Colored Cocoa Butter: The Topic

[Saltychoc]

Has anyone tried these new cocoa butter colors from Luis Amado/Chef Rubber? I'm intrigued but can't find much online. No info sheet on the Chef Rubber site either, I might email them to ask.

 

https://shop.chefrubber.com/products/320/Luis-Amado-Collection/

[no10]

I’m trying to purchase Power Flowers but can't find a US supplier. The only US supplier that seems to carry them (The Chef's Warehouse) only sells to companies and not individual households/hobbyists. Does anyone have extra power flowers I can purchase from? I need red and yellow.

 

Alternatively, would someone be willing to help me purchase Power Flowers from The Chef’s Warehouse? I attempted to open an account with them but can’t because I’m not a company.

 

Edited June 14, 2023 by no10 (log)

[pastrygirl]

58 minutes ago, no10 said:

I’m trying to purchase Power Flowers but can find a US supplier. The only US supplier that seems to carry them (The Chef's Warehouse)

 

I used to have an account with them but I guess I don't anymore.

 

You can get loose/powder fat-dispersable Roxy & Rich colors from either chocolat-chocolat or webstaurant store, if that helps ...

[Kerry Beal]

2 hours ago, no10 said:

I’m trying to purchase Power Flowers but can find a US supplier. The only US supplier that seems to carry them (The Chef's Warehouse) only sells to companies and not individual households/hobbyists. Does anyone have extra power flowers I can purchase from? I need red and yellow.

 

Alternatively, would someone be willing to help me purchase Power Flowers from The Chef’s Warehouse? I attempted to open an account with them but can’t because I’m not a company.

 

I've got a bunch

[no10]

3 hours ago, Kerry Beal said:

I've got a bunch

Hi @Kerry Beal, I’ll DM you.

Edited June 14, 2023 by no10 (log)

[no10]

5 hours ago, pastrygirl said:

 

I used to have an account with them but I guess I don't anymore.

 

You can get loose/powder fat-dispersable Roxy & Rich colors from either chocolat-chocolat or webstaurant store, if that helps ...

Thanks for the suggestion @pastrygirl. I am considering going the fat-soluble powder route but wanted to try procuring the Power Flowers first (it's so convenient since they tell you exactly how many of each color to add to white chocolate to achieve a specific shade).

Edited June 14, 2023 by no10 (log)

[cece]

Hi everyone. I am relatively new to chocolate making, and I hope it's ok to ask the question. I have started dabbling in using coloured cocoa butter for my bonbons. I make the colours myself using CB and while the results are turning out great (shiny and vibrant), I notice there is a distinct smell and taste notes that the cocoa butter adds overall to the chocolate. One I'm not so keen on.

My CB is new and purchased from a food store. I (think) I am doing relatively thin coats, but that smell and taste just really lingers.
It's all applied using brushes or sponges or fingers etc. 

Is this something that is just normal? Am I doing something wrong? or should I look at a different kind of cocoa butter?
Purchasing coloured cocoa butter in NZ seems to be really hard or expensive, so I am just making my own using the cocoa butter and color mill coloring design for chocolate.

[Kerry Beal]

Can you smell the cocoa butter and the powdered colors on their own and see where the odor is coming from? 

[Jim D.]

20 hours ago, cece said:

I notice there is a distinct smell and taste notes that the cocoa butter adds overall to the chocolate. One I'm not so keen on.
 

 

Somewhere on eGullet I posted on this subject.  I too found the (premixed) colored cocoa butter I use to have an unpleasant odor and taste.  Since then either I have gotten accustomed to the smell/taste or I have begun using a fresher product.  I still find that white cocoa butter has a smell, as do other colors that use a lot of white, but it doesn't seem as obnoxious.  I eventually concluded that fresh cocoa butter is essential.  I now use Cacao Barry, and when I open a new tub, I get a very faint odor of chocolate, but nothing terrible.  Mixed colored cocoa butter definitely gets an odor as it ages.

 

In spite of the issues,  I have never found that the odor/taste carried over to a finished bonbon.  Chocolate used for the shell and the filling used inside appear to overwhelm anything unpleasant.  I have never had a customer mention the issue.

[pastrygirl]

Fats can go rancid, if it doesn't taste good, don't use it.  Also possible the product is reasonably fresh but picked up strong smells  in storage.

[cece]

On 11/15/2023 at 5:57 AM, Jim D. said:

 

Somewhere on eGullet I posted on this subject.  I too found the (premixed) colored cocoa butter I use to have an unpleasant odor and taste.  Since then either I have gotten accustomed to the smell/taste or I have begun using a fresher product.  I still find that white cocoa butter has a smell, as do other colors that use a lot of white, but it doesn't seem as obnoxious.  I eventually concluded that fresh cocoa butter is essential.  I now use Cacao Barry, and when I open a new tub, I get a very faint odor of chocolate, but nothing terrible.  Mixed colored cocoa butter definitely gets an odor as it ages.

 

In spite of the issues,  I have never found that the odor/taste carried over to a finished bonbon.  Chocolate used for the shell and the filling used inside appear to overwhelm anything unpleasant.  I have never had a customer mention the issue.

Thanks for your response. I felt like I was the only one having this issue, but I feel reassured. It is def the butter and not my colouring.
I have found that using larger chocolate moulds seems to have a less shell to filling ratio and so the taste is very minimal now. I will also look around and try other cocoa butter. Unfortunately in NZ and a hobbiest in this field, it can be a bit hard to find products.

[Jim D.]

@Kerry Beal @pastrygirl  This is a continuation of our discussion that originally began under the topic of cleaning colored cocoa butter from molds.  It's probably more relevant here.

 

First, I concluded that the little chips that came off a lot of shells (shown in previous thread) were caused by cleaning the molds on top of a food warming tray that was too warm.  If it had been caused just by rubbing them too vigorously on shop towels, the CCB would have come off completely; instead it stuck in the mold when I unmolded.  However, the rubbing procedure is relevant (see below).

 

I did my experimentation on whether CCB needs to be tempered.   I used the Fuji to spray both molds.  Although the bonbons in the photo below appear not to be colored, they are--with Chef Rubber's idea of what magenta looks like.  I sprayed one mold with untempered CCB around 90-95F/32-35C.  Excess CCB was very easy to remove because it was not starting to crystallize; in fact, it took more than a half-hour for the CCB to attain the matte look and not come off when I touched it.  I was sure I faced a daunting task of cleaning the mold.  The second mold I sprayed with CCB I had tempered with 1% by weight of silk (today I happened on a video by Brian Donaghy of Tomric, and he recommended 3%).  It was at 86F/30C (I think this is the temp recommended by Andrey Dubovik).  It took much longer to attain the matte look than what I have been getting by using more silk, but the time was more like 15 minutes.  Again, it was easy to clean the excess CCB from the mold.

 

I filled both molds with tempered chocolate and let it crystallize.  To my surprise, both unmolded equally easily--only a light tap on the counter was necessary.  In the photo below the top group is with untempered CCB; the bottom is tempered.  There is a defect in one untempered bonbon, the left bonbon in the second row (a bit of CCB stuck in the mold), but aside from that, I saw no other defect, and both are equally shiny.  Before I filled the molds with chocolate, I did note that there were some spots with missing CCB on the top edges of the molds (such as showed up in the original post).  I assumed this was from rubbing on the towels and was able to replicate the issue by additional rubbing (the fact that the CCB was not crystallizing so fast gave me more time to experiment).  I don't know what to do about this except to rub more gently or perhaps find towels that aren't so rough in texture.

 

Conclusions:  This was a very limited experiment, but tempering CCB does not appear to be necessary when airbrushing.  Going without, however, takes considerably more time for the CCB to crystallize and may be responsible for the one defect (though this is not certain).  I am left to puzzle over several issues:  Did the untempered CCB ever properly crystallize?  If the act of spraying is supposed to temper it, then it should have firmed up much more quickly.  When we temper chocolate, don't we say that the temper is subpar if crystallizing takes a long time?  But what happens to the common explanation that CCB sticks in a mold when it isn't tempered?  We are left to puzzle over whether the legion of chocolatiers who recommend tempering CCB know something that didn't show up in my experiment.  If one is using silk to temper CCB, my experiment suggests that in the past I have been using too much and, as a result, the CCB was crystallizing immediately on being sprayed and was prone to sticking in the mold and to being very difficult to clean off the mold.

 

 

Edited February 16 by Jim D. (log)

[pastrygirl]

9 hours ago, Jim D. said:

Although the bonbons in the photo below appear not to be colored, they are--with Chef Rubber's idea of what magenta looks like.

😂

 

If you're spraying so much CB that wiping off over-spray is a whole necessary thing and that's all the color you get, that is super weak.  Is it natural or just lame?

 

 

 

9 hours ago, Jim D. said:

This was a very limited experiment, but tempering CCB does not appear to be necessary when airbrushing. 

Welcome to the dark side.  The CB should set up more quickly than that, still within 2-5 min like regular chocolate, though sometimes it doesn't and they still turn out fine. I don't actually temp my CB, just go with 'warm but not hot' on the inside of my arm. Like a baby's bottle.  And I shake it a lot.

 

Edited February 17 by pastrygirl (log)

[Jim D.]

51 minutes ago, pastrygirl said:

If you're spraying so much CB that wiping off over-spray is a whole necessary thing and that's all the color you get, that is super weak.  Is it natural or just lame?

It's a regular Chef Rubber color (one I don't like and could easily use for experimentation).  The bonbons are fully covered; it must be the light that makes them look otherwise.  The Fuji does spray more than an airbrush, but it is much faster.  It's a tradeoff, one I am willing to make, esp. at times like Christmas. 

 

As for wiping off overspray, just about every chocolate-spraying video I have watched includes that.   If I let it fully crystallize on top of the mold, I have a terrible time cleaning it off later.

[pastrygirl]

16 hours ago, Jim D. said:

The Fuji does spray more than an airbrush, but it is much faster.  It's a tradeoff, one I am willing to make,

 

You keep saying that, but I'm not convinced.  How big is the Fuji?

 

I just got a sagola 0.8mm, the spray pattern is 3-4".  So far I've only tried it on larger molds, not my small bonbons.

 

 

[Jim D.]

1 hour ago, pastrygirl said:

 

You keep saying that, but I'm not convinced.  How big is the Fuji?

 

I just got a sagola 0.8mm, the spray pattern is 3-4".  So far I've only tried it on larger molds, not my small bonbons.

 

 

Not sure what you mean by "how big is the Fuji?"  Are you referring to physical dimensions or volume of the spray cup?  And I'm not trying to convince you.  People have different priorities.

 

The Sagola looks very much like the Fuji.

[pastrygirl]

10 minutes ago, Jim D. said:

how big is the Fuji

 

I meant the nozzle size.  1.0 mm?

[Jim D.]

15 minutes ago, pastrygirl said:

 

I meant the nozzle size.  1.0 mm?

I have the 0.8mm (recommended by Kerry and others); Fuji has them up to 2.0.

[Rajala]

I blast my molds with cocoa butter as well.

[pastrygirl]

On 2/18/2024 at 3:23 AM, Rajala said:

I blast my molds with cocoa butter as well.

 

Do you buy colors by the kg?  Do you attempt to scrape off and save the excess or is the time savings still greater than the cost of the CB?

[Rajala]

17 hours ago, pastrygirl said:

 

Do you buy colors by the kg?  Do you attempt to scrape off and save the excess or is the time savings still greater than the cost of the CB?

 

I'm only doing this as a hobby, so it doesn't matter too much. But I do scrape it off and save it!

[Jim D.]

With the changes in the U.S. administration coming in 2025 and promises of ridding our foods of unnecessary additives--and artificial colorants!--perhaps those of us in this country need to check out the natural cocoa butter colors available from some manufacturers.  Am I actually ready to substitute beet juice for Chef Rubber's "Red Ruby"?  And is there a blue vegetable that can replace the beautiful "Blue Lapis"?  Hmm.

[Saltychoc]

@Jim D. Not to get political but considering some photos from yesterday - I'm not sure how committed any of them are to actual "healthy" food. Very worried about the already rising price of chocolate though.

 

The blue cholula from chef rubber's natural line is very very pretty. Unfortunately, it's so light and looks much better backed with titanium white.

 

I would also be interested to know what natural lines people have used and liked. I do a farmers market and get a number of people asking for no artificial colors. I do think New York and CA banned or has an upcoming ban for a few colorants so we may see an increase in natural colors. I have read/heard good things about Bold Cocoa butter out of the Netherlands. They are titanium free but I think use regular "fake" color formulations beyond that. Unfortunately, they still do not ship to the states, though I have asked a few time and the answer is always "we're working on it".

[Jim D.]

2 hours ago, Saltychoc said:

@Jim D. Not to get political but considering some photos from yesterday - I'm not sure how committed any of them are to actual "healthy" food. Very worried about the already rising price of chocolate though.

 

The blue cholula from chef rubber's natural line is very very pretty. Unfortunately, it's so light and looks much better backed with titanium white.

 

I would also be interested to know what natural lines people have used and liked. I do a farmers market and get a number of people asking for no artificial colors. I do think New York and CA banned or has an upcoming ban for a few colorants so we may see an increase in natural colors. I have read/heard good things about Bold Cocoa butter out of the Netherlands. They are titanium free but I think use regular "fake" color formulations beyond that. Unfortunately, they still do not ship to the states, though I have asked a few time and the answer is always "we're working on it".

 

I have heard good things about Chef Rubber's natural white color (not sure of its exact description).  A number of people have stated that the natural colors fade.  I think Andrey Dubovik has switched (at least partially) to natural colors, and his creations now look a bit faded.  Perhaps we will eventually get used to duller colors and won't remember what existed way back in 2024?

[pastrygirl]

14 hours ago, Jim D. said:

promises of ridding our foods of unnecessary additives

 

Have they met Americans?  Good luck with that. Besides, I thought they were dismantling all the regulatory agencies?

 

Anyway, chocolat-chocolat carries Roxy & Rich's natural line.  Haven't tried these, I use mostly their jewel colors.

 

https://www.chocolat-chocolat.com/product/coloured-cocoa-butter-natural-collection/