Level: Novice
Read Time: 8 minutes
I'm going to add some clarified butter to a milk chocolate:
550g Nibs
650g Sugar
175g Cocoa Butter
300g Milk Powder
??g Clarified Butter
How many grams of Clarified Butter would you be comfortable adding to this recipe with the goal of getting a decent temper? I know 'decent' is subjective, so maybe you could give me a range?
Can we use milk butter to make chocolate? In what percentage?
I want to use ghee to make my chocolate. Is that allowed?
Can soya bean oil be used to replace cocoa butter in chocolate making?
How much coconut oil should I use?
We temper 70% dark Callebaut in our Instantpot Sous vide but want to experiment with white chocolate and coconut flavors. However, white chocolate is already so sweet on sweet dates! How can we reduce the sweetness without messing with the tempering process. I heard that adding cocoa butter will break the emulsion of the chocolate.
Do you folks get together and decide to send these in all at once?
I would like to introduce you to a term that I’ve been using but is apparently already pretty well known in some less savory areas of the world. #FAFO.
I’ve been using it in regards to science. F*ck Around and Find Out. Said a different way, if you have a question, don’t just ask someone when you can test it yourself and learn something. It is my sincere belief that knowledge earned is knowledge appreciated and you earn it by ef’ing around.
I know this is Ask the Alchemist, and of course I want you to ask questions. I very much want you asking questions. The key is whether you should because you have hit a stumbling block or just don’t want to test some ideas. Asking questions isn’t a substitute for getting your hands dirty. Get out there and FAFO!
What? You are not sure how to F around? Damn, it is so second nature to me, I had not considered that. It would be so easy to fall into the ‘in my generation we did this or that’ shit and that just isn’t fair. It isn’t just the zoomers not wanting to dive in. Almost everyone, Gen X, boomers, and whatever the other ones are, seem to have forgotten or lost the habit of just doing something for the hell of it. Times have changed. I get that. Everyone wants to be handed an answer, not because they are lazy but because we have just gotten used to that being how it is done. I mean, even I am asking you to ask me questions so I’m as guilty as anyone about promoting not getting your hands dirty.
I think it is time that changes!
Do you remember 2020? Ok, silly question. The better question is do you remember how much fun you had in 2020 when you discovered what a blast it was to just do something to do it and how fun it was? I’ve got news for you. Sourdough is all about FAFO. Whew....whoa John, reel it back in to the topic at hand. Where was I? Oh yeah.
FAFO is just another way of talking about the scientific method with the caveat that you write down your results. Hell, science is the original FAFO and I’m not alone. To quote Adam Savage, “the only difference in science and screwing around is writing it down”. Basically FAFO and write it down. That’s science.
I’m going to go through those questions above one by one and tell you how I would go about working them out instead of just handing you the answers.
It is time to learn (or remember) how to FAFO folks.
How many grams of Clarified Butter would you be comfortable adding to this recipe with the goal of getting a decent temper? I know 'decent' is subjective, so maybe you could give me a range?
Upon reading this my first thought is I just don’t know what you want. You say it yourself, a decent temper is so subjective. Just brute forcing it, I would make the batch of chocolate listed above and then make up a bunch of 100 g samples and temper them with silk and see what happens. That said, a good scientist does a little research before getting into the lab. Typing “how much clarified butter can I add to chocolate” into google gets you some results and even some from Chocolate Alchemy but I’ll admit, it does not hand you the answer. What it does do is pretty quickly lead you to our Heavy Cream powder where I state:
“Here is the first batch I made.
2 lb 75% dark chocolate
1 lb Heavy Cream powder
It was that simple but it also was too much butter fat and the chocolate refused to temper and was soft at room temperature.
I would recommend not using more than 5%. More than that and you may run into tempering issues.”
Oh look....I even suggest you not use more than 5%. But I do qualify it as ‘may run into tempering issues” and not ‘you will run into tempering issues”. You are still going to want to test it out. Since the cream powder is about 72% milk fat and 1/3 cream powder was too much, we know that is the upper limit for not working or 72% / 3 = 24%
With that the test would look like this.
After you run your test you may find that 90% was too hard and 85% was too soft (I’m making this up, I don’t know this) and so you would do round two of testing.
And there you go. You have a FAFO scheme and with just starting with google, you could have found out the range was 4-24 %.
Next question.
Can we use milk butter to make chocolate? In what percentage?
SSDD on the search about if you can use it. Right? In what percentage? #FAFO.
Now, that said, when you do f*ck around you are going to very quickly discover that your chocolate behaves a little oddly. It will have probably gotten a little thick and the reason is that butter has water in it and why the first person specifically said clarified butter (good job, have a cookie). I would have loved if that was the question I received instead.
“I added some butter to my chocolate and it is acting funny. Do you know why?”
That at least shows some initiative and I would’ve been more than happy to explain it. Anyway, per the above, you now have the power in your own hands to FAFO for yourself. You know you can’t just add it due to the water in the butter and it needs to be clarified. How do you clarify it? Google is your friend.
Next question.
I want to use ghee to make my chocolate. Is that allowed?
Allowed? There ain’t no chocolate making police that I’m aware of. #FAFO The above tells you all you need to know.
Next question.
Can soya bean oil be used to replace cocoa butter in chocolate making?
One google search gives me this as the top hit.
https://www.ulprospector.com/knowledge/1085/fbn-cocoa-butter-alternatives-chocolate/
That gives you a conditional yes but indicates too much might give you an issue. Guess what? No, not chicken butt. #FAFO. What will that look like? First you of course would research how much cocoa butter goes in chocolate, right? Good thing I’ve laid that out. Depending what you are making (dark, milk, white), it looks to be 5-40%
There you go. FAFO and let me know what you find.
Next Question
We temper 70% dark Callebaut in our Instantpot Sous vide but want to experiment with white chocolate and coconut flavors. However, white chocolate is already so sweet on sweet dates! How can we reduce the sweetness without messing with the tempering process. I heard that adding cocoa butter will break the emulsion of the chocolate.
I’m thrilled you want to experiment but I’m not sure where to start and don’t get why you are telling me about your Instantpot Sous vide. You reference 70% chocolate but then say you want to play with white chocolate...and coconut. And what is this about dates? Date sugar? Are you wanting to pour it over dates? Are you wanting to add coconut oil? There are references ALL OVER the site about how much coconut oil is going to mess with tempering. Whoa, you heard what? HUH? That adding cocoa butter will break the emulsion of chocolate? You seem to be the victim of the telephone game. You have taken something way out of context. Yes, adding fats (or water) to certain emulsions can indeed break them but chocolate isn’t an emulsion. Chocolate ganache is an emulsion and yep you can break it by adding fat or water to it incorrectly, but chocolate is a non-Newtonian fluid. Emulsions have water in them and that is one of the only rules we have in chocolate - NO WATER.
So in this case there are so many variables and unknowns in this question that I can’t even begin to suggest anything other than FAFO. Sorry, not sorry, that I can’t give you more. You are going to need to FAFO. Add some cocoa butter to your chocolate and see how it tastes and tempers and go from there.
Next question.
Oh...that’s all. We don’t have any more questions.
Lest anyone thinks I’m upset ala The Alchemist loses his shit, rest assured, I’m totally not. I am encouraging others to find the joy I find in experimentation, learning and just plain old F*cking around and finding out what happens.
Before I wrap this up, I want to say many of these questions are just too case specific to give concrete answers to. I do know for instance that 10% butter fat makes a chocolate with different tempering properties depending upon how much cocoa butter is in there. Different amounts of sugar and nibs and milk powder will also change its properties, so even if I wanted to, I can’t give up upper limit. It isn’t so much as not wanting to give you and answer, I can’t. The permutations are too great.
A new series?
With that in mind, I’ve come to realize I’m too close to the subject of chocolate making but I do love to FAFO. In the same vein of Ask the Alchemist, do any of you have ideas of things that you would you like me to FAFO for you? This could be fun. #FAFOFriday anyone?? #FAFOF??? I know I can’t do every Friday but it has a nice ring to it for a new series if there is enough interest and I can do it.
We are going to look at setting up a page similar to Ask the Alchemist where you can submit ideas. FWIW, I’m thinking they should be real ideas that the answer isn’t obvious (How about seeing if you can refine chocolate by banging two rocks together?) or isn’t useful to making chocolate at home (what happens if you mix gasoline into chocolate?).. I’m thinking more along the lines of “can you ferment cocoa beans a 2nd time?” or “We all know we can’t add water to chocolate, but is that a fact? I’ve had a drop of water fall into my chocolate and it was ok. What is the actual limit for water in chocolate and is it different for percentages of sugar, butter and milk powder?""
So start thinking about #FAFO. Maybe do some yourself and if it is beyond your scope, toss them my way.
And don’t forget kids, if you don’t write it down, your just f*cking around. Write it down.