Colored Cocoa Butter: The Topic

Elkyfr · December 24, 2020

The ingredients are... Food additives(sorbitol, glycerol, carboxymethyl cellulose, potassium sorbate), water. I use for macaroni, cakes and frostings.

I am testing with a mould and these colorants are not that good. I am going to get the good colouring cocoa butter, for bonbons. Thanks.

Jurjen · December 25, 2020

On 12/21/2020 at 10:40 PM, Rajala said:

The only alternative I've seen is from Chef Rubber, and I can't source it here. It's way too expensive. It's strange that PCB for example doesn't have an alternative, they're even a French company where it's forbidden these days

I've seen some other ones like Avalance from Sensient food colours and Chr. Hansen has something as well however these aren't available to consumers. It's a shame that these or similar products are not available as titanium dioxide is getting banned in some places.

**Jim D.** · December 25, 2020

On 12/24/2020 at 1:45 AM, Elkyfr said:

The ingredients are... Food additives(sorbitol, glycerol, carboxymethyl cellulose, potassium sorbate), water. I use for macaroni, cakes and frostings.

I am testing with a mould and these colorants are not that good. I am going to get the good colouring cocoa butter, for bonbons. Thanks.

As has already been suggested in this thread, you must have oil-based colorants when working with chocolate. Water and cocoa butter don't mix (unless, of course, you are deliberately making an emulsion with them). I don't know what country you are in, but look for "oil-based" before you buy, regardless of whether it is pre-mixed colors or powder that you will mix with plain cocoa butter yourself.

You also wrote about backing colors with white. Unfortunately, that is required with some colors, and you really know which ones only by experimenting. It often depends on how much titanium dioxide has been mixed in (since it blocks all colors). Most red cocoa butter, for instance, turns dark red/brownish when dark chocolate is behind it. But yellows, orange, light blue are usually OK without a white layer. I have found, however, that even colors that block most other colors (orange, for instance) show up brighter when there is a layer of white. You can experiment by melting the colored cocoa butter, spreading a little of it on a transparent surface (a piece of clear plastic, for example), letting it set, then spreading some melted chocolate on top of part of the colored area. When you turn the plastic upside down, you will see how the cocoa butter will show up with and without chocolate behind it.

Rajala · December 25, 2020

43 minutes ago, Jurjen said:

I've seen some other ones like Avalance from Sensient food colours and Chr. Hansen has something as well however these aren't available to consumers. It's a shame that these or similar products are not available as titanium dioxide is getting banned in some places.

As it gets banned in more places, the replacements are more likely to be widely available. I guess there is little profit in selling these now.

JeffreyJames · January 13, 2021

Hi Everyone! New to the chocolate world... I've begun experimenting with making my own colored cocoa butter- and got some fat dispersible Chef Rubber colored powder for starters. I've done a few batches of their black powder but am having a really tough time blending it (there appear to be little "specks" in the butter). After mixing with an immersion blender, I strain through fine mesh sieve (with cheesecloth over it), but there still appears to be chunky specs in it... any tips or suggestions I should try? I've got some Roxy & Rich that I'm going to try as well to see if I have better luck with that. Thank you! -Jeff

Kerry Beal · January 13, 2021

57 minutes ago, JeffreyJames said:

Hi Everyone! New to the chocolate world... I've begun experimenting with making my own colored cocoa butter- and got some fat dispersible Chef Rubber colored powder for starters. I've done a few batches of their black powder but am having a really tough time blending it (there appear to be little "specks" in the butter). After mixing with an immersion blender, I strain through fine mesh sieve (with cheesecloth over it), but there still appears to be chunky specs in it... any tips or suggestions I should try? I've got some Roxy & Rich that I'm going to try as well to see if I have better luck with that. Thank you! -Jeff

Really vicious mix with the immersion blender and strain through pantyhose rather than cheesecloth

no10 · June 7, 2021

Does anyone know if Chef Rubber sells a colored cocoa butter similar to ChocoButter's Gold Dust (Cosmic Collection)? Is Chef Rubber's Gold Luster (Decor Colored Cocoa Butter) a close match?

Edited June 7, 2021 by no10 (log)

kannehearts · January 10, 2022

Hi all,

I started playing with tempering chocolate last December. It's been a few months since I last made any bonbons and I'm sort of having to re-learn a few things while I try new things too.

I have a big container of white colored cocoa butter by roxy and rich and started experimenting with lightening some other premade colors. I have a few bright primary colors and figured I could just do some mixing to get whatever I wanted from there. I like a lot of cool pinks and purples so l used a lot of white to get a pastel tone. I also was curious if I could coat an entire shell in a color rather than swipes or dots of color.

They were grooooss. My husband also tried some said it tasted like a closet. I think I figured out it was the liberal amount of white I mixed in and it took on the gnarly taste of titanium dioxide. Even the shells that only got a small splatter of a colored mixed with white, it was still very jarring and off putting.

Is messing with white to this extent just not an option? Are there whites that aren't so pungent?

I also have some roxy and rich powders and some food grade cocoa butter. I mixed some pink powder with melted cocoa butter and added a small amount of titanium dioxide so it wouldn't be so transparent. Since the cocoa butter is quite yellow though, the pink was weird so I'm sort of in the same boat where I'm looking for something to mix in. I don't want to add white though because I'm afraid it will create that bad taste again. Maybe violet would help? It's supposed to negate yellows I think.

The homemade color also ended up too thin to paint into my mold. It ran so much I didn't have any control of where it went, and it looked cloudy.

Is color mixing a lot more technical than l thought? Or, maybe l missed something?

I saw some of you mention creating a coating of white to make some of your colors pop. What is this though? White cocoa butter? White chocolate? Do you need to airbrush that in?

If the answer here is to just get premade colored cocoa butter, that's fine. My biggest concern is this yucky taste. Should I try to avoid using white any more than a speck? How can I be sure I won't get this taste with the lighter premade colors too?

Kerry Beal · January 10, 2022

White coloured cocoa butter oxidizes quickly - It is very likely that it has gone off. Adding powder instead will be fine but you need to make sure you mix it very well. I tend to use one of those little battery powered coffee frothers.

If you want to use the bright colors and put white behind it, I would make up some fresh white with the powder that you have and melted cocoa butter.

**Jim D.** · January 10, 2022

10 hours ago, kannehearts said:

Hi all,

I started playing with tempering chocolate last December. It's been a few months since I last made any bonbons and I'm sort of having to re-learn a few things while I try new things too.

I have a big container of white colored cocoa butter by roxy and rich and started experimenting with lightening some other premade colors. I have a few bright primary colors and figured I could just do some mixing to get whatever I wanted from there. I like a lot of cool pinks and purples so l used a lot of white to get a pastel tone. I also was curious if I could coat an entire shell in a color rather than swipes or dots of color.

They were grooooss. My husband also tried some said it tasted like a closet. I think I figured out it was the liberal amount of white I mixed in and it took on the gnarly taste of titanium dioxide. Even the shells that only got a small splatter of a colored mixed with white, it was still very jarring and off putting.

Is messing with white to this extent just not an option? Are there whites that aren't so pungent?

I also have some roxy and rich powders and some food grade cocoa butter. I mixed some pink powder with melted cocoa butter and added a small amount of titanium dioxide so it wouldn't be so transparent. Since the cocoa butter is quite yellow though, the pink was weird so I'm sort of in the same boat where I'm looking for something to mix in. I don't want to add white though because I'm afraid it will create that bad taste again. Maybe violet would help? It's supposed to negate yellows I think.

The homemade color also ended up too thin to paint into my mold. It ran so much I didn't have any control of where it went, and it looked cloudy.

Is color mixing a lot more technical than l thought? Or, maybe l missed something?

I saw some of you mention creating a coating of white to make some of your colors pop. What is this though? White cocoa butter? White chocolate? Do you need to airbrush that in?

If the answer here is to just get premade colored cocoa butter, that's fine. My biggest concern is this yucky taste. Should I try to avoid using white any more than a speck? How can I be sure I won't get this taste with the lighter premade colors too?

In the case of the cocoa butter that was too thin, you just need to add more color powder to get the right consistency.

About your main topic: I agree totally about the smell/taste of titanium dioxide, but I do use it both to mix with other colors to lighten them and to back colors that are not opaque (such as red). Its bad qualities will show up in any color that includes it (Chef Rubber's gold or yellow, for instance). Unfortunately, although people are working on a substitute for titanium (especially in countries where it is now illegal), I don't know of anything now available. What I discovered, however, is that after I finish a bonbon, I don't notice the smell or taste. Actually I have spent some time with this issue, trying as hard as I could to detect the taste in, for example, a bonbon with ganache, and I didn't get it. Now perhaps your senses of smell and taste are keener than mine, but if you haven't already done so, go ahead and coat a mold in white, fill it with something, and see what you find. You didn't say whether you used an airbrush to paint the cavities. If you were not using one, then it will give you a finer coating of the color than using a paintbrush.

kannehearts · January 11, 2022

Kerry and Jim- thank you!! I did some more practice and experimenting today with your recommendations and information and things have been going better! I still had the homemade pink so I added more pink powder and that did the trick in terms of fixing the consistency and yellow tone. I made another homemade color, purple, and I'm letting it sit overnight before I use it (I guess you're supposed to?). It already looked better than my first batch though since I wasn't stingy with the powder this time.

I ordered a milk frother today to mix better. I've been waiting for a good excuse to get one 👍

I think I will then buy another bottle of the pre-made white cocoa butter and compare the two to see if the original has gone bad. It sounds like it shouldn't be so gross normally so I won't worry too much about this happening again for now.

I have a tray filled with shells that I will inspect tomorrow to see how things taste with the homemade color and how a light coating vs. a heavy costing of white differs, if at all.

Thank you both again!

**Jim D.** · January 11, 2022

8 hours ago, kannehearts said:

Kerry and Jim- thank you!! I did some more practice and experimenting today with your recommendations and information and things have been going better! I still had the homemade pink so I added more pink powder and that did the trick in terms of fixing the consistency and yellow tone. I made another homemade color, purple, and I'm letting it sit overnight before I use it (I guess you're supposed to?). It already looked better than my first batch though since I wasn't stingy with the powder this time.

I ordered a milk frother today to mix better. I've been waiting for a good excuse to get one 👍

I think I will then buy another bottle of the pre-made white cocoa butter and compare the two to see if the original has gone bad. It sounds like it shouldn't be so gross normally so I won't worry too much about this happening again for now.

I have a tray filled with shells that I will inspect tomorrow to see how things taste with the homemade color and how a light coating vs. a heavy costing of white differs, if at all.

Thank you both again!

Your experiments all sounds quite reasonable. I wouldn't expect a miraculous improvement when opening a brand new bottle of white c.b. First, I don't think there is a way to tell when the c.b. was bottled, and second, titanium dioxide has a smell--that's just a fact. But the other fact, that it is used in many foods, suggests its smell/taste is not so prominent in real world use.

One small point: I never heard about waiting a day to use "homemade" colored c.b. In the online class that some of us on eG took with Andrey Dubovik, he used it immediately, and so does Kirsten Tibballs of Savour School. And one other thought: In your original email you mentioned that you had a "big" container of white c.b. I buy the 200g bottles, which I am sure cost more but (in theory) don't have a chance to age so much before being used.

kannehearts · January 11, 2022

7 hours ago, Jim D. said:

Your experiments all sounds quite reasonable. I wouldn't expect a miraculous improvement when opening a brand new bottle of white c.b. First, I don't think there is a way to tell when the c.b. was bottled, and second, titanium dioxide has a smell--that's just a fact. But the other fact, that it is used in many foods, suggests its smell/taste is not so prominent in real world use.

One small point: I never heard about waiting a day to use "homemade" colored c.b. In the online class that some of us on eG took with Andrey Dubovik, he used it immediately, and so does Kirsten Tibballs of Savour School. And one other thought: In your original email you mentioned that you had a "big" container of white c.b. I buy the 200g bottles, which I am sure cost more but (in theory) don't have a chance to age so much before being used.

Yeah, I know titanium dioxide is sort of icky. I haven't noticed it when I've used it in the past, but i maybe just wasn't using as much. Or, it oxidized like Kerry suggested. I am going to get a fresh bottle just so I know, but I'm not going to toss what I have in the meantime until I figure anything out. When I said I have a bunch of white, i meant I have 8 oz, haha. My other pre-made cocoa butters are 2 oz bottles.

Mixing is going better so far. I'll be getting the milk frother in a day or two which will help. And the white is definitely going to have to leave the rotation for now. In a test with specks, a lightened color, and white only, they were so bad. Other colors, pre- made and homemade, all tasted fine if they hadn't mixed with the white.

Maybe the suggestion to wait overnight was for the tempering process? I believe they said it was so the cocoa butter could crystallize. I read a lot in the forums the other day though and can't remember enough about it to be trustworthy. I might just be spreading rumors.

**Jim D.** · January 11, 2022

8 minutes ago, kannehearts said:

Yeah, I know titanium dioxide is sort of icky. I haven't noticed it when I've used it in the past, but i maybe just wasn't using as much. Or, it oxidized like Kerry suggested. I am going to get a fresh bottle just so I know, but I'm not going to toss what I have in the meantime until I figure anything out. When I said I have a bunch of white, i meant I have 8 oz, haha. My other pre-made cocoa butters are 2 oz bottles.

Mixing is going better so far. I'll be getting the milk frother in a day or two which will help. And the white is definitely going to have to leave the rotation for now. In a test with specks, a lightened color, and white only, they were so bad. Other colors, pre- made and homemade, all tasted fine if they hadn't mixed with the white.

Maybe the suggestion to wait overnight was for the tempering process? I believe they said it was so the cocoa butter could crystallize. I read a lot in the forums the other day though and can't remember enough about it to be trustworthy. I might just be spreading rumors.

Are you straining your homemade colors? Dubovik, Tibballs, really everybody calls for straining it through fine mesh after mixing it to get rid of the undissolved bits. All of that is why I gave up and just buy it already mixed.

kannehearts · January 11, 2022

2 minutes ago, Jim D. said:

Are you straining your homemade colors? Dubovik, Tibballs, really everybody calls for straining it through fine mesh after mixing it to get rid of the undissolved bits. All of that is why I gave up and just buy it already mixed.

I haven't strained it so far, and I have some undissolved bits here and there, but I'm not too concerned with that until I get some of the other problems solved.

kannehearts · January 20, 2022

@Kerry Beal @Jim D

I got my new cocoa butte colors the other day and whipped up a batch of bonbons. So. Much. Better! I compared the new white with the old white (same brand) and there was a huge difference in scent. My husband had just asked me to smell check some old sunflower seeds that same day and we agreed that they were bad, and they smelled the same as the old white even.

Thanks for your help guys!

RWood · February 10, 2022

So, I wanted to get some opinions. I've been using Chef Rubber's colored cocoa butter since I started making chocolates many years ago. Lately I've just been getting their small bottles, and I need to restock.

Has anyone noticed any difference in any of the other brands? I've never tried Roxy & Rich. Are their colors any different? Better? Or are they basically the same?

Has anyone tried Chef Rubber's natural line? How are the colors?

TIA

pastrygirl · February 10, 2022

I don't know if there's much difference between brands. With either I usually go for the jewel/extra sparkly ones.

I've switched to Roxy & Rich because I'm often ordering more molds from Chocolat-Chocolat anyway 😊 R&R has some really nice blues, like turquoise, aquamarine, & sapphire, and the fuchsia tourmaline is very pretty as well. List price is slightly higher on the 200g bottles but the exchange rate in our favor evens it out.

RWood · February 10, 2022

48 minutes ago, pastrygirl said:

I don't know if there's much difference between brands. With either I usually go for the jewel/extra sparkly ones.

I've switched to Roxy & Rich because I'm often ordering more molds from Chocolat-Chocolat anyway 😊 R&R has some really nice blues, like turquoise, aquamarine, & sapphire, and the fuchsia tourmaline is very pretty as well. List price is slightly higher on the 200g bottles but the exchange rate in our favor evens it out.

Thanks, I'll check Chocolat Chocolat. I've ordered a lot from them in the past.

DomDeFranco · March 31, 2022

I wondered if anyone had come across an e number free/natural/TO2 free (whatever the term is for it) white food colouring available to buy?

As discussed previously, many countries have banned or are in the process of banning TO2, but I can't seem to find a white alternative yet?

Has anyone saw anything and what do those who are going for clean labels use to replace white cocoa butter?

Thanks

Rajala · April 3, 2022

Roxy and Rich and Chef Rubber both have replacements based on E170. It’s obviously not as good as E171.

DomDeFranco · April 4, 2022

18 hours ago, Rajala said:

Roxy and Rich and Chef Rubber both have replacements based on E170. It’s obviously not as good as E171.

Thanks. I saw that rice starch seems to be used as a white colouring agent for some applications, but i imagine it might make the cocoa butter too thick. I might give it a little try to see what it turns out like.

Kerry Beal · April 4, 2022

18 hours ago, Rajala said:

Roxy and Rich and Chef Rubber both have replacements based on E170. It’s obviously not as good as E171.

E170 is calcium carbonate - used in sufficient quantity to get the same white as titanium dioxide it would be too thick to spray (or likely even paint). So the new white is going to be yellow.

DomDeFranco · April 4, 2022

1 hour ago, Kerry Beal said:

E170 is calcium carbonate - used in sufficient quantity to get the same white as titanium dioxide it would be too thick to spray (or likely even paint). So the new white is going to be yellow.

Interesting. What do you think could replace E171 as a backing colour?

Kerry Beal · April 4, 2022

1 hour ago, DomDeFranco said:

Interesting. What do you think could replace E171 as a backing colour?

Million dollar question.

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