it's disappeared
>from my newsreader.
>
>Here are a few glazes i've been using:
>
>I'd been using the Medrich glazes with partial satsifaction. ...
> I would like to have a glaze
>thin enough to not have to use an offset spatula to even it out. ...
> The Payard one looked good to me because
>I thought with all the cream and corn syrup, the glaze would surely be
>quite thin.
>So I guess I'm looking for advice here. I'd like to figure out if I
>should try another glaze, or try another chocolate with the glazes I've
>been using. So to be clear, I want a glaze that's thin, that preferably
>keeps some sheen upon refrigeration...

Part of the problem is that all the glazes you have there have a fair
amount of water, which will stiffen the mixture. Payard's is essentially a
corn-syrup-thinned ganache. The Medrich glazes are closer to traditional,
with the first one being the most typical "standard" glaze.

One thing you haven't mentioned is how hard you want it to be once set. Do
you want it to be a hard shell, like an ice cream dip? Would you prefer a
hard icing-like consistency (still hard, but has some give so that it
doesn't completely splinter when cut into?) Or do you want more of a soft,
fudgy consistency?

The first thing you'll want to do is get rid of most of the water, so that
you're dealing with pure chocolate, sugar, and fat. Then, you'll need to
adjust mostly the sugar types and amounts to match your desired final
consistency.

The standard icing-consistency glaze that I use is dead simple to make -
simply melt 1 tbsp of butter per oz of bittersweet chocolate together in a
double-boiler, stir, and pour. It comes out of the pot extremely fluid (I
use Guittard Gourmet Bittersweet), although you can cool it so that it
becomes spreadable and use it like a traditional icing. This is a good one
for coating cakes that you want to keep for a while because it will seal
the cake inside a hard shell while remaining just pliable enough that you
can cut elegant slices without icing falling everywhere.

To modify this recipe to produce a truly hard shell, you need to add some
hard sugar. What you do in this case is make a sugar syrup using again
about 1 tbsp sugar per tbsp butter and just enough water to dissolve it.
You boil the syrup until it gets to hard-crack stage (300F), and then
quickly pour it, stirring constantly, into the chocolate/butter mixture.
Adding a small amount of corn syrup (I'd say perhaps substituting 1 tbsp
corn syrup for 1 tbsp sugar in a recipe using 8 tbsp sugar) will improve
the texture (especially the smoothness) somewhat. Since you're adding
sugar, you may want to use a stronger chocolate such as Lindt 85%. All the
amounts I mention here are approximate. You should adjust depending on the
consistency and sweetness level you want.

Of course the other way to get a hard shell is to use pure chocolate. Then
you need to melt it and temper it, at which point it should be ready for
use. Tempered chocolate, however, isn't genuinely thin, although it should
pour and smooth without a spatula.

Going the other way, to make a soft glaze, the best thing is to add a
liquid sugar to the basic chocolate/butter mixture. Corn syrup will work,
although better still is invert sugar. I'd try 1/4 cup of the liquid sugar
and see whether the consistency was what you wanted. At some point, you'll
reach chocolate syrup (it will never solidify at all) although by then it
would also be extremely sweet. If you use an unsweetened chocolate such as
Michel Cluizel's Noir Infini (which also has more cocoa butter, making it
still more fluid), you can reach the highest fluidity levels.

The classic soft pourable cake topping is pouring ganache - 1 oz heavy
cream per oz of chocolate. You grate the chocolate, scald the cream, and
pour the cream over the chocolate. Then you stir with a spatula and pour
right over the cake. It's very fluid, but it doesn't set hard - it sets
into the consistency of a very dense frosting. However, it has a classic
sheen and excellent rich taste.

Finally, it occurs to me that you may be heating your mixture too much.
Chocolate, if overheated, will lose fluidity and become grainy. This could
be what you're experiencing. You only want to use the bare minimum of heat
necessary to melt the chocolate at all.

--
Alex Rast

(remove d., .7, not, and .NOSPAM to reply)