Making Chocolate with raw cacao/cocoa: help needed

[Sophie Cook]

Hi Everyone,

 

I spent the weekend making chocolates with raw cacao.

 

I wanted to try and make some chocolates that are made from natural ingredients. I managed to get some brillant flavours together using the raw cacao powder, agave nectar and cocoa butter. However, the chocolates melted a little too easily (I guess this is why so many additional ingredients are added).

 

I'm completely new to making chocolate, but could anyone give me some guidance on the correct quantities for chocolate so I can experiment? Are there certain ingredients that should be added in order to increase the melting point? 

 

Any feedback on anything would be much appreciated! 

 

Thanks,

Sophie

[pastrygirl]

If you want to try making chocolate for real, start with cocoa nibs or beans.  I'm not sure what you mean about 'so many additional ingredients', most good chocolate is made from only cacao and sugar, with a little vanilla and lecithin, though some makers don't even use those.

 

Agave nectar, being liquid, would give you more of a thick ganache (or even modeling chocolate, which mixes chocolate and corn syrup to make a malleable chocolate) than a true chocolate bar.  Solid chocolate made from the bean or nibs has no water.  If you're trying to make chocolate by mixing cocoa powder and cocoa butter, try powdered/icing sugar to sweeten - the particles are fine enough that you won't get grittiness, and you're not adding liquid.

Edited October 20, 2014 by pastrygirl (log)

[jmacnaughtan]

If you want to try making chocolate for real, start with cocoa nibs or beans.  I'm not sure what you mean about 'so many additional ingredients', most good chocolate is made from only cacao and sugar, with a little vanilla and lecithin, though some makers don't even use those.

 

Agave nectar, being liquid, would give you more of a thick ganache than a true chocolate bar.  Solid chocolate made from the bean or nibs has no water.  If you're trying to make chocolate by mixing cocoa powder and cocoa butter, try powdered/icing sugar to sweeten - the particles are fine enough that you won't get grittiness, and you're not adding liquid.

 

There's a reason why almost nobody makes their own chocolate at home.

 

Even with cocoa powder and icing sugar, you're still not going to get a product that's anywhere near as good as what you can buy.  You just can't get the smoothness you need for chocolate without a wet grinder, and these will cost you at least a thousand pounds.  Also, icing sugar generally contains starch, so I'm not sure what that'll do to your finished chocolate.

 

You'll save yourself a lot of time and hassle by just buying some high-quality chocolate and learning to make good-quality chocolates with it.

[pastrygirl]

jmacnaughton, I agree, though it is fun to experiment with once or twice.  Heck, I find myself wondering why most of the small bean to bar producers even bother, very few of them please me.  Personally, I highly doubt that I'm going to make anything approaching what any of the producers who've been doing it for 100 years and conching for days are making so I stick with Valrhona and Felchlin.  But I also support playing with it in order to understand why Valrhona makes it so much better than we will at home

 

As for sugar, I believe fondant sugar is equally as fine as icing sugar but without starch.

[Lisa Shock]

I also am clueless as to your reference to 'so many ingredients' when fine chocolate is generally cacao, sugar and occasionally vanilla, and very occasionally lecithin.

 

Agave nectar has different properties than cane sugar, and as such will remain a liquid, which is not generally the direction one wants to go in making chocolates.

 

Conching is the step that makes all the difference, as mentioned above. Chocolate candies as we know them did not exist before the invention of conching. (chocolate was primarily a drink back in the before-times)

 

Buying chocolate couveture isn't all that different from buying cocoa in the end. Someone else still chose the variety beans, fermented them to their own specs, dried them (with or without smoky fires,) and then processed the beans. The flavor profile is determined early on in the process, long before the cocoa mass is extracted. The end of the process gives texture. The best suppliers of chocolate do a great job all along the way. That said, you can always ask the sales reps for samples, some of the companies have dozens of chocolates to choose from each with its own unique story.

[Sophie Cook]

OK - thank you everyone! Lots of really useful advice here. By 'other ingredients', I'm referring to what I see on the packets of chocolate I have at home.

 

I'm totally clueless when i comes to chocolate, so I'm going to take on board what you've said and try again at the weekend! I was quite pleased with my first attempt, so hopefully the second result will be even better.

 

Obviously, there will be higher-quality chocolate around, but it's very fun to try at home!

 

@ Lisa S - No idea what conching is - if you could provide more detail that would be great?

[minas6907]

The packets of chocolate you have at home, are they by chance coating chocolate? Does it contain hydrogenated oils?

[pastrygirl]

Sophie, both Valrhona and Callebaut have good basic information on their websites.  I'm sure you can search and get more in-depth.

 

http://www.valrhona-chocolate.com/shop/About-Chocolate.php

http://www.barry-callebaut.com/3

[Lisa Shock]

The conching machine was invented by Rodlphe Lindt it slowly, over the course of days, grinds the cocoa mass into very fine gains and coats each grain in cocoa butter (making tempering possible,) and aerates the chocolate altering the flavor. The chocolate is usually conched until the cocoa is reduced to grains finer than the tongue can feel, giving the chocolate a very smooth texture. Every company has different machines and lengths of time for making each of their products. Baking chocolate isn't conched as long as couveture is, for example. And, this is why serious confectioners don't use supermarket chocolate chips to make bonbons.

[Kerry Beal]

Sophie - a few of us here have made bean to bar chocolate a time or two.  A Patric (Patric Chocolate) did a demo back before he started his successful bean to bar chocolate business.  Link here.  

 

The equipment that was being recommended to conche was an Indian stone spice grinder - this has since evolved into a more purpose driven piece, easier to clean, more pressure exerted on the product.  Here that allows you to start with nibs and grind them in the unit that will be used to conche.  

 

Here is a link to some cocoa liquor I made from nibs in my Sumeet.  I made a fairly smooth temperable chocolate with it.  

[gap]

I've made a lot of chocolate from scratch. You can do it with a cheap wet grinder (this one for $211 works very well - http://www.amazon.com/Premier-Wonder-Table-Grinder-110v/dp/B004OPIBV2 - it's what I use). Chocolate Alchemy and Chocolate Life are two websites that have a lot of information on making chocolate from scratch.

 

It is possible to get icing sugar without starch, but you if you're using a wet grinder, you can just use normal sugar (or blitz it first to make a finer particle size and then put it in the grinder). Using a liquid sugar is very tricky and probably not the easiest place to start.

 

Anyway, if you are interested, I'd recommend reading the boards over at Chocolate Life and Chocolate Alchemy.

[keychris]

It sounds to me that you didn't have the finished product properly in temper when you let it set, or you added too much agave and increased the water content too much.

 

I've made 'chocolate' from cacao, agave, vanilla & cacao butter successfully with the following ratios:

 

28.5% agave

47.7% cacao butter

23.8% cacao powder

seeds from 3 vanilla pods / kg final product

 

It's extraordinarily fluid (unsurprisingly, at almost 50% cacao butter), but it sets up nicely and stays set at room temperature, no problems. I used it to make easter eggs (a bit tricky), but it's best suited to simply making solid bars or pieces.

 

As everyone else has mentioned, it will naturally have a more grainy feel in the mouth - this is even more so if you use other forms of sugar instead of agave, say, powdered sugar or rapadura etc etc.

 

HTH
Chris