Posted by admin on February 18th, 2010 — Posted in Commerce, Creative Arts, Eating Fun
The tempering phase is very important in chocolate candy making because you cannot turn chocolate silken, lustrous, and firm without it as these are not the usual characteristics of chocolates. Though through conching, you can turn cocoa liquor grains smaller, only tempering will further refine and turn these grains so small as to be unnoticeable by the consumer.
With tempering, chocolates get a glossy patina, snap, firmness, smoothness and a richness and of course, an extended shelf-life. Blooming is also kept at bay. If blooming is allowed to occur, chocolates become flaky and granular and the ugly whitish spots of the crystals in cocoa butter appear on the chocolate’s facade.
Heating and melting prepare the chocolate for dipping and molding, and when temperatures shoot above 90 Fahrenheit, re-tempering becomes a necessary evil.
Manual tempering is a must-learn for every chocolatier because emergencies (such as a tempering machine on the blink) may and will happen whether you liked it or not.
France is from where tabliering, one of the two methods of manual tempering, originated. Marble-slab technique is its other moniker since it’s on a marble slab or any other heat-absorbing top that the melted chocolate is cooled during tempering.
When you venture to do tabliering, you’ll need a ridged knife, a completely dry repository, a double boiler or an electric skillet, and spatula to work on a pound of chocolate. Thin slices are made from the chocolate, after which these are melted on the double boiler, with caution never to get them burned. Out of the melted chocolate, one half is first worked on the marble slab by folding and spreading with a rubber spatula until the cooling temperature for the type of chocolate you’re using is achieved. The other half is then mixed with the first half and the whole mass is worked on till it’s homogeneous in temperature, consistency and appearance.
In the other technique, called seeding, still solid chocolatesappropriately tempered by the manufacturersare used as starter seed for the melted chocolate. The process is not dissimilar to tabliering except that you only heat up three-fourths of the chocolate. The remaining one-fourth of the chocolatethe seedis blended in gently until they are also uniform in temperature, consistency and appearance.
Exact chocolate temperature ranges must be sustained and maintained in both processes of manual tempering with the aid of a calibrated thermometer. You can have fruit-filled chocolates or chocolates of various captivating designs if you so wish with your properly-tempered chocolate.
The scope for fun in manual chocolate tempering is quite limited since the process is an engrossing activity in itself. For regular tempering, a chocolate tempering machine can simplify and speed up your work so you can have the time to plan and improve on your business.
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Posted by admin on February 3rd, 2010 — Posted in Commerce, Creative Arts, Eating Fun
Chocolates, if they are delicious and great-looking, could tempt just about anybody to indulge a bit. There are three kinds to choose from: dark, milk, and white chocolates. Cocoa butter, cocoa liquor, and sugar and vanilla in varying amounts constitute dark, or bitter, chocolates. Milk chocolates have, certainly, milk added on top of the dark chocolate components. White chocolate, while lacking cocoa liquor (what makes chocolate chocolaty), has cocoa butter so all three requires tempering to produce fine quality chocolate.
Longer shelf life, shine, crispness, a velvety texture and firmness are bestowed to chocolates via tempering, a process that stabilizes the cocoa butter fats to keep blooming away, a phenomenon which yields blotchy chocolate tops and crumbly textures.
Artisanal chocolatiers are good at manual tempering with their expertise and perseverance honed by years of practice. Using either seeding or tabliering techniques, the difficulty in manual tempering for relatively new chocolatiers is in committing a mistake in keeping temperatures on an even, correct keel as well as in mixing chocolates incorrectly. Both deter the multiplication of type V crystals, which is the sole objective of tempering.
Chocolate tempering machines were invented so that they only produce the type V crystals which give shine and snap to your chocolate confectioneries. A microprocessor controls the temperatures acting on the chocolates during tempering and adjusts the same accordingly. Working space limitations as well as humidity and moisture are issues addressed satisfactorily by a tempering machine, too.
Using a tempering machine is a must if the quantity of chocolates that requires tempering is huge because you need to the quality unchanged every time you make your chocolate candies. But your purchasing decision should be preceded by ascertaining how many operators will use the machine and for how many hours. Benefits will always outweigh costs when investing in a chocolate tempering machine as you’ll have more free time to concentrate on business improvements.
ChocoVision’s Revolation 1, with the capability to temper 1.5 pounds of chocolates per hour, is ideal for the beginner who has no tempering know-how. Too, there’s the ACMC Tabletop Temperer that has a bigger capacity, being able to handle more or less six pounds of chocolates each production time. The tempering bowl is separate (detachable), the thermometer is digital (for accuracy), and the control panels and digital displays are up front for accessibility. The heat source comes from two bright lamps (100 watts each).
A chocolatier well-versed in manual tempering can easily shift to the chocolate tempering machine with a Revolation 2; it has Rev 1’s features plus a digitized temperature display, an all-night mode and a pause option when you want to play with the tempering cycle. Similar to the Rev 2, the Revolation x3210 has all the nifty all-night and pause options; more, it can handle roughly 3-10 pounds of chocolates a pop.
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Posted by admin on January 13th, 2010 — Posted in Commerce, Creative Arts, Eating Fun
Chocolatiers embraced the tempering machine readily because they may have been fed up with the arduous process of tempering by hand. Also, chocolates that are tempered with a tempering machine remained in temper for an extended period, and if needs be, all night.
But there are some chocolate lovers who want to have only those chocolates crafted by hand and artisanal chocolatiers cater to this segment of the market using tabliering, a method of tempering by hand. France was the birthplace of tabliering, which involves lowering the temperature of molten chocolate on an endothermic surface like a marble or stone slab.
You should not allow moisture to spoil tabliering and hence the surfaces and the equipment used for tabliering are kept dry as a bone. Moisture may cause “seizing” of the chocolates as well as fast heating and freezing.
The things you need for tabliering, apart from the basic ingredient of a pound of chocolate, include a knife, chopping board, rubber spatula, mixing bowl, double boiler, a thermometer that can read as low as 80-82F, and a cookie sheet. All these things must be entirely free of any wetness.
The one pound chocolate is cut into slim strips, melting them on the upper pan of the double boiler, while boiling water on the lower pan. The chocolate should achieve a 108 to 115F temperature range, remembering that the melting temperature differs from one variety of chocolate to another. The molten chocolate is then transferred onto a mixing bowl. While pouring, the molten chocolate should not fall with lumps but must pour smoothly.
Otherwise known as the mush, the molten chocolate is divided into three parts. The first two parts of the mush is spread repeatedly on a marble slab to bring it to a cool of 80 to 82F. You should keep the temperature of the remaining chocolate in the bowl at 100F to safeguard it from congealing.
Once the first portion has cooled, you mix in the remaining chocolate in the bowl and work the whole lot on the marble slab until it has thickened to a matte consistency as well as the same temperature. Finally, warm up the chocolate accordingly: for the dark chocolate variety, temperature ranges is at 86 to 90 F; for the semi-sweet variety, it’s 86 to 88F; and for the white variety, it’s 82 to 84F. To ensure that the chocolate has been tempered properly, dip the end of the knife or spatula into the chocolate then air dry for five minutes. If the chocolate appears hard and glossy around it, this means that the chocolate has been properly tempered. This tempered chocolate is now all set for molding, dipping or sculpting.
The most important step in tabliering is focused on keeping the temperatures closely monitored and accurate levels maintained so that you need not re-temper the chocolate. If you want to keep the tempered chocolate in that state a while longer, place the tempered chocolate on a bain-marie briefly with the same precautions against water.
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Posted by admin on January 7th, 2010 — Posted in Creative Arts
Feng Shui is all about re-arranging your indoors so that you have optimal energy flow in your home or office. It was developed by Chinese civilization. Its verbatim english version is “wind and water”. The scheme of aesthetics was created with an intent of designing spiritual tombs for the Chinese ancestors. With cultural progress, the sensitive artistry was being utilized in designing palaces for kings, government agencies, and influential city-points. Finally, whole metropolises were built up employing the powerful art and skill of feng shui.
Majority of buildings in Hong-Kong are planned and built with feng-shui principles. This demonstrates the importance of feng shui in oriental civilization. A well-known myth is that Bank of China was sued by the business enterprises in its neighborhood because of its knowing anti-feng-shui architecture.
It was not until late 20th century that the rules of feng shui began to become fashionable in Western culture. By the 1990s, feng shui turned into the buzz word among the elite members of society in New York and Los Angeles.
One of the most common feng shui elements is a desk fountain. Renowned for multiple feng shui benefits, a slate fountain has earned a peculiar place in the heart of feng shui lovers. Slate symbolise the element of earth. Earth represents Yin, so it is feminine by nature. Earth is also somewhat masculine in nature because of its stability and dependability that is mirrored from its substantial merit. The integration and two elements - earth and water - makes slate water fountain immaculate feng shui fountain.
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Posted by admin on July 18th, 2009 — Posted in Creative Arts
The mainstream artworld has had a love/hate relationship with graffiti. On the plus side, gifted creatives such as Banksy have made graffiti an aesthetic pleasure, applying stencils to create technically challenging artworks loaded with political messages attached. This type of graffiti was likely to grow popular with the masses and the likes of The Guardian pressroom : attractive to both eye and intellect. This sort of graffiti is now even purchased as graffiti printed onto canvas, and placed on the walls of middle class homes and office reception areas.
Even so, when it comes to your down and dirty graffiti - the gangbanger, the tagger, the street urchin - this is just seen as antisocial, a crime committed by the talentless. But is graffiti only art? To many people, it’s not just an artform, but a way to mark a neighbourhood, or even a two finger salute : anti-art, anti-social, anti-establishment.
Spraying has always been a clandestine pursuit, even though the effects are very much public. The targeted audience is often unknown. Is it for a rival gang? A message to a single person? To the public at large? Maybe it’s merely gratuitous and out of nothing to do.
Whatever the causes may be, there appears to be a sustained demand to spray graffiti. Some cities have acknowledged that graffiti isn’t going to go away, so they’ve marked off zones where graffiti is permitted - usually uninhabited areas, but now and then busier areas like boarding around inner city construction sites.
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Posted by admin on April 29th, 2009 — Posted in Creative Arts, Great Fun, Stuff for Kids
Everyone likes to decorate his/her living place, and crafts are one of the best ways to do that. That is why this market always has a potential in it if someone. You can start it with some initial investment but you will always have a high margin of profit on these products.
There are two ways for starting a business like this. You can either start crafting things by yourself or you can be a retailer for other’s craftsmen. If you are going to start a small business and make things on your own then start with a limited number of things that you are great at. When you start getting income you can expend it by practicing so even if you ruin something while experimenting you don’t get financially damaged.
For home based business word of mouth is the best advertising. Give discounts to your costumers/friends who bring new clients for you. It will help you to expand and your business. You will have to gain trust of clients by giving quality service so that anyone can happily refer other people to you.
If you are going to open an outlet in your area, make sure it’s easily reachable and noticeable. If you are crafting by yourself, make sure you have enough to display and your sales covers the cost of your outlet before moving from home to shop. If you are displaying other’s arts and crafts in the outlet then try to have all items of craft industry in your outlet but again don’t forget the quality. You can arrange some small painting exhibition or flower arrangement display or any such thing to advertise your store. Other ways of advertising is to use newspaper, internet ads or brochures.
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Posted by admin on July 3rd, 2008 — Posted in Creative Arts
Finding your long-lost relatives is now much easer, thanks to technologies that enables you to build your family tree.
What is a family tree?
A family tree is a record of your ancestors. It is usually represented by a genealogy chart that shows family connections. The chart typically contains the names of individuals that belong to the family, important dates such as their birthdays, states or countries where they live, and sometimes their occupations. Each individual person is connected to other persons using lines that represent different types of connections such as marriages, etc.
Building your family tree
There are easy ways to build your family tree. There is no need to place expensive phone calls or travel to all parts of the world just to meet your distant cousins. A lot of family tree software can be bought at reasonable prices, and some are free. Family tree software usually has very user-friendly, step-by-step tutorials to help you get complete the tree. It can help you organize all the data, pictures and heirlooms you have from your family. Best of all, it can search online databases of family histories, so that you can access related information and decide if it is connected to your tree. That’s a fast and easy way to find all your relatives.
Sharing your family tree
You can share your family tree either online or by printing out copies and giving the, to your relatives as presents. You can even put them all together in a CD-ROM, or create a website for everyone in your family to access.
Sharing your family tree to an online database is an excellent way to link with other family tree researchers who may be a part of your ancestry.
Family Tree provides detailed information on Family Tree, Free Family Tree, Family Tree Makers, Family Tree Charts and more. Family Tree is affiliated with Family Reunion Ideas.
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Posted by admin on May 23rd, 2008 — Posted in Creative Arts
Have you re-modeled your bathroom lately? If not, maybe you should take notice that avocado green and harvest yellow are no longer the rage. You will be quite astounded when you start looking around at options for your new bathroom. Modern bathroom design has really gotten creative and you can find sinks, toilets, faucets and all the fixtures in a huge variety of unexpected designs, colors and styles. Instead of simply tearing down your hideous wall paper and repainting your bathroom, think about getting some new fixtures to spice things up.
Modern bathroom design is all about looking cool and unexpected. You may be slightly overwhelmed by your options as you take on this project. But keep in mind the size of your bathroom, the color scheme you have picked out, and the prices of the items you are looking to purchase to decorate your modern bathroom. It is not uncommon to see sinks that look like they are floating above the countertop with a faucet built into the wall to look more like a shower head. Tile work is also an attractive feature of modern bathrooms. A little bit of special tile design in the shower or on the sink countertop can really spice up your modern bathroom.
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Posted by admin on May 10th, 2008 — Posted in Creative Arts
Many people like to add words to their scrapbooks. Words help to tell the story behind the picture. There are several ways to add words to your scrapbook pages.
One way to journal is through premade words and phrases. You can find stickers, diecuts and word cutouts, all with different phrases. You can also use alphabet sets to create words on your pages. One page I did has my daughter’s four high school pictures, one from each year. Down the middle of the page I put the letters DPHS. In 50 years, when she looks at the page, she’ll know those 4 pictures were her four high school pictures.
Other folks enjoy writing in their albums. If you are going to write on the pages, choose an ink color that matches the color theme of your page. You can write directly on the pages, or you can write on paper and then attach the paper right to your scrapbook page.
How much, or how little you journal is completely up to you. In some cases, I just wanted a year attached to my pages, so that my kids would have a general idea of how old they were at the time. In other cases I wanted a city name or building name to remind me of where I took the picture. In yet other instances I wanted to put people’s names and a little bit about the people in the pictures.
I know some folks who included song lyrics or poems with their photos. They believe the song lyrics or poem truly tell the story of the photos on that particular page.
I have several photos of my own grandmother. On page one, I have just one photo of her, and then a lot of journaling, speaking of where she was born, what year she was born, where she grew up etc. On other pages, I put many photos of her, with very little journaling. It really depends on why you are making the album, who the album is for and what information you want to add with your photos that will determine how much journaling you’ll do.
If your children are young, or your grandchildren are young, it’s fun to ask them to write something each year and include that in the album so they can see their writing as they grow up.
Sometimes, if I have a lot to say, I’ll type it on acid free paper and then cut out what I’ve typed and add it to the page. Typed words will allow me to say a lot more than if I write the words.
Often, we want to include a photo or article from a newspaper on our scrapbook pages. My suggestion is to copy the article onto acid free paper, as the newspaper will yellow and crack with time. One friend has a son who was on the high school football game during his 4 years in high school. He was often written up in the newspaper. She copied every picture and story written about him and he now shares those stories with his own son.
Another technique I use with journaling to cut shapes; ovals, hearts etc. and then journal on those pieces of paper and then attach to my scrapbook page.
If you are making a scrapbook for a friend, it can be fun to share your thoughts, versus just telling a story. For example, maybe you and a friend had a girl’s night out and took some photos. You can share “I remember how much we laughed and laughed this night. My stomach hurt from us laughing so much”. This shares not only photos but you are also sharing yourself with your friend.
Acid free index cards are great for journaling. They are just the right size to write on and then attach to your scrapbooking pages.
There is no right or wrong way to journal. The key is to have something in words to help tell the story of your photo.
Audrey Okaneko has been scrapbooking for several years now. You can reach her at audreyoka@cox.net or www.scrapping-made-simple.com
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Posted by admin on April 1st, 2008 — Posted in Creative Arts
I know I keep saying I don’t like to do articles on poetry, but I do, maybe because of all the writing in the world out there, I respect poetry above all the rest.
My wife was looking over a poem of mine today, translating it actually into Spanish, and she said, “You put a noun where a verb belongs, and if you put another verb in, it will be two in the same sentence. And I said, it is not a sentence, it is a line within a stanza, and it compliments the direct object. To be honest with myself, I really couldn’t find the word I wanted so I made up the word to be presented as a plural adjective so I could push in what I wanted to end the line.
Then I said to myself: she is trying to help, and it makes more sense to her (not to me), so I looked at the whole poem, and figured if I had to change that one word, I’d have to change the whole poem, the whole two stanzas, 10-lines. You can’t write a poem, no more than you can order creativeness, it doesn’t happen that way. So I said, let me look, and see if there is something in this poem beyond the word that can save the day. And I restructured the whole poem, and created a deeper meaning than what I wantedbut was happier with it, and left the word completely out, and my wife fell to sleep in the chair. I wanted to show her my accomplishment; I mean I had to stop everything in my life to ponder on this, to see if I really wanted to change it. I think I did it for her.
Right or wrong, it doesn’t matter, what does, is approach, or attitude; now let me start all over again.
I have four corners to my world, north, south, east and west, better put, God, myself, my wife and poetry.
First thing I’ve realized long ago in poetry was thisyou take out of poets or poetry what you like, throwing the rest away. Good or bad, if it’s not for you, then why force-feed yourself. Thus, if you like what someone teaches you, it is good for you, if not, why argue about something or someone who is not for you. If you don’t like what I say, don’t read me. If you do, then fine; don’t conform to music that sickens you; that way you can keep a good attitude. When Elvis was making a record, if someone was in the area that bothered him, he’d stop the production and leave. It makes good sense, you cannot be creative with a bug in the nose, and that is why he was good, or perhaps one reason.
I was going to give a long example of an event that took place back in l985, when the Ronald McDonald House of St. Paul, invited me to a presentation, but I will make it shorter than what I intended to. Anyhow, in the process of me attending the presentation, they had asked me to do a small story, as the one I had done, “The Tale of: Willie the Humpback Whale,” back in l981. Well I did, but it wasn’t finished, yet I brought it along, was going to give it to the officials, for review. During the presentation, one of the officials looked it over, said something like this: if only you could take the rhyme schema out, and change the subject from turtle to a human being, and so for the and so on.
He was rude and demanding and I could go on, but I said: “You know what you want, go get it,” and I got up and walked out. They didn’t need me or want me as far as my creativeness went, and had told me over the phone, they didn’t know what they wanted, but I guess found out what they didn’t want. So instead of me trying to pretend, and fit in, I didn’t want to waste my time or theirs. If I lost anything, it was perhaps a potential future with an ongoing who knows what: I mean I was volunteering my services.
Anyhow, the one book I had done on the whale went up for a Pulitzer Prize, and I got a nice letter back, but not the Prize.
[Meaning of a Poem] Sometimes the poet gets lost and doesn’t’ even know his subject himself, or so I’ve noticed in much poetry I’ve read. Most of us think it is in the title of the poem, but could be to the contrary.
The problem comes not when he finishes up on a subject per se, but when he hobbles on, when he has already named it. It’s kind of like sitting down with an old friend and running out of things to say, thus, you grab whatever pops up in your mind: this creates in the reader confusion. If it is said, leave it alone, we don’t need to pound a person with it. Faulkner does that sometimes, and it irritates me, but he does it for his own reasons: he gets lost also, so do not stop writing if you are…just slow down.
I hate to say this, but I will: arrogance is good, a little good in poetryin a poem, if done right, just so you don’t take it to heart, and display it outside of the stanzas. What I write, I write because I want it there, usually, and I like a lot of imagination tucked in the corners. And thus, attitude and meaning are important ingredients in a poem; the reader can see it, feel it. The reader is no dummy, they may not write it, but they know it. Sometimes they are the better poets, not because they wish to write it, but because they love it, and those are often the ones who appreciate it more, and don’t like it mopped around on the floor; they have a good inner eye; we poets, are perhaps the ones with the eccentric eye, somewhere in the back of our minds trying to unveil the monster.
Let’s see if I can say this right: never write a poem that should have been written because someone told you they wanted to hear it, write it because it should be, perhaps, and it is something you overlooked, and would have done, but not directed to do in particular, you lose the creative touch; or at least I do, and the meaning of the poem becomes stale.
See Dennis’ web site: http://dennissiluk.tripod.com
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