Colored Cocoa Butter: The Topic

[sbain]

Sad night. I just made a big batch of bonbons where my colored cocoa butter stuck to my molds. Tragic

 

i think i might might have overheated my Chef Rubber bottle in the microwave and lost my temper? Is there a way to salvage the bottle of CB? Can I melt the whole bottle up to 122F then table it down to 82F (like dark chocolate?)

Edited April 18, 2019 by sbain (log)

[keychris]

2 hours ago, sbain said:

Sad night. I just made a big batch of bonbons where my colored cocoa butter stuck to my molds. Tragic

i think i might might have overheated my Chef Rubber bottle in the microwave and lost my temper? Is there a way to salvage the bottle of CB? Can I melt the whole bottle up to 122F then table it down to 82F (like dark chocolate?)

 

Yup, melt it out, stir whilst cooling to 31-32C and you should be fine. I melt all of mine back to 45C and retemper like this with no issues.

 

I store mine vacuum sealed to protect from moisture , they last for ages.

[Jim D.]

7 hours ago, sbain said:

i think i might might have overheated my Chef Rubber bottle in the microwave and lost my temper? Is there a way to salvage the bottle of CB? Can I melt the whole bottle up to 122F then table it down to 82F (like dark chocolate?)

 

In my experience you can do that as long as the cocoa butter wasn't heated so high that it burned. The telltale sign of that is little hard bits in it that won't dissolve. The first time I overheated c.b., I didn't realize what had happened and kept trying to heat and retemper, but the bits remained.

[pastrygirl]

1 hour ago, Jim D. said:

In my experience you can do that as long as the cocoa butter wasn't heated so high that it burned. The telltale sign of that is little hard bits in it that won't dissolve. The first time I overheated c.b., I didn't realize what had happened and kept trying to heat and retemper, but the bits remained.

 

You should still be able to temper it, just strain out those hard bits (as long as it doesn’t taste burnt) 

[Jim D.]

3 minutes ago, pastrygirl said:

 

You should still be able to temper it, just strain out those hard bits (as long as it doesn’t taste burnt) 

 

I should have said that yes, it did taste burnt and smelled definitely "off."

[pastrygirl]

8 hours ago, sbain said:

Sad night. I just made a big batch of bonbons where my colored cocoa butter stuck to my molds. Tragic

 

i think i might might have overheated my Chef Rubber bottle in the microwave and lost my temper? Is there a way to salvage the bottle of CB? Can I melt the whole bottle up to 122F then table it down to 82F (like dark chocolate?)

 

 

Very sad. But I have to say the chocolate itself looks pretty rough. If that is dark chocolate, it looks like the chocolate may be out of temper.

 

Did they contract and pop out nicely  except for the cb or did the molds take a beating to get the pieces out? 

[sbain]

Hmmm. It is dark chocolate and it did take some whacking to get them out. Might have been the chocolate temper, though I made several different types with the same batch and it was only theses that had issues, so I am inclined to blame the CB. My tempering is usually pretty good, but come to think of it, I did just buy a fancy new Mol d’art melter and this was my first batch using it to temper(seed instead of my usual tabling), so maybe it was off. 

[pastryani]

I’d like to make some chocolate-inspired-by-art for a friend who uses a lot of neon paints in his artwork.  Are neon cocoa butter colors available?  (I’m thinking yellow, pink, orange, green, blue, purple, just like highlighters we used in school). If not, is it possible to make them by mixing colors, and if so, how?

[Kerry Beal]

Aren't the colors that Stick with Me Sweets uses pretty much neon? Those are made by Chef Rubber. 

 

Look under their new cocoa butters - there are some pretty bright ones. They also make a riboflavin yellow powder.

[pastryani]

She does use some bright colors - I’ll have to look at them next time I’m there.  How does the riboflavin powder work?

[Kerry Beal]

18 hours ago, pastryani said:

She does use some bright colors - I’ll have to look at them next time I’m there.  How does the riboflavin powder work?

No idea - I assume the same as any powdered color.

 

 

[DayGameCandy]

Riboflavin, or Vitamin B2, is one of the few natural compounds with fluorescent properties.  If you use enough of it and hit it with a black light it will fluoresce.  I've done it with hard candies before. 

Jon

[pastryani]

On 6/15/2019 at 11:25 PM, DayGameCandy said:

Riboflavin, or Vitamin B2, is one of the few natural compounds with fluorescent properties.  If you use enough of it and hit it with a black light it will fluoresce.  I've done it with hard candies before. 

Jon

 

Thanks for the info.  Sounds pretty cool, would love to see a pic of glowing candies. 🙂

[Louise nadine brill]

On 11/7/2016 at 12:53 PM, Kerry Beal said:

Hey Carol - I think most of us keep it around much longer than we would admit to - I've got bottles that I've had for a lot more than 3 years - I give them the sniff test - if they don't smell cheesy or unpleasantly strong then I use them. The natural colours seem to go off quickly - but it's the colour that changes not the cocoa butter itself.

 

I think the huge number of bottles that I destroyed in the heating tray meets Ikea dimmer switch incident at Niagara College a couple of years ago were on average over 5 years old and they were still fine (before the incident)!

I don’t want to open old wounds but my curiosity is piqued. Is there a thread around here where “the incident” is discussed?

[RobertM]

49 minutes ago, Louise nadine brill said:

I don’t want to open old wounds but my curiosity is piqued. Is there a thread around here where “the incident” is discussed?

It was an incident better left to our fading memories....

[Louise nadine brill]

27 minutes ago, RobertM said:

It was an incident better left to our fading memories....

Of course, you must know that this just makes me more curious! 😂

[Kerry Beal]

I’ll see if I can find the report on ‘the incident’ later tonight

 

 

[Kerry Beal]

Doesn't look like I took pictures - 

 

https://forums.egullet.org/topic/144916-report-eg-chocolate-and-confectionery-workshop-2013/?do=findComment&comment=1917108

[Louise nadine brill]

Oy! Ok I am actually glad you did not take a photo 😢 would have been heartbreaking to see. On the plus side, it looked like everyone had a wonderful time - and i very much enjoyed looking at these pics of the workshop. ❤️

[Kirtida]

I applied cocoa butter colours...which is ready but. It was wet and after 30 minutes 

 

i poured chocolate into mould

 

colour was still wet till I got my chocolates out of the mould

 

whats the problem

 

i used the colours direct from the bottle and applied with the brush..

[Kerry Beal]

Any idea what the temperature of the cocoa butter was when you applied it?

[SweetandSnappyJen]

Hi folks -

 

I've just received some Power Flowers and had a question about color matching. The recipes reference using white chocolate(or milk, oddly) to mix with the colors, but I'm planning to use cocoa butter instead. I'm guessing the color will not entirely match with their colors, has anyone found a method/way to tweak the colors so that the color can be a closer match?  Thanks!

 

[Chocolot]

Use the white flowers instead of white chocolate.

[SweetandSnappyJen]

Thanks, Chocolat. I added the white flowers, and it looks like it generally worked, it set very quickly (I used silk) but there's a little streakiness. Any thoughts on what this could be? And one last question, had I not added the white flowers, would backing the somewhat transparent color with white have the same effect?  

Thanks!

[Kerry Beal]

As you suspected - without white they are transparent - and if you paint with the transparent and back with the white - you will get a more intense colour.

Edited October 25, 2019 by Kerry Beal (log)