Colored Cocoa Butter: The Topic

[Avachocolate]

3 hours ago, keychris said:

I saw a cocoa butter colouring pack at the school I go to a few years ago, with a chart with about a squillion colours that it told you how to make, but the price was astronomical. I can't remember the brand, but such a thing does exist. My own experience is I mix up the colours I can get as powders (10% powder / 90% cocoa butter) then make the rest up as best I can from those with a very much "that'll do" attitude to it.

Maybe "IBC Power Flowers" would fit that description ? Many different colors with supplied mixing charts...quite expensive from what I remember...but may be worth checking out if you want some exact coloring formulas...

[gfron1]

I suggest buying a Pantene color guide...or hell, you could just go get a paint guide at the home improvement store. You have to understand the very basics of primary colors plus the use of black and white to darken/lighten/pastel.  For percentages @keychrisis right on the mark although I would say a range of 5-10% or even 15% in some cases. Andrey Dubovic's class is covering this quite a bit and all/most of the colors you're seeing those of us in the class are making ourselves according to his ratios. Here is a black currant/purple that I made this morning. Could have used a bit more red to get it to where I wanted it, but still pretty.

[Jim D.]

Of the three eGullet members taking the Dubovik course, I seem to be the dissenting one on the subject of mixing colored cocoa butter from scratch. Not knowing what the classes were going to require in detail before they started, I got some basic powders from Chef Rubber. For the translucent colors Dubovik specifies, I did indeed mix my own, even though I already have a zillion bottles of mixed Chef Rubber colors, because at that point I was not sure how else to make translucent colors except to make them myself. I made those two plus a couple of others and was not pleased with any of them (no doubt user error, I freely admit). Deciding how translucent to make them is quite difficult, as is knowing how much powder to add for an opaque color. It's really trial and error because different brands (and even different colors) behave differently. I made a nice medium green (Chef Rubber's tends to be quite dark), but although it looked opaque when tested, it wasn't, and it remained quite fluid compared to the CR ones. CR does not list any ingredients other than cocoa butter and coloring (at least one other U.S. brand does include some kind of starch or something similar), but I never achieved that thicker consistency. I have noticed in the videos that when Dubovik spreads a little cocoa butter on granite to test it for temper, even the opaque colors sometimes look considerably closer to translucent than similar CR colors do.

 

So I have now decided that I will just use the CR bottles I have on hand and mix colors as needed. For the aforementioned black currant color, I started with CR teal and added red until it looked black currant-ish.  For a dark gray supposed to be made with black luster dust (which I did not know to purchase before the course began), I used CR silver and added some black to darken it, so I got the color and the sparkle as well. I find the mess of mixing cocoa butter not as bad as I anticipated (the straining of it is decidedly a pain), but there is definitely a mess compared with melting the contents of a bottle and pouring it out. I am not sure of the price comparison, but there does not seem to be a huge difference. I now think I could make translucent colors by simply adding plain cocoa butter to a CR bottle but have not had occasion to test that.

[keychris]

11 hours ago, Avachocolate said:

Maybe "IBC Power Flowers" would fit that description ? Many different colors with supplied mixing charts...quite expensive from what I remember...but may be worth checking out if you want some exact coloring formulas...

 

I knew someone on here would know what I was talking about, that's exactly what I was shown

[Tri2Cook]

1 hour ago, keychris said:

 

I knew someone on here would know what I was talking about, that's exactly what I was shown

I was pretty excited about those until I found they were incredibly difficult to find a source for that would ship to where I live and then, having finally found that, found out how expensive they are. The excitement was quickly diminished. I still like the idea of them though.

[Kerry Beal]

1 hour ago, Tri2Cook said:

I was pretty excited about those until I found they were incredibly difficult to find a source for that would ship to where I live and then, having finally found that, found out how expensive they are. The excitement was quickly diminished. I still like the idea of them though.

They are expensive - but they make getting just the right colour quite easy.

[Jamal12]

On 6/11/2018 at 11:15 AM, SilverstoneBakehouse said:

Hello, my name is Matthew and ever since university I've been working with racing cars but am now looking to start making filled bonbons to finally scratch an itch that has just never gone away since I first successfully tempered a batch of chocolate.

 

I recently commissioned the creation of some custom moulds, shaped like racing helmets, with a view to supplying my filled bonbon creations to racing teams, as potential gifts for sponsors and hospitality guests. I plan to emulate some classic helmet designs (like Senna's helmet for my caramel) and also offer customisation, for any drivers who want the chocolates to resemble their own helmet designs.

 

The custom moulds will be produced in 40 shore silicone (FDA approved), with each mould weighing 2KG, sized somewhere around 250mm square and including 20 helmet cavities. I have also purchased a Chocovision Rev2, tabletop vibrating platform, airbrush and loads of other odds and sods to assist in the process. 

 

I won't receive the moulds until later this week (hopefully) but have been doing loads of practicing and research into how I could utlilise coloured cocoa butter to create various effects on the finished product. Does anyone know of any books that are filled with graphical explanations of this, something along the lines of "by using X tool and Y technique, you can produce Z result"?

 

My main concern is that the moulds will be difficult to decorate due to the limited accessibility of the cavity (my own fault I guess). Unlike a sphere mould where you can pipe straight lines easily, with helmet shaped cavities its a much more complex and time consuming process. I have included a couple of photos of a test helmet I cast last week. Please note that I gave little thought to the decoration of this piece, it was really just to test out whether 40 shore silicone would be too stiff for removal of the chocolate from the mould.

 

I would appreciate any advice you are able and willing to provide, as I embark on this new adventure.

 

Thanks

 

Matthew

 

HI, 

where can i buy this mold?

jamal

[Jamal12]

HI, 

where can i buy this mold?

jamal

[Tri2Cook]

6 hours ago, Jamal12 said:

HI, 

where can i buy this mold?

jamal

Read through the post again... you can't buy it, he had it custom made.

[Jamal12]

16 hours ago, Tri2Cook said:

Read through the post again... you can't buy it, he had it custom made.

 Yes i know he had it custom made but is he commercialising it , where can it be found?

[Tri2Cook]

6 hours ago, Jamal12 said:

 Yes i know he had it custom made but is he commercialising it , where can it be found?

Le sigh... when I get to the bottom I go back to the top of the slide...

They can't be found, he had them custom made for his personal use. I suppose you could possibly arrange through him with the company that made them to have a run made for you if he was feeling generous at that moment but other than that, you'd have to go through the same process he did and get something similar made for yourself. 

[Racing_Chocs]

Hey Guys,

 

Sorry to see that this conversation has gone on for so long with no input from my side, I was busy attending the UK Callebaut Chocolate Academy. 

 

If I was to supply my custom moulds to anyone else, I would charge a minimum of £250 per mould and set a minimum order quantity of 4pcs. It's expensive I know, but so were the tooling costs. 

 

Matthew

[Racing_Chocs]

Just incase anyone was interested, this is the finish I have been able to achieve with my custom silicone mould. 

[Kerry Beal]

1 minute ago, SilverstoneBakehouse said:

Just incase anyone was interested, this is the finish I have been able to achieve with my custom silicone mould. 

Looks good - can't wait to see how it goes with the colours. 

[Racing_Chocs]

Yep, that's what all of my energy, effort and focus is on right now. Experimenting with combinations of artists masking tape, the dremel and removable inserts are all planned for the next few days. Now that I know a good technique for tempering very small amounts of coloured cocoa butter before applying it, it should help. 

[keychris]

good luck! Did anyone at the Callebaut Academy have any good ideas about cleaning your silicon moulds?

[Racing_Chocs]

3 minutes ago, keychris said:

good luck! Did anyone at the Callebaut Academy have any good ideas about cleaning your silicon moulds?

 

Alcohol, elbow grease and a microfibre cloth. 

[Rajala]

What kind of silicone are you using? Feels like it needs to be kind of hard? 

 

The silicone I use to make moulds is 28 shore, feels a little bit too soft to use for chocolate moulds. But maybe I'm wrong.  

[Racing_Chocs]

5 minutes ago, Rajala said:

What kind of silicone are you using? Feels like it needs to be kind of hard? 

 

The silicone I use to make moulds is 28 shore, feels a little bit too soft to use for chocolate moulds. But maybe I'm wrong.  

 

This mould has been made with 40 shore silicone, which is as hard as I was willing to go. any harder and I would have struggled with removal of the product.

 

As you can see, the end result does have a shine but it is a matt shine.

[Jamal12]

On 7/16/2018 at 3:08 PM, SilverstoneBakehouse said:

Hey Guys,

 

Sorry to see that this conversation has gone on for so long with no input from my side, I was busy attending the UK Callebaut Chocolate Academy. 

 

If I was to supply my custom moulds to anyone else, I would charge a minimum of £250 per mould and set a minimum order quantity of 4pcs. It's expensive I know, but so were the tooling costs. 

 

Matthew

 

sorry but i will pass on that price, good luck anyway.

[tikidoc]

There has been a lot of talk lately on the forum regarding using home made colored cocoa butter. I’d love to learn how to do this, preferably with basic materials available on Amazon and other websites. I’d like for this to be another “share your experience” thread, so feel free to discuss the “flowers” designed for this use, but I personally would rather start with less expensive options. What products do you use? How much do you add to the cocoa butter? Do you strain it, and if so, how? I’m thinking I would try the pantyhose idea since I have a clue unopened packages of them in a drawer somewhere, and they (happily to me) seem to have gone out of style. 

 

I have done a few google searches, with very little success. It appears there may be some info on YouTube, but I have painfully slow internet at home, limiting streaming (we live in the country).

[Rajala]

I do it like this;

 

100 grams of cocoa butter

10 grams of color (if I want it to be opaque, which I want, I take maybe 8 grams of green and 2 grams of white)

 

Melt cocoa butter, add sifted color. Mix with bamix. Done. One would probably argue that you should strain it, but I haven't seen any issues with not doing it.

[keychris]

remember it has to be fat soluble powder

[gfron1]

Heat to 50º

add colors

Stick blend

Strain or not (if you do a good job of blending its not an issue)

5% for most colors

10% for mettalics

10-15% for white

[tikidoc]

Where do you find metallic colors? Which powders are everyone using?