Chocolate Alchemical formulations (Recipes)

Playing With Chocolate

“You can deprive the body, but the soul needs chocolate.”
— Frederic Shilling of Dagoba Chocolate

If the thought of making chocolate right off the bat is a bit daunting, I would suggest you get you feet wet with just baking with some fresh cocoa. Actually, any recipe you find that calls for unsweetened baker's chocolate, you can just use your own cocoa liqueur. That is all it is after all. Pick your bean of choice (a rich Caranero or maybe a fruity Ocumare), roast it, shell it (for this amount, doing it by hand is not that bad) and grind it in your champion for a smooth liqueur or just a whirly blade grinder for more texture (really nice in the brownies).

All of the recipes in this first section are from Alice Medrich: Bittersweet; Recipes and Tales from a Life in Chocolate. All of the recipes in this section call for cocoa nibs. A nice light introduction to cooking with fresh cocoa beans. Just roast up your cocoa beans of choice and then remove the husk by hand or with our cocoa mill.

Nibby Pudding

Cocoa Bean Cream

If you get the chance to get this book, please do. It is amazing. Also, a thank you to Martha Simmons who got me the original recipes.

I have personally experimented with the following and really love results. These are recipes either that I have worked out or have collected from an unknown source over the years. In general, they call for you to roast your own beans and then make your own cocoa liqueur. Sort of the intermediate step to full chocolate making.

Real Chocolate Syrup

Artisan Chocolate Brownies

Chocolate Torte

Flourless Chocolate Cake

If you find a recipe that calls for bittersweet chocolate, just read this as 70% cocoa, 30% sugar. So if you find a chocolate cake recipe that calls for 8 oz of bittersweet chocolate, I just put in 5.6 oz (actually I round up to 6 oz, I figure you can't have too much chocolate really) of cocoa liqueur, and 2.4 oz of sugar. Once all the rest of the ingredients are added, the sugar will dissolve and no one will be the wiser (except, of course, this may well be richer - life is so tough)

If you come up with a recipe either for a dessert or a nice chocolate, let me know and I will see about putting it up here.