Level: Apprentice
Read Time: 13 minutes
This may seem a little irrelevant at first but hear me out:
One of my favorite things to do when I want chocolate ice cream is just whip some cocoa powder into vanilla ice cream. It gives a really bitter sweet flavor I didn't notice was so separate from normal chocolate ice cream until recently.
There's no way that cocoa powder can dissolve into the ice cream base in any form at that temperature: it's essentially just cocoa chunks so fine that you don't notice it, which gives a super interesting bitter sweet flavor. My hypothesis is that while the ice cream melts in contact with your mouth it's allowed to partially dissolve into the liquid, the bitter of the cocoa flavor then able to be muted out by the sugar in the ice cream (this makes sense if you think of it from a chemistry PoV, you're just balancing the pH levels).
So I've come to a chocolate expert to ask this: what if you tried whipping in powdered sugar into 100% cocoa chocolate at a temperature between the solidification of the chocolate and the soluble temperature of the sugar. It'd be a difficult thing to balance, especially since the increased surface area would allow them to take on more heat, but the results could possibly be very interesting. I'd like to hear your thoughts, thanks : )
This is a variation of the myth that you can make smooth chocolate by dissolving cocoa powder and sugar into oil. I have a full video on it where I go over what you get.
I’m kind of amused at how much hate and vitriol the video has received. But at the same time I’m getting this question at least once a week still so I guess I’ve not addressed it sufficiently even though I’ve talked about it for years.. Therefore we are going to do it again and see if I can get the science across. That is important. This is not my opinion. This is science. I’ve stopped trying to solve this as the science fully backs up that you can’t dissolve sugar (or cocoa powder) in oil. Continuing to try is no different from trying to invent the perpetual motion machine (it is impossible folks). By continuing to try you are turning to belief, not science.
Let’s set the stage of what you are asking and noticing.
The very first thing is we should do is define what is and is not solubility. To use the proper terms, when you dissolve one thing into another, we are talking about a solvent (like water or oil) breaking apart a substance called the solute (like cocoa powder and sugar) and distributing it through the solvent….and here is a rather important part, and the system can’t settle out or be filtered apart.
We are all familiar with dissolving salt or sugar in water. If you mix water and sugar then groups of water molecules tease apart individual molecules of sugar and carry it away. If you pour the solution, as it is now called, through a filter that initially would not allow the sugar to go through you will find that no sugar is caught on the filter. The pieces of sugar have been reduced to molecules of sugar that can now pass through the holes in the filter. Because of this, sugar is said to be soluble in water.
Now, if you take a lump of cocoa butter and put it in corn oil you will find that the cocoa butter slowly goes away and is evenly distributed throughout the corn oil and if you pour it through a coffee filter, it will all go through because the oil dissolved the cocoa butter. The butter is soluble in the oil.
I’m not going to go into the nitty gritty physical mechanisms of why dissolution happens any more than I would go into trying to prove our earth is round and not flat. Instead I’m giving you a test that allows you to test if something is soluble in a given solvent or not. But really, you either have to accept science and data or not. You don’t strictly have to test every single case once you accept the science. The test is to help prove it to yourself.
And this is where I went wrong in that video. I didn’t clearly and concisely lay out why sugar will not dissolve in cocoa butter. For me, and again it is my bad, I though it was obvious. Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of solutions. Water based (sugar and water) and oil based (cocoa butter and corn oil). The BIG take away is that with one basic subtle exception that we will get to, water based substances (like sugar) will never, ever, ever dissolve in oil based solvents (like cocoa butter). This is fact. This isn’t up for debate and no amount of physical manipulation (like sifting or stirring or heating) will change that.
In the video people commented over and over that I should have sifted the cocoa powder and sugar into the melted oil. It literally never crossed my mind because I had previously looked up the solubility of sugar in oil, and even went so far to look up how much sugar would dissolve in hot oil and what I found was “I”. That means insoluble. That means no matter what I do to the mixture, whether I sift it, or whisk it or blend it or stand on one foot with my tongue out, or ANY OTHER PHYSICAL manipulation the sugar will not dissolve into the oil. It is really no more complicated than that. I have been called egotistical and self serving and pompous….and fine, I’ll own that in that I should have maybe gone into the why a bit better instead of assuming it was self obvious. In the same way that if I were testing out the flammability of different liquids, I don’t have to check water. Everyone knows water puts out fires, therefore it won’t burn. To my mind everyone knows that oil and water don’t mix. It is basic kitchen chemistry. Right? When you make a salad dressing with a nice olive oil and balsamic vinegar, you have to shake it up and pretty much pour it over your salad immediately or it will separate out.
And that leads us to the other two types of ways things can mix together. If you mix oil and vinegar (water) you have a suspension. If you pour it through a filter it will all go through because both things are liquids but that does not mean that the oil dissolved in the water or vise versa. If you let them set, the oil will rise to the top and they will no longer be a suspension. The suspension will have broken.
I’ve also heard this. “Oh, but if I use sugar and cocoa butter, and let the cocoa butter harden then the sugar can’t settle out of suspension, so I fixed it”. My answer to that is that you simply stopped the process. All you have produced is a suspension that has not separated. The sugar didn’t dissolve. The sugar particles are still just as large as when you put them in and if you melt the mixture and try and filter it, then the sugar will all be caught on the filter.
Let’s go a step further and talk about doing something to turn the suspension into something that will not separate. If you add an egg yolk to the oil and water mixture, and indeed mix it in just the right way, you can get it to stay together. What you will have made is known as an emulsion. There are molecules in the egg yolk that are sort of a hybrid between water and oil and will dissolve in both the corn oil above but also water. If you try and pour this emulsion through a filter it will not filter at all. It will clog the filter. This is how you tell that mixture apart from a solution (where one thing dissolved into another). I won’t filter.
Why is this important and why have I been going over all this?
All this though is a moot point to the REAL crux of issue. We’ve gone down the rabbit hole of discussing what dissolves what and the differences in solutions, suspensions and emulsions for a really important reason.
Chocolate is a suspension, not an emulsion and not a solution. If you make either it is literally, by definition, not chocolate. This is not opinion. It is definition and fact. I’m not going to debate that any more than I’m going to debate if a triangle has three sides when I’m teaching someone that the sum of the 3 internal angles always equals 180 degrees. You either take that as fact or we have nothing to discuss. There may or may not be a name for what you make if you use cocoa products (cocoa powder mostly) and make an emulsion or solution with it, but what it isn’t is chocolate. It might be chocolate fudge or chocolate ganache or chocolate batter and it could well be a totally chocolatey, yummy and wonderful creation, but it isn’t chocolate. If you disagree, you can stop reading now and move along. COVID has rather stripped my patience for this currently.
Since you are still here, let’s go through what was brought up in the question and some of the common suggestions from the video.
I guess I should mention that the pH comment isn’t applicable here at all and I really don’t know what was meant by it. Sure, pH can affect solubility of things but this isn’t one of those cases. Cocoa powder doesn’t dissolve in anything that I know of. It can form an ok suspensions in oil and water if the right techniques are used but at no point will a large cocoa powder particle be reduced to a smaller ones. It just seems that way in certain instant cocoa powder drinks as the particles are already super small. If you were to make homemade cocoa powder by grinding the residue of pressing out the cocoa butter you would see this clearly as the particles stay large and pretty readily settle to the bottom of what you are making. But I digress. Mostly I’m saying I am all for hypothesis. In this case it isn’t applicable. That flavor you are getting is just your tongue reacting to the molecules on the surface of the cocoa particles and very little else.
So what about whipping in powdered sugar? The next condition answers the question when you say the soluble temperature of the sugar. There is no soluble temperature of sugar in oil. EVER. It is that simple. At some point we’ll probably do a video showing this really clearly, very possibly in Mythbusters style but for now, take it or leave it or send me a conclusive video showing it isn’t impossible but I’m not going to argue it.
I want to run through a handful of the comments and suggestions from the video now.
Why didn’t I sift the sugar and powder in? See above. Sifting does not affect solubility of something that is insoluble. You only sift ingredients when making cakes because flour can absorb water and sugar does dissolve in the water you add. In this waterless system it doesn’t matter.
How about if you melt the sugar?
If you do that you have liquid sugar that as soon as you start to add it into the oil will either just separate if the oil is hotter than the sugar’s melting point (well over 300 F) or solidify (even with stirring) into crystals and fall to the bottom.
Can your dissolve the sugar and drive off the water?
That is an ok theory…but doesn’t work in reality. The water binds too strongly to the sugar and won’t be driven off by heating. Well, let me take that back a tiny amount. You CAN get this to work but it takes a LOT of agitation, a lot of heat and pressing the mass over and over to expose as much surface area as you can. To date the only way I’ve found to do this is with a heat lamp on a Melanger. Do you see where this is going? If you have a melanger to drive off this water then you don’t need to dissolve the sugar in water in the first place as you can just grind the sugar in the melanger. This is a Catch 22 as it were.
Emulsify the sugar with x, y or z? The simple answer here is that chocolate is a suspension. Making an emulsion might work….but then you would not have chocolate by definition.
Then we get to blenders, food processor, vitamixes, stick wands, etc. Not a one of those will get the sugar fine enough where you find it smooth on your tongue. I’ve tried them all.
Sonic horn or sonicator? Well, if you are going to buy one of these that cost more than a melanger…..it still won’t work as those don’t change solubility problems of sugar in oil and they won’t break up the sugar fine enough….again, I tried while in the lab.
Honey or syrup? See above about driving off water and the need for a melanger.
There were a few comments about filtering out the coarse sugar particles. On paper it sounds half way like a fine idea. In practice the filters clog virtually instantly and there is no getting around it. By the time you get enough filters to incrementally take out a little sugar at a time you are right back at the issue that the screens will cost you WAY more than a melanger.
I have lost count the number of times I’ve heard that someone’s grandmother made chocolate on the stove this way 30 years ago. In short, no she didn’t for all the reasons I gave above. I’m not calling anyone a liar about this, only that they are not remembering correctly. Fudge, ganache or something yummy? Sure. Chocolate? Nope. Why am I so adamant? F**king Science is why. Natural laws are funny that way. They are like a honey badger. They don’t give a shit if you believe in them or not…they just ARE and oil won’t dissolve sugar now and it didn’t any time in our past.
And yes, I’m a bit worked up by this. 99% of my readers know all of this and this isn’t aimed at any of you. But that percentage is dropping because more and more people are discovering homemade chocolate and haven’t done enough basic research. As I say in the video, the internet if teeming with videos showing you can make chocolate on your stove top and in short it is fake news, mostly because they are leading people to think it is smooth chocolate. It isn’t. Even with powdered sugar your tongue can tell it is gritty.
As for the contingent that think I have some conflict of interest and just want people to by my product (the melanger)….well, that is sort of true but not in the way they mean it. I don’t really care if you by a melanger….but I do care that I’m answering this question a lot because new people think I’m big industry and just trying to hide the truth or if I tried harder I could solve this. Once you know 2+2=4 you stop trying to prove it can equal anything else. You know it is just a waste of time and it pains me to see people wasting their time and hopes on something that isn’t possible.
That all said, PLEASE keep experimenting. Maybe another piece of non-common equipment can be used to make real chocolate. But if you are new to this game, please keep in mind I started this game of homemade chocolate back in 2004. I have tried SO MANY things and honestly I’d be giddy if someone tried something I haven’t and can get it to work but I really recommend you do your due diligence and research to find out what has been already tried, and why it failed. Why prove 2+2=4 yet again?
For those that do want to dig in, try to do it with some understanding of the actual problem and with the mindset that part of the solution is that you do it for less than what a new melanger will cost you. There are many times I’ve gone down wonderful and fun paths that might work (think ball mill made from a Cuisinart and stainless steel shot) only to discover that to make it practical it will cost more than the current solutions and you are still using specialized equipment..
Alright, I know this won’t stop the haters and the people that think I’m just trying to hawk my own product but at least now I can point them somewhere that explains why I didn’t sift the sugar
TLDR - Ignorance happens, and that's okay...use it as the powerful learning experience that it is. Intentionally ignoring science is nuts.
Be safe out there folks and go make something yummy.