Enrobing with chocolate and hard or soft coatings

Cakes, croissants and pastries

Preparation

Needed:

• grill
• receiving bowl 
• tempered chocolate or melted coating (40°C) 
• receiver to pour chocolate or coating 
• small palette knife 
• pastry/cakes/biscuits…

Temper the chocolate and pour into the receiver. You can also melt the chocolate and mix it with fondant sugar at ±35°C. The advantage of doing this is that a similar layer will crack or break less easily.

If you are using a hard coating or socalled baker's coating, you do not need to temper it. Melt at 40°C and then immediately after the dipping cool for the glaze. (see later). The same is true for the soft coatings.

If you are covering with chocolate (or a mixture of chocolate and fondant sugar), it should be at room temperature to pour over pastries, cakes…. Afterwards, it's best to let the layer harden at room temperature without cooling. Is the workroom warmer than 20°C? Allow to harden at room temperature and then place in the refrigerator. Too abrupt a change in temperature (but also cooling too slowly) affects the glazing of the chocolate.

If you are covering with a coating, you can even do this to a deep frozen product. If the product is at room temperature, after the coating place it in the refrigerator immediately! The abrupt temperature shock gives the coating layer a beautiful sheen.

Step by step

1. Place the receiving bowl under the grate.

2. Place the pastry on the grate. 1

3. Pour the chocolate onto the upper surface of the pastry. Lift the grill up and make rolling movements to distribute the chocolate over the pastry faster and let surplus chocolate run off the edges of the pastry.

Are the edges and the top of the pastry completely uniform? Then in one gentle movement of the palette knife smooth the surplus chocolate off the pastry. 2 3

Tip: For pastries on which you only want to coat the upper surface: hold the pastry upside down and dip the upper surface into the chocolate or coating. Allow to drip with gentle up and down movements then place on the grate. (e.g. turban-shaped cake).

4. Slip the palette knife under the pastry to remove it from the grate.

5. Place the pastry on a paper.

- for chocolate: do not wait too long! When the chocolate layer hardens, it will stick against the grate and might get damaged when moving the pastry from the grate. Allow to harden on the paper at room temperature and avoid abrupt temperature shock. Afterwards - or if the temperature in the workroom is too high - put it in the refrigerator (10°C).

- for coatings: place in the refrigerator immediately after enrobing. These products need to be cooled rapidly in order to develop a good sheen.

Which Carma chocolates are best suited to covering pastries?

Depending on the thickness of the layer that you wish to obtain, you can choose different chocolates. All our Couvertures from "Origine Rare", "Swiss Top", "Swiss Line" and types SS have a viscosity suitable for enrobing.