I have two refurbished Behmors. And these are a real steal as they were both cosmetic damage only. Never used. Dinged panels and doors. ...and a mere two hours later they are gone....
I am trying to figure out the best way to make my homemade chocolate behave in ice cream. Do you have any suggestions or recipes for how to make this work?
Well, this is not so much a chocolate question, but it does bring up a couple points that I will take a couple minutes to address. And summer is upon us, so it’s also perfect timing.
First off, if all has gone right, your homemade chocolate should act no different than commercial chocolate, so any recipe that calls for chocolate, you can use your own alchemical creation. That is point one.
That said, point two (as I’ve noted in the past) is that if you are cooking or baking with your own chocolate where you incorporate it into a liquid, a little lecithin in the mix is helpful to make sure it all stays together.
With those points in mind, it’s just a matter of finding a chocolate ice cream recipe you like. Myself, I adore working with David Lebovitz’s recipes. And that brings me to my third point. Many recipes you find include cocoa powder. But you want to use your own chocolate solely. Generally, I’ve had very good luck just substituting double the amount of chocolate and cutting back on the equal amount of fat (since chocolate is cocoa solids and cocoa butter). If you really crunch the numbers, it will be a touch off, but from a practical standpoint I’ve yet to find it makes any difference. Below is one of David’s recipes:
Ingredients 2 cups heavy cream 3 tablespoons (1/2 oz) unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder 5 ounces bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, chopped 1 cup whole milk 3/4 cup granulated sugar Pinch of salt 5 large egg yolks 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
Using my own advice, that turns into the following:
2 cups heavy cream 6 ounces bittersweet or semisweet chocolate (with lecithin), chopped 1 cup whole milk 3/4 cup granulated sugar Pinch of salt (smoked salt anyone?) 6 large egg yolks 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
In this case, I removed the 1/2 ounce of cocoa powder, doubled it, and added 1 oz of chocolate. Since no direct fat was used, I did not remove any (and, really, it’s ice cream – can there be too much?). Since I did not remove any fat, I increased the egg yolks by one to be sure it would emulsify properly. With that out of the way, proceed as normal for making ice cream. And so you have it, here is the rest of the directions.
Procedure
Bring 1 cup of cream to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer at a very low boil for 30 seconds, whisking constantly. Remove from the heat and add the chopped chocolate, stirring until smooth. Then stir in the remaining 1 cup cream. Pour the mixture into a large bowl, scraping the saucepan as thoroughly as possible, and set a mesh strainer on top of the bowl. Warm the milk, sugar, and salt in the same saucepan.
In a separate medium bowl, whisk together the egg yolk. Slowly pour the warm milk into the egg yolks, whisking constantly, then scrape the warmed egg yolks back into the saucepan. Stir the mixture constantly over the medium heat with a heatproof spatula, scraping the bottom as you stir, until the mixture thickens and coats the spatula (170 degrees on an instant-read thermometer). Pour the custard through the strainer and stir it into the chocolate mixture until smooth, then stir in the vanilla. Stir until cool over an ice bath. Chill the mixture thoroughly in the refrigerator, then freeze it in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions. (If the cold mixture is too thick to pour into your machine, whisk it vigorously to warm it up and thin it out.) My personal favorite proportion of salt to ice is 1:4. So, for every quart of ice, add one cup of ice.
This is another great Chocolate Ice Cream recipe. Just convert the 35 g cocoa powder and 85 g chocolate to 155 g of chocolate and keep on going. Happy Summer time Ice Cream!
We are away for the upcoming week. The stores and cart will remain open, but no orders will be processed at all. Please feel free to put in an order. Likewise, no e-mails will be answered until the end of the week. And if anyone is curious, my daughter has taken a fancy for hiking the PCT. This is a short training trip with an added small bonus of an assault on the third highest peak in Oregon - South Sister.
Enjoy the summer everyone.
I Have tried to alkalize my cocoa nibs by briefly dipping them in a solution of water and sodium carbonate. I was amazed by the change of color to a real dark brown. Only that I lost a lot of the cocoa flavor. But that bitter taste too disappeared. My question is:
Is that a proper way of making an alkali solution? If not, what is the right way? Am I not risking too much by adding water because of the seizing challenges? Will I get the same results(Darkening and reducing acidity) if I mix the carbonate powder in the liquor with the other ingredients?
Yes that is a way to alkalize or dutch your cocoa nibs and yes, you lose a LOT of flavor. It's one reason I have little experience in it as I never liked the results.
I can't answer if you made your alkali solution correct as you didn't tell me how you made it. Only what you made it out of. To that regard, yes, sodium carbonate (baking soda) is the correct chemical.
As far as what the industry does, nibs are not normally alkalized as only the surface is then treated. The interior is hardly affected. The powder is what is treated. It's mixed in a slurry (after the butter is pressed out) and then dried.
And yes, it will also work to add your baking soda direct to the liquor. It's what I've done. About 1 t per pound. With a radical drop in flavor. It basically made it one dimensional in flavor. I much prefer to simply not use beans that are overly bitter or astringent so alkalization is not needed. And as for acidity reduction, I prefer roasting and refining techniques to reduce that instead of neutralization by chemical techniques.
With this question in mind, I tried dutching some Peru nibs that I had roasted. I mixed up a 10% solution of baking soda and soaked the nibs for about 1 hour. I then sun dried them. As expected they turned very dark. And the chocolate aroma was radically reduced. The flavor did turn a little more chocolatey, but it is difficult to tell if it was real or only perception as the bright, tangy fruit disappeared. What I was left with was a non-bitter, non-fruity, non-offensive (not that it was offensive) cocoa nib that basically was BORING. The resulting chocolate was the same. Non-bitter, non-offensive, non-fruit and BORING.
In general, my take is this. Alkalization was introduced as a way to make poor beans palatable. Maybe a partial treatment might have a place in artisan, single origin chocolate, but to my mind, I don’t find a strong reason to treat your high quality, single origin cocoa.
I have a question for Ask the Alchemist. How do I get it to you and get you to answer it?
You can send it to questions@chocolatealchemy.com.
And no, you have not missed this address somewhere. I’ve had quite the number of back logged questions. But now I would love to answer more of your questions, so I’ve created the new address.
Now, please try to keep them to specific chocolate related questions. Techniques, theory, understanding. That kind of thing. If you can avoid rhetorical questions (why do I love chocolate?) that would save us all time and energy. Read through some of the previous questions and I think you will see the flavor of question I am after. And I’ll say again, please keep it chocolate related to one degree or another.
That’s it for this week. Get thinking and get asking.
Oh, and if you were wondering, the above question was asked via one of the posts to Ask the Alchemist.
Before I get to my weekly Ask the Alchemist, I want to let everyone know a few dates that Chocolate Alchemy will be partly closed. I will still be taking order, but I will not be responding to any e-mails or filling/shipping any orders as I will be out on the trail with my daughter for some much needed time off. 6/28/13 – 7/1/13
7/22/13 – 7/26/13 ( a full week)
8/21/13 – 8/24/13
Alchemist
On to Ask the Alchemist.
My cocoa butter melted. Is it still good?
I’ve had my cocoa bean/nibs for 2 months. Have they gone bad?
With the summer months coming on, this was the perfect set of questions to answer.
And I’m just going to dive into a number of related questions and answers. Yes, we still ship cocoa butter when the weather is hot. Yes, it may melt on the way to you. Over the years I’ve learned to double seal the bags to prevent leaks. And no, the cocoa butter will not be harmed in any way from melting and re-solidifying. In nearly a decade of dealing with cocoa butter, I’ve never seen it go bad. ‘Bad’ usually means rancid, and for whatever reason, I’ve never noticed that to occur in cocoa butter. So, let it melt and set up. No harm. Just shoot for cool and dry for storage.
Roughly, the same information goes for cocoa beans and nibs. They won’t melt during the summer months. Also, they won’t go bad in just a couple months, and really, ‘bad’ is a very subjective term. After some amount of time, which varies from bean to bean, and is related to the conditions they are stored in (cool and dry is again best) cocoa beans don’t spoil. Roasted beans and nibs may well go stale in a month or so, but won’t go bad. Raw beans are stable and easily keep many months if not years. It really varies per bean.
Given how stable both are, refrigeration is not required. There is a not very funny joke about what do you get if you freeze your freshly roasted coffee beans after a month? Cold, stale coffee beans. Contrary to what people want to believe, freezing (of the standard sort) does not radically or magically extend freshness of coffee and cocoa. Why? Basically because it takes MUCH colder temperatures and a lack of oxygen to do that.
And I will toss out one last note about lecithin. See cocoa butter above. It may melt. No, it won’t be ruined by melting. Cool and dry storage.
Do I have to use lecithin, vanilla and preservatives in my chocolate? How and when do I add them?
First and foremost, you don’t have to add anything more than sugar to make chocolate (assuming we are not talking “baker’s chocolate”). And you absolutely don’t have to add any nebulous preservatives. Chocolate does not go bad.
As for lecithin and vanilla, they are both optional additives and very simple to add.
Lecithin is often described as an emulsifier. In chocolate, that is not really why it is used, but that property is used. What I mean by that is technically an emulsifier is used to bind somewhat equal parts of water and oil together. Like in a Caesar salad dressing. The egg is the emulsifier, and allows the oil and vinegar to bind together into an emulsion. In chocolate, as we all know by now, you don’t use water as it causes the chocolate to seize. But sometimes, either due to a lighter side roast, humidity or because certain ingredients (some sugars and milk powder) can be easily absorb water, water does make it into the chocolate. The addition of a small amount of lecithin keeps the water from causing problems such as seizing or thickening the chocolate. But to repeat, it is an optional ingredient. I’m a big fan of ‘don’t fix what is not broken’. If your chocolate is not showing symptoms of moisture problems, and you like the chocolate, leave it be.
The other reason you may wish to use lecithin is actually for its emulsification properties. When baking, or cooking with homemade chocolate, more than once I found the recipe trying to separate, but the recipe was just fine with commercial chocolate. A little investigation led to the difference being a small amount of lecithin in the chocolate. The lecithin gives you just a little edge and leeway in having everything incorporate smoothly and evenly.
How much is a ‘small amount’? The rule of thumb I use currently is 0.1% of the recipe, or roughly a teaspoon in a 6 lb batch. Will more lecithin hurt? No, I’ve used up to 5% in a test batch, and although the texture and viscosity because a little odd, it by no means ruined the chocolate.
Vanilla – what a controversial subject…..which mostly I fail to participate in. As I said, it is optional. Many chocolates contain it. Many people are used to the flavor and expect in chocolate. Some people think it complements the flavor of the chocolate. Some people think it competes with the flavor. If you do wish to add it, I find 1-2 vanilla beans per 6 lb batch is a good starting point. If you don’t want it, don’t add it.
How do you add either of these ingredients? In nearly all of my recipes I have at least a small amount of cocoa butter. I melt the cocoa butter, and then add the lecithin, stirring to incorporate. You can add it directly to your chocolate in your Melanger, but I find it seems to behave better this way. Likewise, for vanilla, I take a vanilla bean, split it down the middle, scrap the seeds, and toss it all into the cocoa butter to steep for 1/2 - 1 hour. Longer is fine, shorter if you wish. Scrap the vanilla bean again, and use the vanilla infused cocoa butter, seeds and all. And if you don’t use cocoa butter? My suggestion is just to use some if you are going to add either of these ingredients.
Preservatives. To my mind, they have no place at all in chocolate. None. They are not needed. It’s really that simple. Chocolate, being effectively water free, is it’s own natural preservative. For something to spoil, you have to have bacteria thriving, and bacteria (or any life that I am aware of) will not thrive in a water free environment. This is not to say you can’t have dormant bacteria in your chocolate if you are not careful in your processing. E.coli, salmonella, etc. But they won’t cause the chocolate to spoil – they will simply make you sick after you ingest them and give them water.
Don’t you make chocolate out of cocoa powder? Can't I just heat it with sugar and cocoa butter to dissolve the sugar?
No.
No.
There. Are we done? I didn’t think so.
To the best of my understanding, no one makes chocolate from cocoa powder commercially. I’m not sure where the idea has surfaced. Maybe just that it’s from a desire to make the chocolate making process seem simpler or more approachable. Mind you, I’ve seen lots of recipes all over the internet about making homemade chocolate from cocoa powder, sugar and often butter (or Crisco – shudder). My response is that is nasty. I won’t sugar coat it (no pun intended). Aside from that, I just can’t bring myself to call that chocolate. And really, this question came in after someone tried one of those recipes, it turned out terrible (and nasty – their word, not mine) and wanted to know from me what they had done wrong. Oh, and why I posted the recipe in the first place if it was so bad – I delicately and politely suggested that maybe they mixed up websites as I would never post such as recipe as anything other than an example of what not to do.
You simply can’t dissolve sugar in cocoa butter. Just because the cocoa butter (or shortening or dairy butter) is melted and in a liquid state does not make it equivalent to water. Sure, they are both liquids, but one is an oil and one is, well, water. Sugar is not soluble in oil (I’m not going to go into why, but if someone really wants to know, submit the question and maybe I’ll geek out on you from a chemistry standpoint) just as water is not soluble in oil. Gasoline is a liquid but you can’t drink it and you can’t run your car on water. And no, it does not matter if you heat it. Sure, at some point the sugar will melt (366.8 F), at which point you will have molten sugar in hot oil – and when you add your cocoa powder it is going to burn. And if you try cooling it to a point where it won’t burn the cocoa powder, it will solidify. It is a no win situation. Been there, tried it, failed!
But cocoa powder is fine, and I can use powdered sugar, and there, presto, whamo, smooth chocolate – right? And you wrote me and asked this question why? Because what you got was nasty and gritty. You may think both those ingredients are fine, and compared to granular sugar or salt and the like, sure, they are fine – but from the standpoint of your tongue and modern expectations, those are like 100 times coarser than you need or want. When all is said and done, you still need to refine it in a Melanger.
Next we come to flavor. To my understanding cocoa powder was and mostly is a by-product of cocoa butter. Cocoa butter being the important commodity, great heat and pressure are generally applied to the cocoa pressing. The cocoa butter comes out unharmed but the cocoa solids are pretty well hammered from a flavor standpoint. Sure, it’s ok for baking (but I’d still rather use cocoa mass in my baking recipes) but that is about it. Now, to be fair, there are some not bad cocoa powders out there. When I do use it (it’s great for dusting cake and torte pans with) I’ve used Dagoba’s.
At some point a few years ago I put this to the test. 30% Dagoba cocoa powder, 35% cocoa butter, 45% sugar, and I refined it in the Melanger for 12 hours. The result looked like chocolate and behaved like chocolate, but that’s really where it ended. It was flat and one dimensional tasting, had virtually no aroma, and there was this really odd aftertaste that made me not want to eat any more. I’ve since tried it with two other cocoa powders and tasted half a dozen that people have sent me and all of them have me not wanting to eat more than one bite.
Now, I won’t discount the fun factor, and if you want to create something in the kitchen, with your son or daughter, great. Have fun. But know that it’s just not going to be high end, or even low end, chocolate. It’s going to be a kitchen chemistry experiment to show there is more to making chocolate than mixing cocoa powder, butter and sugar together.
First off, I am moving Ask the Alchemist to Thursdays. Next, I have a very limited supply of Venezuelan Chuao (3 bags) available for wholesale only, by the bag.
Finally, on to our question.
As I've discovered chocolate is so surprisingly similar to coffee in that I'm finding beans from different regions taste differently. Also the different levels of cocoa butter. What if I find a bean I love for my recipe and the roasts are varied or I can't get that particular bean anymore?
We live in such a homogenous world. Or maybe we strive for homogeneity. Or it’s a result of a world market and huge production lines. I’m really not sure. But regardless, we seem to expect products to always be the same…except when we don’t.
What I mean by that last statement is the crux of the answer and maybe even the crux of the question. Cocoa is a crop. No two crops are ever the same. Ever. Sometimes the differences are insignificant. Sometimes they aren’t (insignificant). The best example of this to me is grapes and wine. Virtually no one expects wines to be the same year to year. They have vintages. Some years are good. Some are great. Even the poor years, most good winemakers can make a reasonable wine (assuming the grapes are actually good). And no one is upset at the wine maker when a wine changes subtlety year to year. If anything, it’s like a new car. Wow, a new model that is different and exciting.
That is how artisan chocolate (and make no mistake, if you are making your own chocolate, it is artisan chocolate and you an artisan) should be. And your job, as a chocolate artisan, is to educate your customer base that you are not the chocolate equivalent of Mondovi wine – drinkable but the same from year to year, blended and standardized to mediocrity. Basically you are not Hershey or Callebaut or Ghirardelli (thank goodness) and chocolate can and does change year to year and it is to embraced, not worried over or criticized.
Now sure, you would not want to start your chocolate line with something like the Chuao I just put up. But it’s absolutely PERFECT for a small, artisan LIMITED RELEASE chocolate. Something special. As for the rest, it’s why I put years on all my beans. So you can tell them apart. Every so often a review changes very little because a given origin is that consistent (Ghana, Peru and Conacado are good examples) but they are different year to year.
In a word, promote the difference, don’t hide it or try to minimize it.
I will admit I am spinning this up a little. But just a little. I’m very serious that we should not be expecting our chocolate not to change. We are not Kraft or Bud or Mondovi or Pepsi and personally I don’t want to be. But from a practical standpoint, there is something to be taken from these giants – and that is blending. They blend to the lowest common factor and blend out everything special about their product. There is nothing wrong with picking 2 or 3 origins and blending those into your own signature creation. If the worst was to happen, and a cocoa bean does indeed become not available, you are not totally out of luck. In all likelihood you will be able to find another bean to take its place without totally changing the taste profile of your chocolate. Let’s learn from the giants, but not emulate them or become them. Nearly all good French Bordeaux are blends. But it’s intent. They are blending to create the best product they can, not to make the most consistent product they can. It’s all about intent.
That reminds me of a quote I have always loved.
“Remember who you wanted to be when you were a child”
Why are you making chocolate? Just to make a living or to make something special? Both have their place, but which drives you? I’ll leave you to answer that yourself and make your own connections as to what I have written. Remember who you wanted to be!
Why is cocoa so much more expensive than coffee? …and… Is there anyone who sells the ground roasted cocoa in quantities of 2 lbs or larger?
I purchased a 1 oz hobby grade bar mold from your establishment. I have been pleased with the results (good shine and crisp snap) in general, but I am a bit puzzled by a spot in the middle of each bar that has a slightly different sheen where the bar contacts the mold. I'm guessing the center is the slowest area to cool. Is there something I can do to avoid the variation in sheen?
This is the difference in theory and practice. In theory, there should be no difference in hobby molds and professional molds, but in practice there is a difference.
This is a result of it being a hobby mold. A few words about molds. Hobby molds are about 1/3 the thickness of professional molds. First off, the mold is less expensive and great while your chocolate making is, well, a hobby. Funny that. Next, the thinner polycarbonate allows the mold to flex and bend. Over time, these molds will crack along the edges and simply show harder wear. Finally, this flex allows the chocolate to warp the mold as it contracts during the temper. Now, a few more words about tempering and contracting. As I’ve talked about quite a bit, tempering is the selective crystallization of cocoa butter into Type V crystals. In know, I know. Wah, wah wah, wah wah – I know I lost some of you. Here – go read this. I’ll wait……OK, you are back, let’s keep going. Analogy time. You are stacking pick up sticks.
In your untempered chocolate the cocoa butter (your pickup sticks) are laying every which way. But once you align them, they nestle in, and as you hopefully notice, take up much less space. The same thing happens with nearly every fluid that solidifies (the glaring exception being water that expands when you freeze it (which is why it floats)).
So how does that cause the different sheen? The chocolate is also just ever so slightly adhesive, so as the chocolate sets up in the various molds, it can either come away from the walls smoothly, in one snap (if it is in a very rigid professional mold) or it can pull away slowly (if it is in a flexible hobby mold). And since chocolate does not like to be disturbed while setting up, when it disturbs itself, you see the result as a change in surface appearance.
Unfortunately, what that means is the only real way to avoid that change in appearance and have a 'professional' look is to use Professional molds - at least in regards to bar molds.
One final note, as I just thought of it. This is usually only noticeable on these longer, perfectly flat topped molds where there is one long continuous surface. The 2 oz mold shows it some, and the 4 oz bar mold even less, but most of the small cavity hobby molds don’t show this at all, partly because the curves in the surface make the mold naturally more rigid, but also because there is less to pull away at a time.
Finally, it's sort of interesting this question just came in as due to a decision of one of my main mold suppliers, the hobby mold option for the bar molds has been discontinued. So, in very short order, once stock runs out, only professional grade will be available.
I had the honor and privilege of showing a class of 8th graders how to make chocolate. Here are a few of the quick questions they asked over 3 days. If you roast the cocoa beans darker, does that make dark chocolate?
No, dark chocolate is a rough designation that indicates that it is not milk chocolate, and technically not ‘semi-sweet’. Basically, 70% cocoa content or more.
Why are we adding cocoa butter?
Because we have decided to make a 65% chocolate, and if we add just 35% sugar, it will be too thick, so we need less solids in there so it can still flow.
Can’t we just add a syrup or honey?
Nope, it would cause the chocolate to seize.
What happens if we refine it for a week? Will it make it extra good?
No, most likely it will make it extra boring as so much of the flavor is driven off.
What is your favorite chocolate?
The one I am eating right now.
What’s the yellow stuff you are adding?
Lecithin. We had to rush just a little through the cooling stage, and the moisture is a little higher than I want. So I am adding the lecithin to help bind up the water (drawings ensued on the board) so it does not seize.
Why did you add the lecithin to the cocoa butter?
It’s how I prefer to add it. It distributes evenly that way as it melts and I’ve found does a better job than just adding it directly to the Melanger. But you can do that also.
Are we going to add vanilla? I thought vanilla was in all chocolate. Would we use that stuff from a bottle?
No and No. If we were going add it, I would scrape out a vanilla pod into my cocoa butter, and then add it that way. The vanilla extract is water based so it would seize the chocolate. And we are not adding it as I want you to be able to taste the full array of flavors in the chocolate.
What’s the funny descriptions on your bags of cocoa beans?
{snicker}. Those are tasting notes. Sure, all chocolate (worth eating) tastes like chocolate, but they also have their own individual flavors. Just like apples all taste like apples, but also taste different.
Can we taste the chocolate while it is in that machine (Melanger)?
More than can you , you should. I want you to taste it as it refines. See how it changes. Just remember, clean hands and no water.
I want to make chocolate for baking. Do I need to still go through all the steps of refining, conching and tempering? How is the process of making baker's chocolate different from the process of making semi-sweet chocolate?You do not have to go through all of the steps you list above, but you do need to do most of the to one degree or another. And in one small case, I will back pedal and say you will have to do them all. First off, I want to get some definitions out of the way – or more to the point, I want to list some synonyms.
- Baker’s chocolate
- Chocolate liqueur
- Cocoa mass 100%
- Unsweetened chocolate
These, being synonyms, are all the same item. I’m going to go out on a limb, and assume that you recognize at least one, and you don’t officially need an actual definition.Way back in the dark ages of home chocolate making (about 1 BCA – that’s Before Chocolate Alchemy) I experimented with just using the Champion juicer to make one of them there things above – the result was something that looked like one of them there things, but was not one of them there things. It turns out, it was a matter of scale. Although the Champion had released the cocoa butter and the mass flowed, it had not released it all, and it just didn’t quite behave right. The flavor was muted, it was too thick, and it would not temper well. But just a couple hours refining in a Melanger, and suddenly, like Alchemy, it was transformed into one of them there things above. Going back to scale, basically that particles were just not small enough. Instead of sand, it is still gravel.
So, you need to refine. And that can occur much faster than if you had sugar in there – again, just a couple few hours. After that, you move into the conching zone. And really, I find that totally optional, and in nearly all cases overkill if you are going to be baking. I won’t refute that conching is a remarkable process…but it is a relatively subtle process that will be totally lost (to my tastes) in baking.
Now, semi-sweet vs baker’s chocolate. Gah, I had marketing terms sometimes. If there is sugar in your chocolate, you can consider it semi-sweet and most of the time, that is what we make. It’s close enough. Painting with a very broad brush, if it is not milk chocolate, and it is not 85% chocolate (that would be ‘dark’) then it is semi-sweet.
Tempering – here is that one that on the surface I want to just say ‘no, you don’t need to do that’ but, I have found in one case, where it does seem to make a difference. Chocolate chips and chocolate chip cookies. Very simply, if you are melting the chocolate down as an ingredient, then there is no reason in the world to temper it – you are just destroying the temper when you melt. If on the other hand you are, you are using some of that ‘semi-sweet’ chocolate, and you want to make your own chocolate chips (which purely for the work involved, I don’t recommend – chocolate chucks people, chocolate chucks), then there is a difference in how the chips behave during baking if you don’t temper. Simply said, we are used to tempered chocolate chips, how they hold together, how they feel in the mouth, etc, and untempered chocolate chips, while still good, seemed to lack something.
That’s about it…except for one final item.
Over the years, I’ve basically said lecithin is optional, and from the standpoint of fine eating chocolate. It still is. But what I have discovered is that if you are baking with it, and especially if you are mixing the chocolate into water based ingredients (truffle fillings, cake batters, tortes, etc) then a little bit (1% or so) greatly increases workability and reduces the chances your chocolate will ‘break’ and you will have cocoa butter floating around. There has been a few occasions that when I made truffle fillings, and tortes, both without flour or another binder, that oil floated to the top. Using the same exact recipe, but with the addition of a small amount of lecithin kept everything together and much more manageable.
OK, NOW, that’s it.
If you are not familiar with Madagascar cocoa, then prepare for a wild ride. It is a real powerhouse. It has generally gained the reputation as an immensely complex cocoa bean with a huge potential. If you are familiar with coffee origins, then I put this akin to a bright, citrusy Kenyen. As always, you can have it however you with. Raw and Roasted, Retail or Wholesale.
I am an amateur chocolatier attempting to make organic dark chocolate without using soy lecithin. I know of many organic and raw chocolate bars that do this but have found virtually no information on the internet for a lecithin-free technique. I have achieved a makeshift bar by tempering baker's chocolate and adding sugar but it's not very good. I'd like to start from raw cocoa beans but have a few questions I'm wondering if you could answer.
Can I add powdered sugar, vanilla and other ingredients to cocoa paste and temper a bar from there?
Is conching necessary if I am not making milk chocolate and not using lecithin?
This might sound suicidal but is there a way to hand-refine? I've looked into a melanger that runs on electricity but are there any hand-crank models, or -- this may sound silly -- any possibility to rig some bicycle pedals onto a model to power it? I'm hardcore.
OK, there are a lot of questions packed in there, but let’s just go through them.
Lecithin is an ingredient that is 100% optional. It is a water binder, so, if your moisture content is low, you have no need for it. You can also add it to lower the viscosity of your chocolate.
You do not want to add powdered sugar. It has cornstarch in it and makes for a gummy chocolate. Also, it will still be very gritty, and tempering will be very difficult.
Conching is not absolutely necessary, but refining is. You need to understand the difference.
As for adding sugar after it is refined....you could be meaning something else or have in mind adding more sugar after refining but usually you add the sugar before refining and refine the sugar.
But to answer your question, no, there is no way I know of to add granulated sugar and not refine with a Melanger if you want to end up with smooth, modern chocolate.
Moving onto hard core manual refining.
The short answer is that unless you are world class athlete, it's doubtful you could power a bike to refine your chocolate. Have a look at this.
Here is the important part:
When I ride an exercise bicycle (with a power meter attached) I can maintain about 200 Watts for 20 minutes before I am tired. A "tour de France" class bicyclist can output that level (about 1/4 horsepower) for several hours.
You need 1/4 hp at least, for way more than several hours, i.e. well over 12 hours.
With that in mind, has hard core as you may be, I just don’t think it is feasible to truly refine your chocolate by human power.
"I've made a version of your (Aether/Sylph) winnower, but it's not quite working. I'm still getting husk in my nibs and nibs in my husk. Help. And I really don't understand what the point of that other valve is that isn't changing the vacuum. Can you explain that more?" Great question. I keep forgetting I don't have the manuals on line. The short answer (long to follow) is you have to tune the winnower. Just like you have to tune an instrument, each winnower has be to be tuned AND re-tuned as needed. So, the following is right out of the manuals. My winnower is designed to winnow roasted and cracked cocoa beans. It has two adjustment valves to allow you to ‘tune’ it to your particular cocoa bean and vacuum. All cocoa beans are not alike. You know this as they all have different flavors. Likewise, they require slightly different settings on the Sylph and these settings MAY CHANGE over time.* Also, the Sylph, regardless of its magical name, is not magic. The quality of the nibs you get out is only going to be as good as the quality of beans you put in. This means if you have flat, under-fermented and/or mucilage covered beans then you will most likely get flats and other pieces of ‘non-nib’ in with your nibs. This is a consequence of what you put in, not a matter of the Sylph not functioning properly.**
First off, no winnower is perfect. A small amount of nib in your husk (as powder) and/or a small amount of husk in your nibs can be expected. Industry standard is less than 1.5% husk in nib (that would be nearly 2.5 oz of husk in 10 lbs) If you were to weigh it out and look at it, it looks like a LOT of husk, so when you see a little, don’t panic. On average, with well prepared, properly roasted beans, you can expect less than 0.5% husk in your nibs and virtually no nib in your husk bucket.
Tuning the Sylph occurs in two steps: setting the Vacuum Adjustment Valve and then setting the Discriminator Valve. Think of them as coarse and fine adjustments respectively. Please do not change both valves at one time as you can then not tell which valve affected your results.
As a starting point, open the Discriminator Valve all the way and open the Vacuum Adjustment Valve ½ way.
Test with fully cooled roasted beans.
Process 10 oz of roasted beans (see operations manual for step by step instructions) and calculate your recovery: Weight of nibs / Weight of beans (10 oz).
- 0.80 or 80% is great. If the nibs look good and there is virtually no nib in the husk, you are done. Go forth and winnow.
- 82% is either perfect or you have husk in the nibs. If it is the later, increase the vacuum a little (close the valve) and test again with another 10 oz.
- Less than 80% - generally there is nib in the husk waste. Decrease the vacuum a little.
Continue adjusting the Vacuum Adjustment Valve and testing until you hit a maximum recovery of nibs with minimal husk content. At this point there will still be some nibs in your husk waste or husk in your nibs.
Note: ‘Flats’ do not count as husk if you see them in your nibs. You can’t ‘adjust’ these out – they have to be screened out.
Setting the Discriminator Valve
At this point, you have adjusted your Vacuum Adjustment Valve to the point where there is either husk in your nibs or nibs in your husk. Adjust the Discriminator Valve depending which is the case.
Husk in your nibs – Close the Discriminator Valve 1/4-1/2
Nibs in your husk – Open the Discriminator Valve 1/4-1/2
Process another 10 oz of roasted beans and calculate your recovery: Weight of nibs / Weight of beans (10 oz). Compare this recovery to your last recovery.
If there was husk previously in your nibs, you want your recovery to go down as that shows more husk is being removed. If there is still too much husk in your nibs, close the Discriminator Valve another 1/4 - 1/2 and test again with another 10 oz of roasted beans.
If there was nib previously in your husk, you want your recovery to go up, giving you more nibs. If there is still too much nib in your husk, open Discriminator Valve another 1/4-1/2 and test again with another 10 oz of roasted beans.
Through all of this, keep in mind to LOOK at the nibs and husk and if they look good, you are done.
Troubleshooting tuning:
If you are at 80% recovery or above, stop adjusting and proceed to winnowing.
If you are way above 80 % recovery and a lot of husk is in the nibs, adjust your Vacuum Adjustment Valve closed (although this should not be the case as you should have closed it enough to have no husk in your nibs).
If you are way below 80% recovery, examine your husk waste. If there is nib present, there are three possible reasons:
1) You cracked while the beans were warm and they powdered too much – re-test and calibrate with cold roasted beans.
2) You need to open the Discriminator Valve more.
3) If the Discriminator Valve is already fully open, you need to close it to 1/3 open, open your Vacuum Adjustment Valve a little, and test again.
And of course, at any point you are happy with the distribution, stop. I like to process 10 oz each time because the math is easy, the amount is representative, and you can see very quickly whether the tuning change you made had a positive or negative effect.
After a while, you should be able to ‘eyeball’ your tuning without all of the math, but it’s rather helpful at the beginning while you are learning.
* Over time, the dust filter on your vacuum will accumulate dust and the vacuum pressure will drop. As this happens you will start to get husk in your nibs. The solution is to simply close the Vacuum Adjustment Valve a little to increase the vacuum pressure until you clean the dust filter out. Don’t touch the Discriminator Valve!
** If you find you are using a bean with a lot of flats, (and there are some great tasting beans out there with flats so I do understand) you can screen your final nibs to remove these as they are generally much larger than the nibs. A ¼” hardware screen tacked onto a frame works very well for this.
Are there some general percentages of loss to calculate for in chocolate formulations, such as moisture loss, husk waste loss, etc?"
Yes.
OK, I guess you want more than that. Like, you actually want to know what they are? Ok, I can do that. It’s pretty straight forward, and around the site, but the whole point of these Questions is to get much of the information in one place, so here goes.
Roasting. Unlike coffee which can lose 20% of its weight to moisture, cocoa starts out with much less moisture, and you end up with very little lost. So little in fact, that I totally discount it at all. It is usually only 1-2%.
Winnowing. This is by far the largest loss. At the absolute minimum there is 17% of the weight of the bean in the husk. This corresponds to ‘perfect’ winnowing efficiency, with a perfectly thin husked bean, of 83%. Most of the time I find this number is closer to 80%, or a 20% loss. On a particularly poorly prepped or heavy husked cocoa bean (think Papua New Guinea for a heavy husk), or one with lots of flats, a 25% loss is closer to the mark. When doing my estimating, I tend to round down, and be surprised when I have more nibs in my bowl.
Grinding. If you are using the Champion Juicer, you will lose a flat 6 oz to the Champion, regardless if you are doing 1 lb or 10 lbs. For this reason, many people (myself included) have taken to pre-heating the cocoa nibs, and adding them slowly to the Melanger (which has also been pre-heated). This way you don’t lose anything.
Refining. At this point, it would seem that your losses are at an end, but I’ve found that at this stage a little more moisture is lost. Sometimes up to 5%. And you have whatever you simply cannot get out of the bowl and off the rollers – usually an ounce or two at least.
There you go.
1% Roasting
17-25% Winnowing
0-6 oz Grinding
1-5% Refining
And instead of trying to wrap your head around that EXACTLY and making how much you need to the ounce, I highly recommend just estimating your losses high (25% does just great) and make a little more than you want (4 oz) and you should have plenty.
With Hurricane Sandy last year, a lot of cocoa and cocoa supply chains were severely disrupted. At nearly half a year later, most everything is back in order, old regulars are back in stock, and some new ones have come also.Belize - Organic and Direct Trade - NEW Origin Dominican Republic "La Red" Organic/DT is back
Dominican Republic "Elvasia" Organic/DT is new also.
Venezuelan Sur del Lago-2012/13 is back
In addition, I have something a touch novel, and I hope helpful. Testing beans. These are vastly inexpensive, and perfect for getting your feel for roasting, experimenting, and getting daring, and maybe, just maybe, having some neat surprises along the way. Now, before anyone asks, there are no certifications on these, I don't know really anything about them except they are composite samples that one of my suppliers had around. Knowing what I do, they passed them onto me (basically at the cost of shipping), and I am passing them on to you at effectively that same cost of shipping and doing business. On the surface, this may look like I have beans that I am offering that could not have supported anyone (i.e. crappy prices to farmers, non-fair trade, dare I even mention slave labor? etc) but the story behind it is that, again, they were sample beans collected over time (i.e. there were no cost associated with except shipping) that simply would have been thrown out, but instead you get to benefit from them, and no one loses and it's frugality all the way around.
Test and evaluation Cocoa beans
That's it for now. But with 17 different beans in stock, I hope that is sufficient for a little while...until the new tongue tingling Madagascar arrives.....
I have heard that chocolate benefits from a slight resting or maturation period before eating. Is this true? Why? How long? Is there a shelf life?
Well, for once, there is going to be very little definitive I can give you here, at least in the form of specific practices. Keep in mind, the majority of chocolate I make is for evaluation purposes, so I make it, and taste it within just a few days. But then again, I am looking for defects, not perfection. And while you are keeping things in mind, recall I started this whole journey because I tasted fresh chocolate and was blown away by its vibrancy, which is sort of the opposite of an aged flavor.
Without just repeating it here, there is a great discussion on the Chocolate Life about just this, and I cannot disagree with any of it (which isn’t quite agreeing with it if you understand what I mean there). .
That said, I’ve made many things that improve with age – wine, ale, cheese, mead, sausage and say un-categorically that there are changes in flavor that only aging can produce (which I love), and there is no reason the same cannot happen in chocolate. I do know I can taste a difference in just roasted beans that are fresh out of the roaster (and cooled) and ones that have had a day to ‘rest’. In the rested beans, the flavors are more developed, more melded. And that is basically what is said about chocolate. It’s basically a chemical tying up of loose ends, and being in a solid state, it’s going to happen pretty slow. .
I think I lean more toward longer aging over ‘slight’ aging. This is mostly because from what I have tasted it is a S L O W process and a day here or there is not going to be that drastic. Similarly, given just how slow and gradual it is, I’ve never tasted a chocolate that has gone bad. It might be possible, but under cool ‘aging’ temperatures, I lean toward thinking it’s not. .
So, make your chocolate and temper part of it. Taste it and make some notes. Now wait a month and temper the rest. Taste them side by side and make notes. Now wait another month and taste them again and make those notes. Now compare all the tasting notes. If you tasted differences, great. Was there one set you liked better or were they simply different? You didn’t taste any difference? Well, put them away 6 months and try again. Rinse and repeat. I suspect until you get to many months or even many years you are not going to see huge differences….but you may depending on your bean and tastes. .
That’s about all I can tell you. In theory age will make a difference. In practice, that difference may or may not be better to your tastes.
_____
Coming soon - new beans.....Belize, Sur del Lago, Madagascar oh my....
Do I have to use all that equipment for making chocolate? Can’t I just use (fill in this or that random appliance)?"
Ok, so first off, I cobbled this one together because I get this about once a week at least. The appliance changes, but you get the gist of it. And almost always, it is referring to the use of the Melanger.
In a word, no.
Now that isn’t me wanting you to buy what I sell. Honestly, I make hardly anything on equipment. Just so that is on the table. I sell Melangers (and the other equipment) because it’s what I have found that works. It’s really no more complicated than that.
Over the years, I have had LOTS of failures trying to find something that was a little less hard on the checkbook. But the fact of the matter is that grinding sugar and cocoa down to around 50 microns is HARD. Let alone15 microns that some people want. It’s a technical feat.
Why? You need to picture what you are trying to do.
Ok, you have a small swimming pool (analogy of scale time). One that is about 12 feet in diameter. Cover the bottom about a foot deep with golf balls. Now, fill it up with water about half way. You have your unrefined chocolate with sugar (bowling balls) in it. Your goal is to get the golf balls broken up to the size of sand. And you have a sword to do it with. Go ahead and hop in and let me know how far you get. That’s basically what you are trying with any blender, food processor, etc. You might break those balls up some, but in the end, they are just going to move out of the way and not get chopped up.
What you need is a something that actually grinds. A grinder one might even say. And that’s what the Melanger started out as – a wet grinder. Something that grinds a fluid over and over until it’s the fineness you want. And that first part is key. WET. It’s why flour mills, coffee grinders, Corona mills, etc won’t work. They are all dry mills and meant for coarse grinding (even fine flour is in the 200-300 micron range) of dry material a single time. They might work if you could recirculate the mixture for hours on end, but in the end that pump or mechanism to do it is going to be way more expensive than a Melanger.
As for the rest, I’m going to just give a fast overview and maybe come back to it later. In general, you have choices, and you can either put out sweat equity or money, but basically, TANSTAAFL (look it up).
Roasting. You have to roast. An oven will work if you want to stir and not have huge control. A Behmor works great. You can build your own.
Cracking. You can hand peel. A champion works great without the filter. A cocoa mill works well. Everything else I’ve tried makes too fine of a powder or leaves too many whole beans. Other things may be out there, but these work well, and generally speaking I try not to fix what is not broken.
Winnowing. Hand peel again. Blow dryer and bowl. Sylph winnower. That’s about it aside from building your own Sylph style winnower (sure, you could design and build something else, but I’ve seen nothing simpler or less expensive – if I had I’d be offering it).
Grinding/refining – see above.
The final option is to purchase roasted nibs, but it’s that tradeoff of money vs. equipment.
So, do you HAVE to use all that equipment? No, but you (or I) do need to get through the whole process one way or another. And I will say, I LOVE the process. So consider working up to it slowly and backwards. Melanger and roasted nibs first as there is no other option. Then cracking and winnowing with roasted beans, and finally do your own roasting if you find you love the process as much as I do. Take your time and enjoy the journey, because to my way of thinking, it’s all about the journey, not the destination.