Colored Cocoa Butter: The Topic

[sirch1980]

I wanted to produce a chocolate that has two layers of color, with bronze powder on top and some green color sprinkled underneath. The mould was half-circled shape.

First of all I polished the chocolate mould, then I tempered the colored cocoa butter to 96-97F, then sprayed it inside the mould using an airbrush. then I used a small knife to tip up a little shiny bronze powder and sprinkled it in the mould. I waited for about an hour or two, then I poured chocolate into the mould.

After I released the chocolate from the mould, there were some cocoa butter sticking to the mould, causing the surface of my chocolate to crack. There were also some shiny bronze powder stuck to the the cocoa butter inside the mould, causing the surface of my chocolate to have big holes on the area where there should be full of shiny powder.

I have tried not to use any shiny bronze powder and only finger painted the mould with the colored cocoa butter, as the result there was no problem at all and there were no colored cocoa butter sticking to the mould.

The mould was bought from Chololat-Chocolat, the colored cocoa butter was from Chef Rubber, and the shiny bronze powder was from PCB.

Did I do anything wrong throughout the process? Exactly why did my finished products resulted in this way?

[alanamoana]

This is sort of an offshoot of the "Chocolates with that showroom finish" thread...

I've been debating purchasing some colored cocoa butters and I'm torn.

Chef Rubber carries standard colors, jewel colors, pearl colors and decor colors...the following are the descriptions from the website:

standard colors = matte

jewel colors = shimmery

pearl colors = pearl

decor colors = luster colors

There isn't much more description than that and I'm not really sure of the differences between "shimmery", "pearl" and "luster"...

Is it worth buying these special colors as opposed to using luster dusts and other dry products? I know with the cocoa butters, they are pre-mixed and therefore more consistent than if you mixed them yourself, but are there any other benefits?

Intuitively, I would think you'd get a different effect if you dust your molds with a powder and then add matte colored cocoa butter and then your couverture as opposed to using the shimmery colors, etc.

Can some of you out there with a little more experience expand on this? I'd like to just buy a few colors to see what I like and I don't know if I want to buy a whole bottle of a shimmery color if I can mix it myself with luster dust and regular cocoa butter in smaller quantities for less money...just for messing around at home.

Thanks in advance for your answers!

Regards,

Alana

[Sugarella]

It appears their lustre cocoa butters are the same price as their matte coloured butters....so if you're buying the coloured ones anyways it's a pretty good deal. But personally, I'd stick with mixing your own dusts with plain cocoa butter if cost is an issue. I can see the ready-made ones being very handy for professional production, but just for home use I personally wouldn't bother adding the extra expense if you don't need to.

Having said that, I was just rummaging around on chefrubber and noticed their prices are way off on a couple of items:

Their trial sized jars of pearl powders are $10, but you can get them for $5 or $6 at Creative Cutters. Chef Rubber's price of $30 on the 50g lustre powders is a steal though.

And their 1 gram jar of 23 kt edible gold powder (halfway down the page) is $60 while it's only $49 at The Gold Leaf Company. (about 3/4 way down the page - labelled Dauvet Powder Gold - Edible Gold Powder

Note: If you do buy from the Gold Leaf Company make sure you specify you want that edible Duavet powder.....the majority of their gold products aren't edible.

[alanamoana]

funny, chef rubber offers so many products, but not plain cocoa butter. plain isn't the same as white, right?

albert uster has a great cocoa butter product which is sold in little bars (like valrhona feves)...but only comes in a 20# bag. ends up being about $7/lb + shipping...anyone want to split a box?!

other than that, pastrychef.com has cocoa noel coco butter in a 1K tub for $22

the desire to play around is "tempered" by my budget...darn...

sugarella,

thanks for the info...but is there really a difference between luster, shimmery and pearl?

[Sugarella]

funny, chef rubber offers so many products, but not plain cocoa butter.  plain isn't the same as white, right?

...but is there really a difference between luster, shimmery and pearl?

←

Right.... cocoa butter isn't white, it's a pale creamy colour, same as white chocolate.

As for the dusts, each company that makes them gives them different labels, so it's kind of hard to say specifically which ones will be more glittery than another. They're labelled in varying degrees based on the size of the glitter particle in them. I've heard them called sparkle dust, fairy dust, pixie dust, and disco dust too. Generally speaking though, "pearl" is very mild on shimmer, similar to that very vague shine on an actual pearl. The glitter in it is really a powder and is very subdued. Shimmery would probably be one step up from that (sorry - I haven't bought chefrubber's powders) and lustre is probably the common lustre dust, which has a very obvious but not garish glitter to it, but the glitter particles in it are noticeable. Lustre would be quite similar to the lustre colours on the chefrubber site I linked to. Stay away from anything labelled disco dust though.... it's thick and has large chunks of glitter in it like a hooker's eyeshadow.

[alanamoana]

so that's why i was getting all those propositions...

just kidding.

thanks sugarella for the information!

[Trishiad]

Alana, I really like the artisan colors from chef rubber. They have a nice shimmer that's not garish. I also use the regular flat colors but I get those from Qzina to save a few pennies. I keep looking at the pearl colors thinking they're just the ticket for something, maybe a sculpture, but just too fake looking for bonbons.

I should add that I think a jar of white is very valuable. Most of the colors are pretty sheer when backed by a darker chocolate. The white cocoa butter makes the colors more opaque so they don't disappear on dark chocolate. You can either add it to your color to make it both pastel and opaque or paint in white after you paint in other colors to give your first colors a background of opacity (is that a word?)

[alanamoana]

Trishiad,

Thanks for the advice. That's what I wanted to hear. I just wanted to do some experimenting with making transfer sheets and that kind of thing. Everytime I read a new post on eGullet, I find another source for products...more ways to spend money, I guess!

Qzina is located near me, so the good thing is I can pick up what I order and save on shipping. Do you order frequently from them? Their customer service seems good as I just spoke to them on the phone.

Thanks again,

Alana

edited to add: So, the standard colors from PCB are matte and the artisan colors from Chef Rubber are slightly shimmery? Now I'm a bit confused again. Sorry to be so dense.

Edited April 3, 2006 by alanamoana (log)

[stscam]

I spoke with the folks at Chef Rubber a few weeks ago about their Liquid Lusters. They said that the effect is not as strong as if you brushed or sprinkled luster dust onto your work and then coated with the color.

I've not had much luck mixing luster dust into colored cocoa butter. The result tends to stick to the mold rather than cleanly separating. Anybody have any thoughts?

Cheers,

Steven

[markg109]

Hi All,

I am an artist ( oil and pastels) by trade so the coloring of artisan chocolates really appeals to me. I was wondering if I could make my own colored cocoa butter using oil candy colors and cocoa butter, or is there more involved.

Also, if I add the oil candy color to white chocolate will it affect the temper?

Thanks,

Mark

[tammylc]

I've tried coloring cocoa butter with oil candy colors, and it works, but you end up with something that's pretty translucent. For deeper colors, you can use powdered colors instead. However, people report that it can be hard to get the powdered colors adequately blended. I've bought an assortment of colored cocoa butters from Chef Rubber and have had pretty good luck mixing them, at least to create lighter colors - I haven't tried mixing to create a new color yet.

[John DePaula]

Adding the oils to already tempered white chocolate will work fine. If I have any leftover, I just reheat until about 2/3 is remelted and stir to melt the remaining. You just need to heat enough to melt. The colored white chocolate doesn't have a problem with being too translucent.

If you want to color cocoa butter with powders, you can use a palette knife to mash the powder and oil together over and over until well blended. Adding titanium powder will give more opacity.

[markg109]

Do you know of a place i might purchase these powders?

[tammylc]

Here's a powdered color set from pastrychef.com

http://www.pastrychef.com/Catalog/powder_c...set_3754142.htm

If you do a google search for "powdered food coloring" you'll find lots of other sources.

[markg109]

Thanks Tammy,

And by the way, your adventures in starting a chocolate business, is really quite informative. Thanks for sharing.

Mark

[markg109]

Thanks John,

Is Titanium powder something you can buy at a candy supply house?

[John DePaula]

Thanks John,

Is Titanium powder something you can buy at a candy supply house?

←

I haven't bought it here in the states but I assume it's "findable." (Thought I didn't see it when I did a quick search). It's what we used in France - "poudre de Titan" I think...

[alanamoana]

look up food grade titanium dioxide. this is what makes colors opaque.

[Fibilou]

I'm making some bride and groom moulded chocs for favours for my wedding in october and really fancied using some coloured cocoa butter. However it seems to be really difficult to get hold of in the UK and the one place I've found it only sold a selection pack for £63 - about $130

Can anyone advise whether they have had success colouring up their own cocoa butter and if so, what colouring compounds they used to do so. Or recommend any UK sites that don't charge through the nose....

[John DePaula]

I'm making some bride and groom moulded chocs for favours for my wedding in october and really fancied using some coloured cocoa butter. However it seems to be really difficult to get hold of in the UK and the one place I've found it only sold a selection pack for £63 - about $130 

Can anyone advise whether they have had success colouring up their own cocoa butter and if so, what colouring compounds they used to do so. Or recommend any UK sites that don't charge through the nose....

←

try using the Search feature (or Google). There are already many topics that discuss this very thing.

Here's one: Colored Cocoa Butter

Edited May 15, 2007 by John DePaula (log)

[Desiderio]

What about ordering directly form PcB creation , is in France and I have ordered transfer sheets from them from the USA and I paid ( shipping and exchange included ) half of what I paid here in the States for the same transfer sheets ( pcb creations )

Their service is outstanding .If I need transfer sheets I will always order them directly from the source.

Here worth to look at .

http://www.pcb-creation.fr/2k3/html_uk/gamme_6.htm

[lapin d'or]

I have purchased cocoa butter colouring compounds in the UK from HB Ingredients but you have to buy quite large amounts (Vantage House sell the same products I believe).

I would be very happy to send you some small samples of the red, yellow and blue colour powders (Deco Relief brand) that I have so you can see what you would be getting. I have not used them a lot yet but they were quite easy to work with.

The home chocolate factory link sell much smaller volumes of colouring powders but these are relatively expensive for the weight you get. It all depends on how much you are going to need.

As Kerry warned in another post, mixing a good green is very difficult, so you may prefer to get your colours pre-made rather than trying to mix them from prime colours yourself.

Good Luck

[tammylc]

All my colors are at my working kitchen, but I need to make up some labels ASAP. Can anyone who has a bottle of Chef Rubber Artisan colors handy please tell me what FD&C colors are listed on the ingredient list? Doesn't matter what color - the label is the same for all of them.

Thanks!

[gfron1]

My bottle of aztec only has a hand-written label on it - no ingredients. Sorry.

[prasantrin]

In case no one else has the info, here's their number so you can call (last resort) 702-614-9350.