Before you can get started on your hand-dipped chocolates, you need to prepare their filling. Learn how to fit a ganache, caramel or fruit gel with a chocolate layer and a solid texture, and cut it to size with a guitar cutter.

GOOD TO KNOW

What should you take to heart when making enrobed or hand-dipped chocolates?
Choose the right fluidity: three drops for a chocolate shell of average thickness, four drops for a thin and crunchy chocolate shell.

For hand-dipping, use a deep, well-filled bowl of tempered chocolate so it maintains a constant temperature for as long as possible and won’t overcrystallise.

Use a clean dipping fork to make sure that you can place the chocolates onto your plastic quite easily.

Only use fillings with a firm, stiff texture covered with a thin but hard layer of chocolate in order to avoid skewing while dipping.

Make sure that the temperature of the fillings isn’t too cold. Keeping them at room temperature is ideal.

Needed:

• Tempered chocolate
• A paper cornet
• A guitar cutter (also known as a ganache cutter)
• Plastic sheets
• A ladle
• Ganache frames
• A filling of your choice (ganache, caramel, fruit gel…)
• A knife
• A sheet of paper
• A very thin tray
• Two plastic boards

Step 1
Pipe tempered chocolate onto a plastic board using a paper cornet and stick a plastic sheet onto it.

Step 2
Spread a thin layer of tempered chocolate evenly onto the plastic sheet. The top and bottom of our filling should be covered with hardened chocolate to make hand-dipping the chocolates easier later on.

Step 3
Fix a number of ganache frames to the plastic sheet and on top of each other with tempered chocolate until you reach the desired height for your filling. 0.6 to 1 cm is ideal. Let these set.

Step 4
Heat up a filling of your choice and gently pour it into the stacked-up ganache frames. Be careful not to overfill it: fill the ganache frames almost to the brim, but leave a bit of space from the top.

Step 5
Make sure the filling is well-spread in the corners and to the sides of the ganache frames. Give them a good shake to level out the filling’s surface.

Step 6
Let the filling harden in a refrigerator at 14 to 16°C overnight.

Step 7
Take the filling out of the refrigerator and apply a thin layer of tempered chocolate on top.

Step 8
Slide the tip of a knife between the filling and the ganache frames to cut it loose. Remove the frames immediately.

Step 9
Cut away and remove any loose parts of filling to create a perfectly clean slab.

Step 10
When the chocolate is dry to the touch, cover it with a sheet of paper and a hard plastic board. Don’t wait until the chocolate has completely set or it will splinter during cutting.

Step 11
Turn the slab over, and remove the plastic sheet and the board that are on top of the filling. Cover it with a second plastic board.

Step 12
Turn the slab over once more, remove the paper sheet and the board.

Step 13
Carefully arrange the slab onto the guitar cutter and cut the filling into the desired shape.

Step 14
If you don’t have a double guitar cutter, slide a very thin tray underneath the slab, put the tray aside and clean the guitar cutter strings.

Step 15
Turn the tray 90°, carefully arrange the slab back onto the cutter, remove the tray and give the filling a second cut.

Step 16
Slide the tray back underneath the slab to pick up all the fillings. Now create hand-dipped chocolates based on one of the techniques demonstrated in our tutorial about hand-dipping chocolates.