Customer Reviews

Chocolates and Confections: Formula, Theory, and Technique for the Artisan Confectioner

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Contents of book: cream ganaches (liquor, orange, amaretti, chai, pear, passion vanilla, habanos, hazelnut latte, etc...) , butter ganache (gingerbread, orange, raspberry, lemon, etc...), hard candies (caramels, taffies, soft caramels, toffees, etc...), sugar candies (cherry cordials, different fudges, etc...) , jellied candies (candied fruits, jellies...), and nougats.

Incredible comprehensive book. Greweling takes a scientific approch to chocolate making, so you get all the science behind the everything. In that way, it is similar to a textbook.

In terms of techniques, this book is a rigorous as you will find. For instance, the technique of molding chocolates is described in 18 steps and 9 pictures. Chocolate molding and dipping defects are described over 3 pages. Preventing 'broken' ganches are described over 5 pages. It talks about freezing. And so on.

In terms of recipes, extremely comprehensive. 28 cream ganache recipes, 11 butter ganache. And that's only up to p173 out of 375. Because of the emphasis on technique and science, this book teaches you to teach yourself. That's the real beauty of the book.

On top of it all, the photography is beautiful.

In terms of difficulty level, I think it's for all levels. A true beginner can skip through the science and just just try out a few recipes. An advanced chocolatier can still find useful information in the tips and recipes. In terms of ingredients, some of the ingredients in some recipes are tough to find for beginners (invert sugar, invertase, co2 cartridges), but a beginner can still pick through and find a recipe to make.

Must have for the serious chocolatier. Compared to other books, Jean-Pierre Wybauw's book is similar in its 'science and technical' nature, covering similar but not always exactly the same stuff. These two books are complementary, and both excellent. It is also complementary to Shott's book, which is less scientific and slightly less on technique, but has very nice recipes and a little cheaper.

I've been making candy for 50 years. For the last 15, I've been trying to find out why taffy can turn into a chalky texture instead of chewy. I have gone through all my candy cookbooks and all those in the library. I have asked small commercial candymakers. Nobody could tell me. So the disappointing end of my lessons with nieces and nephews has been left dangling for years upon years. THIS BOOOK HAS THE ANSWER! (We pulled it too long, to save you the trouble of looking.) It also has tons of other information about making candies (professionals call them confections), with good recipes. You can use as little or as much of the text as you like - even if you just use the recipes, your homemade fondant, fudge, nougat, taffy, brittles, and yes your chocolates will be very good indeed. I'm very glad Amazon has the book at a discount. I started dipping into a library copy, and found myself marking about every other page to make notes from, and decided I ought to buy the whole book. And it is terrific! Well worth the price.

This is a hefty tome that covers virtually every base out there with regards to candy making. Sure, it says "chocolate" in the title, but you'll find enough info on gummis, gels, marshmallows, nougats, caramels and nut pastes to start your own little candy empire. It's expensive, but I've never seen such a thorough discussion of the properties of agar anywhere else, and it's well printed and well bound. I learned at least 10 new things in the first five minutes worth of flipping through the pages at random, so I consider it a wise investment.

For the past year I have been trying to re-create a common candy, with very poor results. I have been unable to find the recipe in any book, and the recipes found on the internet caused miserable failures. Then I found this book. Part textbook and part cookbook, it makes me feel as though I am reading a book of trade secrets. It contains several versions of the "secret" recipe I've been searching for, and goes into scientific detail as to how to make the recipe succeed. I don't mean any of the usual "at high altitude increase temperature" or stuff like that. I mean DETAIL as to why the ingredients do what they do, and how to identify a solution if your experiment should fail. The photographs are gorgeous and serve to inspire even a novice like me to become an artisan candy chef. With a chapter dedicated to explaining the right equipment to guide me, I feel I may even succeed.

Every baker or pastry chef that spends time reading to improve their skills knows that out of the multitude of available books for each subject, a handful stand out. Books that can dramatically improve one's skills or even open new paths of creativity. This is one of these books. Excellent in every way. From the theory to the recipes and from the explanation to the products this book stands out. I am a professional baker/pastry chef and I have rarely seen such professional work in a book.If one acquires this book ,along with 'Fine chocolates' by Wybauw and 'Making artisan chocolates' by Shotts, then they are on a good road to master the techniques of chocolate and candymaking.

This book includes chocolate work, candy making, nougats, dipped goods, ganaches ,moulded products, jellies and many more. The theory is detailed and clear and the photos are luscius and a treat to the eye.There is a multitude of recipes all using mostly easy to find ingredients and traditional methods, with no preservatives.
This book is not the same as Wybauw's. His is similar but, with a special interest in preservation. As another reviewer wrote, the two books are complementary.

Another aspect of the book that I like is that all recipes are in the Metric system, the Imperial system and in percentage formula form. Also all temperatures are in Celsius and Farhenheit.

With almost 400 pages and at this price this is a must for the serious candymaker and chocolatier.

I got this book to expand my scientific knowledge of candy making. It's definately been an asset as far as that goes. The book is strange, it's half text book, half cookbook. There is mega detail regarding why things happen the way they do. That's the part of the book I really enjoy. The part I am not enjoying so much is that the recipes are very complex. They call for about twice as many ingredients as similar recipes I have been using. The book also uses a lot of complex terminology that isn't defined so well for the layman. What exactly IS invert sugar and where can I get it? Almost every recipe calls for Glucose Syrup. I tried inferring from their glossary and basically corn syrup (or many other sugar based syrups will work. It's a big tome, with really great ideas. It's a bit beyond my abilities at the moment, but I think as I study it more, it will make more sense.

I purchased this book for its comprehensive review of the chocolate tempering process. Prior to reading it I already had some tempering experience in a food lab with small tempering unit but have only done this a few times and needed to firm up the basics. I was pleasantly surprised to see that this book has so much more than just chocolate overview. It really gives an outstanding primer on sugar- based confections, including caramels, nougat, hard boiled and gummy candies, marshmallows etc. The explanation of candy making techniques is easy to understand and follow. I did have a few issues with whipping marshmallows to the desired stiffness, but I attribute it to inconsistencies of the whipping time.
I've been making caramels for my company, Das Foods for about 7 months before I purchased this book and and yet I found some very helpful suggestions to improve texture and reduce stickiness of our caramels.
Overall, an excellent book that highly recommend to anyone who has passion and iterest in making confections

A beautifully photographed book with creative and inspirational recipes. Most importantly, this books gives real information about the functions of ingredients, and how to store the finished confections (yes, you CAN freeze them!) As a one person candy business, it is impossible to make a large selection of confections daily, and it is so very helpful to have some guidelines to storage before gambling with finished product (aka profit). Thank you so much for including that desperately needed information!

The CIA and their staff have done it...I don't think there is another book out there with as much information about chocolate that is presented in such a clean and concise and understandable manner. Beautiful photographs for each finished product and tons of other pictures showing methodology. Trouble shooting tips galore! Although this book does have an amazing quantity of useful information, it could be overwhelming to beginners...not that I would discourage anyone from buying it...but assess what you want to accomplish. There are other books out there for simple truffle making. This is definitely geared toward professional candy making. But I repeat, I wouldn't discourage anyone from buying this just to keep in your library to look over occasionally!

This is the best book available for any artisan confectioner, from beginner to seasoned professional. No other book has even come close in its level of detail about the theory and practice of artisan confectionery. Too many confectioners know how to make their products, but they have no idea WHY what they do works. This book explains it all, in brilliant and relatively easy to understand detail. The recipes give good examples, and the photography is excellent. Even better, the cost is far less than most professional level culinary reference books (which commonly run over a hundred dollars).

This book should be on every confectioner's shelf as his/her primary reference work.