We might be at the end of an era, that being the winding down of Ask the Alchemist. In short, people don’t seem to have questions any more and that is bitter sweet. On one hand, it means I’ve answered your questions and that is wonderful. On the other hand, well, I love answering questions, the grittier the better. With that, the short term goal is to make it to ATA 300 and that will be it, and I suspect, until then, they will continue to be a little sporadic, with more basic questions or variations of questions that have previously come in. The following pair of questions are of that flavor.
Read Time: 5 minutes
Level: Novice.
How much vanilla extract should I add to my chocolate?
None.
This isn’t because I am against vanilla. Quite the contrary. I love vanilla and have no issue with it going into chocolate. For my tastes it shouldn’t dominate the flavor but a hint can be just lovely. Many of you know why I said ‘none’. From what I can find, there are no commercial water free vanilla extracts and because of the water content, you can’t add them to your chocolate. If you try, you chocolate is going to thicken and most likely seize. That includes the ones in alcohol and pastes.
So what can you do? Really there are two, maybe three options. First you can make your own pseudo extract by buying whole vanilla beans, splitting and scraping out the vanilla paste and extracting it in warm cocoa butter, then tossing the whole thing into your chocolate to refine. I don’t recommend just tossing the vanilla paste direct in your chocolate again due to the trace water. Sometimes it can work but sometimes it can give you problems. By adding it to cocoa butter over 212 F you can drive off the water.
It isn’t a perfect solution though. I’ve certainly done it in the past, but it can be pretty highly variable in flavor and can get expensive really fast in that I’ve found it can take several very expensive vanilla beans per batch of chocolate. We offered vanilla beans in the past but when they officially got more expensive than gold (no hyperbole there, they were $1600/lb) we stopped.
During some recipe development consultation I did, I came across a vanilla powder. I’ll say outright I was pretty skeptical about using it. But damn it, it worked really nice. The flavor was full and consistent and added that little layer of depth to certain chocolates that many of us grew up with. There are tons of purists out there that want only cocoa in their chocolate, and that is fine. For me, chocolate has turned more and more into recalling why we came to love chocolate and how it can be used. Back to the powder, I liked it so much I’ve decided to offer it.
It is in a base of sugar and you can add it right to your melanger at the outset with your other sugar and off you go. And even if you are making a sugar free chocolate, the amount of sugar added, once divided out to the whole batch, is going to be negligible. I found about 1 teaspoon per pound was a fine place to start, if you want to add any. It is of course a totally optional ingredient.
My son can’t have cow’s milk but loves milk chocolate. I can buy local fresh goat milk but it makes a mess when I try to mix it with chocolate and tastes nothing like milk chocolate. What am I doing wrong?
Well, once again, it is the water in the milk causing you issues. You can’t add any ingredient to chocolate and have it remain chocolate. As soon as you add a water based ingredient, you either have a mess on your hands or you are making something else, like a chocolate ganache. You turn your chocolate (noun) into a chocolate (adjective) creation.
What you are going to have to do is use a dry milk powder, just like what you would use in traditional milk chocolate. To date, I’ve yet to find a way to dry your own milk at home. Getting rid of that last bit of water is very difficult. The sugar (lactose) in the milk wants to hold onto that water and it has a strong grip.
Just like the vanilla beans, we used to carry goat milk until it because impossible to get for repackaging. Lucky for us, someone from Goat Partners International saw we stopped carrying it and reached out, and we now have a new Goat Milk Powder in stock. You can use it like any other milk powder 1:1.
Finally, I just want to share something. I ran across this the other day and it just calls to my soul.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzpJWKvOmdg
I seriously wonder how different it would be with homemade chocolate, turning it into a 250 hour chocolate cake. Maybe all that nuance would be lost….. It is possible I just might have to try it.