Trendspotters from the 2015 Summer Fancy Food Show identified popular flavor profiles that just might tantalize your taste buds and inspire ideas for your own new product development.

Flower Power

Floral notes such as rose, lavender and hibiscus made a memorable appearance in products such as Belvoir Fruit Farms Elderflower & Rose Lemonade, Masala Pop Saffron Rose Popcorn, Rogue Creamery La-Di-Da Lavender Cheese and Vosges Haut-Chocolat Blood Orange Hibiscus Caramel Marshmallows.

 

Vosges Haut-Chocolatcovers marshmallows in burnt sugar caramel with blood oranges and hibiscus flavors, chocolate and tops it with black salt.

 

 

Cocktail Culture

Spirits, wine, and beer inspire flavors and ingredient pairings like Bissell Maple Farm's Pappy & Company Bourbon Barrel-Aged Syrup, Brooklyn Brine Co. Hop-Pickles, Colonel Pabst All Malt Amber-Lager Worcestershire Sauce and L.A. Creamery The Manhattan.

L.A. Creamery’s The Manhattantakes its cues from the classic cocktail with Rittenhouse Rye, brown butter toffee and bing cherries.

 

 

Go Ginger

An honorable mention, so to speak, goes to ginger as another hot flavor trend (pun intended) for 2015.

Try the classic pairing of crystallized ginger dipped in dark chocolate or more adventurous pairings incorporated inDivineChocolate’sLemon Infused Ginger Turtles (top)or Coconut Ginger Popcorn Truffles fromYoderPopcornClick here to view the recipe from Yoder Popcorn.

Tags:  Candy Making  Caramel  Chocolate  Flavors  Floral  Ginger  Ice Cream  Lemon  Liquor  Marshmallow  New  Photos  Popcorn  Recipe  Trends 

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This week’s quick tip? Check your temper!

 

While we don’t want you to have a temper tantrum during the peak of the holiday season, we’re actually referring to checking the temper of your chocolate. As production aims to keep up with the demands of the holidays, it may be easy for production staff to get sidetracked and assume your chocolate is well-tempered and ready to move into the assembly line. However, not keeping a close eye on your chocolate’s temper is a costly mistake.

 

Many of our candy making members have a system in place to verify their chocolate’s temper every hour. While verification processes may vary, just be sure that you have a process in place, even if it is a simple pen and paper system.

 

How often do you check your temper? Leave us a comment below!

Tags:  Candy Making  Chocolate  GMP's  Quality Control 

As has become our custom on the RCI Tip of the Week blog, we’ll make the posts quick and brief this month for you since we know it’s a very busy time of year for candy makers.

 

For this first quick tip, we are encouraging you to think outside of the box when it comes to nuts in your confections, specifically nougat. For example, consider using pistachios in your holiday nougat for a fun and different color and flavor enhancement. Chef En-Ming Hsu provided this idea during her nougat demonstration at our recent Fall Regional Conference, and many attendees commented on how great the pistachios tasted as well as how beautiful they were.

If you have other fun uses for pistachios in confections, leave us a comment below!

Tags:  Candy Making  Creativity  Fall Regional  Seasonal 

It is almost the season for making life-size chocolate Santas. Ok, we realize they aren’t really life-size but some of the pretty large ones could definitely be life-size for a child!

 

Either way, this week on the blog we have a small but useful tip to help you evenly distribute the chocolate in your life-size moulded Santa Claus. Since these huge moulds aren’t likely to fit on a mould spinner, most candy makers seem to have a special way of spinning and flipping the moulds to be sure the chocolate doesn’t all gather on one side as it hardens. To help with this process our tip is to make a rule for your staff that each time they walk by the mould they need to flip it.

 

Be sure every staff member knows and understands the reason for this rule is to evenly spread the chocolate inside the mould to help ensure they’ll follow it. Additionally, it would be wise to assign a staff member to be in charge of ensuring the mould is flipped on a regular schedule. For example, if it needs to be flipped every five minutes and no one walks by for 10 minutes, this staff person would be the one to flip it at the five minute mark. It would probably be helpful to have a pen and paper chart nearby for staff to initial and write the time when they flip the mould.

 

By involving all staff to flip your extra large moulds you’ll be creating a team environment where everyone pitches in, in addition to adding an element of quality control,  

 

P.S. This tip came from our Mechanics of Chocolate Moulding education course held last fall. Attend RCI’s next education course, Chocolate Boot Camp®, by registering online today at retailconfectioners.org/bootcamp.

Tags:  Candy Making  Chocolate  Holidays  Moulds  Quality Control  Seasonal