Sunday, July 18, 2010

DIY Interlude: Waxing Cheeses

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So I read on the internets that you can wax your cheese using nothing but candlewax and crayons. 
Lucily I had some wax laying around from an earlier project. 




Ingredients:
  • 200g paraffin wax
  • A crayon



The Recipe

Firstly get yourself a double boiler, (Bain-marie.) The are very easy to improvise, essentially they are just a bowl in a pan of boiling water. The clever details are to not let the bowl touch the sides much, or it will conduct to much heat.

You want to be using one of these to melt the wax, as you don't want to overheat it, or it might hurt your cheese, or, more importantly, your fingers, as this is quite a manual process (as I discovered).

Also, you really don't want to be getting your wax hot enough to vaporize near a flame.

My bowl in a pan looked like this:

I got my crayon ( I chose red).

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Melting the Wax

I stripped the paper off crayon, and popped it in with the wax into the bowl.
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After about ten minutes it all started to break down:
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Ten further minutes:
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Ten more minutes:
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Then, after a quick stir, it all mixed perfectly into this red soup.
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Dunking the Cheese

Here's me wondering which way round I should dunk it first.
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Then the first dip:
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After dipping, I gave it five seconds then did it again. After three dips, I rotated 90 degrees, finally holding the cheese by its wax coat for the first time. Then repeated the three tips, intil i had compeltly cover there rim.
The I popped the cheese in flat side first, and sealed up the two holes.



The Results:

Cheese 1:
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Cheese 2:
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