Chocolate caviar...

I'm still very much a newbie to the whole of molecular gastronomy. I want to try making the chocolate caviar recipe for my first stab at spherification. Couple of questions:

1) Am I crazy to start off with this one - should I just do a more basic recipe, and if so does anyone have a recommendation?

2) The recipe calls for 3.6 grams of Sphere Magic. I have sodium alginate, but I'm confused on what ratio to use. In the video for direct spherification they mentioned using 1% Sphere Magic or .5% sodium alginate for each 100g of liquid, but then in this recipe they dissolve 3.6g in to 200g of water (along with .3g sodium citrate). Is the ratio based on total volume after adding the sugar and cocoa?

Like I said, I'm a complete newbie, so any clarification would be supremely appreciated.

- R

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Pepijn_31744

I can't help you with the specific spherefication questions. However the ratio used is usually a percentage of the main ingredient. E.g. Adding 10% eggs to 500 gr flour would amount to 50 gr eggs. This as opposed to taking the total weight and deriving percentages from that.

In case of an alginate bath I assume the main ingredient is water. With 1% of 200 g being 2 g. Not sure why they deviated from the guidelines, perhaps someone else can help you with that.

Reuben_33970

Yeah, I don't quite know the reason for the deviation but I tried to run with it - for their standard direct spherification guidelines they say 1% sphere magic or .5% alginate, so half the amount of what they'd use of the SM. So, I figured why not cut the 3.6g in half and give it a go (1.8g of alginate).

Worked pretty well! Wasn't perfect as my initial drops came across as tadpoles more than spheres, but once I got the hang of it, they came together reasonably well. I think if I up the alginate amount just a touch (maybe to 2g) they'll hold a little better. Otherwise, I consider my first try a success!