First attempts at spherification
I bought some Algin and Calcic during the summer to experiment with spherification but never got around to actually giving it a try. Since I've always had an unexplainable fondness of jelloshots, I decided to "reinvent" them (as if I'm the first to come up with THAT idea...). The way I wanted to make my so called Jello Shots 2.0 was to make a liquid center, surrounded with a jelly that would form an explosion when bitten on.
After consulting my copy of Modernist Cuisine I decided to give reverse spherification a go. I should first explain how normal spherification works: You mix the liquid you want to spherify with algin and drop (or spoon) certain amounts of liquid in a waterbath that's mixed with calcic. When the algin and calcic react with one another, a gel forms. So after consulting Modernist Cuisine I found out that algin doesn't really like alcohol all that much, and since I was experimenting with screwdriver (orange-wodka) jello shots that would raise a problem. So reverse spherification was the way to go: mixing the alcoholic liquid with calcic and dropping it in a waterbath mixed with algin. The ratio's I used was 3% calcic in the alcoholic liquid and 0,5% algin the water solution (as recommended in Modernist Cuisine.
A couple of hours after mixing everything I tried making some "caviar" by dropping little droplets of screwdriver mix into the waterbath. But, alas, it failed misserably. In theory, when the outside of the droplets hit the water solution it would gel-suit-up incapsulating the liquid center and keeping it liquid. Mine did about the complete oppoisite. The started by dissolving in the water and just then jelling up, resulting in just big mess of slimy goo.
After evaluating what went wrong, it was pretty clear that the immediately dissolving in the water caused a big problem. I had 2 ideas. The first one being adding some Xanthan gum so the liquid wouldn't dissolve as quickly. Xanthan has the ability to thicken liquids, even if they aren't heated and kept plain cold. A thicker liquid would dissolve less quickly and thus have more time to form a gel around the droplets. The second idea was to attempt cryospherification. Which basically means just pouring the screwdriver mix in an ice cube tray, freezing it overnight and when it's frozen, dropping it in the waterbath. As the ice cube begins to melt a gel forms on the outside and the liquid center doesn't have a chance to dissolve into a slimy goo! (and yes, since the screwdriver had an alcohol percentage of about 20% the center was still liquid, even after an overnight sleepover in the freezer).
I'm glad the (reverse) cryospherification worked, but now I still have 1 problem. I didn't like the mouthfeel of the gel that formed around the liquid. It was very heard and not very pleasant at all. So I decided I will give normal spherification a try, perhaps tweaking the precentages of algin and calcic respectively. I guess I'll keep you posted!
Not bad for a first blog, if I do say so myself.