Preventing fat bloom with nut-based fillings

[kimmiq]

Ugh, nothing more horrifying than to open a box of my hazelnut pralines and finding they've bloomed, then imagining customers opening the box and finding the same thing.

 

I am fairly confident in my tempering skills (when I remember to do it that is.  Last night I accidentally capped 20 molds with chocolate that was out of temper 😩)

I came across this interesting article you all might find interesting, and will start adding a bit of cocoa powder to the fillings to see if this helps.  If you all have other suggestions, I'd love to hear them!

 

[Jim D.]

Thanks for that quite interesting article. I'm not sure I understand exactly what the conclusions were--and I could be wrong about this--but I think the researchers are saying that adding cocoa powder to a center might help with fat migration but, even more, that tempering the filling helps prevent the issues we have all encountered from time to time with fat bloom. I know that in my own case it is easy to take the tempering of a gianduja for granted because it looks so foolproof--just melt some nut paste and chocolate together, pipe the mixture, and it will solidify on its own. For owners of an EZtemper, tempering gianduja becomes quite easy, no messy tabling required.

 

I was impressed by the researchers' description of what tempered chocolate looks like under the microscope:

 

Quote

Scanning electron micrographs of well-tempered dark chocolate revealed spatially uniform crystal structures with well defined inter-crystalline connections. On the other hand, large crystal clumps, a loosely packed crystal network with higher inter-crystalline spaces were found in under tempered chocolate.

 

It's those "spatially uniform crystal structures with well defined inter-crystalline connections" that those of us without the scientific equipment have to imagine we have in our bowls!

[Kerry Beal]

So one of the tricks seems to be to either dip in milk chocolate (which has less uniform spaces) or add some butter oil or milk chocolate to your dark chocolate for the same reason. Also the adding more 'solid matter' to the filling to 'hang on to the fat'. 

 

Controlling the storage conditions as much as possible also helps. But bottom line - nut oils and cocoa butter together form a liquid oil and that sucker is going to work it's way through to the surface eventually. So eat them while they are young!

[kimmiq]

Interesting!  I was just thinking about the peanut   butter egg I just ate and marveling at its 2021 expiry date. I wish I had taken a closer look at the ingredients, but perhaps the milk chocolate shell helped. Are you saying to add butter oil to the coverture?

[teonzo]

You can try spraying melted clarified butter on the shells before filling them, fill them with the nut based center, spray again melted clarified butter on the centers, then cap them. It should help acting as a barrier.

 

 

 

Teo

 

[Kerry Beal]

3 hours ago, kimmiq said:

Interesting!  I was just thinking about the peanut   butter egg I just ate and marveling at its 2021 expiry date. I wish I had taken a closer look at the ingredients, but perhaps the milk chocolate shell helped. Are you saying to add butter oil to the coverture?

Yes - up to 4% but it will make the chocolate softer