Colored Cocoa Butter: The Topic

[choux]

Passion Pink lists: Red 40, Red 3, Yellow 6, Yellow 5, Blue 1, Blue 2, and or Titanium Dioxide.

[tammylc]

Thank you! Much appreciated.

[blackbox]

I'm wondering the feasibility of trying to stamp on chocolate using silicone stamps and coloured cocoa butter. Has anyone tried doing this, and what were your results?

If I've missed this topic on the forums, forgive me.

Thanks!

Shai

[Kerry Beal]

I'm wondering the feasibility of trying to stamp on chocolate using silicone stamps and coloured cocoa butter.  Has anyone tried doing this, and what were your results?

If I've missed this topic on the forums, forgive me.

Thanks!

Shai

←

Silicone stamps don't hold the cocoa butter very well, better to use rubber stamps.

There is a thread here somewhere about making your own transfer sheets and rubber stamps were discussed. As I recall the trick is to use a empty stamp pad for your cocoa butter, or a sponge roller.

Here is the thread. Check out the bottom of page 2 where Alana uses a neat looking stamp to make a transfer.

[K8memphis]

And here's the link for the Jacques Torres way of doing it with a towel as a blotter.

http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/re...6_20438,00.html

[blackbox]

Thanks, Ladies!

[pringle007]

I have used rubber stamps I picked up at Micheals with good success. I use colored cocoa butter and stamp the design onto artist acetate. After it dries, I use it like a transfer sheet. I have found that your chocolate will need to be at the high end of the temp. range in order for the transfers to work well.

[blackbox]

I have been playing around a little bit and thought you might like to see this...my results are very crappy as I was just messing around with a bit of not so nice cocoa butter, etc.

I guess that's enough excuses:

This is a picture of a fairly large rubber stamp.  It has four designs, one on each side of the cube, leaving two sides clear for holding onto the stamp itself.  I bought it at Michael's, the craft store.

This picture is of a sheet of chocolate onto which I transfered the design.

I got the idea from another thread which discussed using rubber stamps to make transfers or designs on chocolate.

How to Make Transfer Sheets

This is what I was asking about. Thank you all so much for chiming in, and pointing me in the right direction to find what I needed!!!

[Kerry Beal]

Don't forget that what you stamp on acetate will be backwards on the transfer, so writing will be mirrored. (Found that out the hard way!)

[Fibilou]

Update !

I got some solid cocoa butter which i melted and brushed lightly on the moulds. I sprinkled these with lustre dust and then piped in the chocolate.

They are a triumph and I will post some pictures when I find the camera.

[cakemuse]

Had to read and view all these wonderful tips and pics again. I'm itching to try. The designs are actually ebru (from Turkey) or marbling designs and a similar process from Japan called Suminagashi. I used to make prints like this but got into very vibrant colors and away from the usual patterns you would recognize.

I hope to try reproducing them in chocolate...keep you all posted when this actually occurs.

Not chocolate or cake, but here are some samples...

[Kerry Beal]

I'm loving the look of these designs. So you float the colour on water, then pick it up with a piece of absorbent paper. I guess that wouldn't work directly with cocoa butter colours - given that you'd want to try to pick it up with acetate, but I wonder if colours manipulated on top of a pool of chocolate (or on a pool of cocoa butter) then picked up with acetate would work.

You wouldn't be able to do the reverse thing though (where you drop something that repels the colour) to make bubbles.

Check out the video here for the technique.

[Tri2Cook]

So you float the colour on water, then pick it up with a piece of absorbent paper.

←

Yep. There's a similar technique used to paint guitars (and other things) called "swirling". You mix water and borax (which gets rid of the waters surface tension allowing paints to spread and flow rather than bead on the surface) in a deep container, float your (oil-based) colors on top, swirl as desired, plunge your primed, ready-to-paint item through the paint until completely below the surface, use something to brush the floating paint to the sides of the container, then pull the item back out of the water with swirled finish intact.

It produces some really cool results and was the subject of my experiments when I was searching for a food safe way to replace the borax a while back. I wanted to be able to dip components that way to get some wild looking colors going on. The main problem at this point is that the only color medium I've found that will work for the technique is oil based candy colors and I'm not sure coating the entire outside of an item with those would be a good thing to serve people. Even if it didn't mess with the taste, it would leave them with colorful teeth and tongues... so I've put that one on the back burner for now.

Edited May 7, 2009 by Tri2Cook (log)

[cakemuse]

I'm loving the look of these designs.  So you float the colour on water, then pick it up with a piece of absorbent paper. I guess that wouldn't work directly with cocoa butter colours - given that you'd want to try to pick it up with acetate, but I wonder if colours manipulated on top of a pool of chocolate (or on a pool of cocoa butter) then picked up with acetate would work. 

You wouldn't be able to do the reverse thing though (where you drop something that repels the colour) to make bubbles. 

Hi Kerry -

Actually, except for the sample that is black on white paper (Japanese method - ink on water), the rest are done on a gelatinous bath. Colors used are water-based, acrylic and oil. I used to mix and sell my own colors and tools. Finding the right paper is a personal choice. I also worked with hand-made paper. Whew, this was a lifetime ago.

I think floating cocoa butter/oil-based colors on chocolate might work. The suspension of one material on top of another is called surface retention - from physics!

If the cocoa butter/colors is thick (have not worked with it yet), then you would be able to manipulate the colors to produce a pattern. If not, I'm sure a random design would be produced. Thinning or thickening a color would also affect color manipulation. I know with paints, each color would react differently because of what they were made of. Not sure if this follows for cocoa butter/oil-based colors.

When I start experimenting, I will post results, good and bad!

[Lior]

sounds completely fascinating. I was just wondering about this- picking up a design with an acetate sheet and then using that on a slab of ganache before cutting. Kind of like a pattern part on each bonbon. Please keep us informed! Thanks!

[Spring]

What would be better to buy: coloured cocoa butter, oil colours or coloured powders? Thanks in advance.

[takomabaker]

Yup, I do it all the time when making chocolate.

The previous poster's comments that using cocoa butter results in insipid colors is correct. Unless you want a translucent effect, which sometimes I do.

I use Pastry Ideale white cocoa butter (I buy at Albert Uster) and add chocolate coloring (purchased at Kerekes in Brooklyn). I've used both oil and powder colors successfully, but it does seem like a need a lot more powder color to get a deep color so I use a lot more. I'm sure there are other outlets for both of these products, but that is just where I happen to buy them due to convenience. I live near Albert Uster, and my significant other lives in Queens, so I have easy access to both retailers.

I typically melt the white cocoa butter in warm water. You don't need to melt the whole bottle if you are not adding color to the entire bottle.

I pour what I need into a shot glass or a small spice mis en place bowl. Something always microwavable, so I can heat it up if it starts to solidify. I usually mix a very small amount at a time, adding a few drops of chocolate color and using a toothpick to mix until I reach the density of color that I want.

When I am finished, I let it harden and I can store the hardened colored cocoa butter in plastic, and can heat up again when I need it.

I made the red this way for the poinsettas in these:

[Spring]

Oh wow, that poinsetta is beautiful

SO if I understand correctly, for a strong, opaque colour the gel or ready to use coloured cocoa butter would be better and work out cheaper than adding powder colour to cocoa butter?

[takomabaker]

Thanks. I was very proud of them. They were very labor intensive.

The Pastry Ideale white cocoa butter already has that titanium dioxide in it. It costs about $20 a bottle. But when you mix it with color, because it already has a white base, the color comes out stronger and opaque.

I HAVE mixed color with straight cocoa butter, and with white chocolate. Mixing with straight cocoa butter gives a translucent effect. Pretty, if that is what you are going for, but it is more of a glaze effect and you will see the chocolate through the color. It will never be opaque.

I have mixed color with white chocolate. When I tried using powder, I was never able to fully incorporate the color into the white chocolate. It always stayed a little spotty. When I used an oil based (chocolate) liquid color, I had a hard time keeping the white chocolate in temper. I don't know if it was the color, or if the color made it harder to tell the chocolate was in temper, or if the color threw the chocolate out of temper and I should have started from scratch and retempered (which, for that trouble, I'll just buy white cocoa butter). But, for whatever reason, I have never been able to add color to white chocolate and mold the chocolate successfully afterward. I tried it once as a decoration over dark chocolate, and it was just a disaster. I'm still scarred from it (just kidding, but it was an ugly mess). Perhaps others have been more successful and I'm just unlucky with white chocolate, but I have had success with white cocoa butter so that's what I am sticking with.

This is what I use (although I buy it in smaller quantities from Albert Uster):

Make sure you are buying confectionery or candy color -- not just gel color. Only the candy color is good for chocolate. Take it from someone who accidentally grabbed regular gel color by accident. It ain't pretty.

[Edward J]

I've got the primary colours at work--that is the fat soluable powders.

On the whole it is much cheaper tomake you own colours with the powders and cocoa butter. Melt the butter, stir in the powder, let it cool completely until hard, then warm up again. Some people I know insist you have to wait 12 hrs, but I have done this many times, and it always works.

To colour the white chocoalte you can use the same technique or just add in the coloured cocoa butter.

I've never bothered with the titanium what-sis-name, I brush in coloured cocoa butter in the mold, then when dry, brush on a thin layer of white, then my mold as usual with milk or white couverture.

[Chocolot]

Today I have been playing with different colors in preparation for Easter. I sprayed 6 trays with the same two colors--Princess Pink and yellow. I shelled half in white and half in dark. Here are the results. It makes sense that they would be different, but I am surprised at how different they are. Sorry the pix is turned--don't know how that happened.

[Kerry Beal]

Wow - that is quite a difference. I wouldn't have predicted it.

[RobertM]

Did back the colors in either (or both) with white coca butter?

[Chocolot]

Didn't back with white. Just shelled in white and dark. Started out just the same. Dark obviously adds a lot of blue to the colors.

[ElsieD]

This may be a dumb question but I'll ask it anyway - was each tray sprayed in half yellow and the other half pink? Or was one tray sprayed pink and the other tray yellow? Those chocolates are amazing. I've never worked with colours and I'm hoping to get some practice at the Chocolate & Confectionery Conference in May.