Been Vapin
Fringe Class
Update on the cocoa butter chocolate making. Took just under half of the ABV cocoa butter form the above post and started making chocolates. I did some research to figure out the chocolate-making part of the recipe. If you google "making chocolate with cocoa butter and cocoa powder" you'll get some ideas, but few people ever seem to make these because there's usually little point in separating the powder from the butter then putting it all back together again. There are a lot of "raw chocolate" recipes out there that use coconut oil, cocoa powder, and honey, but while healthy they dont make a very practical chocolate (lower coconut oil melting point, plus honey contains water which can gunk things up). Ultimately I read that a 50/50 butter-to-powder ratio was typical, then people add sugar to that. Then I wanted to make milk chocolate because I have a buddy who prefers that to dark chocolate. So for every 50g of cocoa butter, I added 50g of cocoa powder, 30g of powdered sugar, and 20g of dried milk powder. I also wanted to add a little vanilla plus some salt to cut the bitterness, but I forgot to add it this batch... so I will try it next time.
So here were the steps:
1) First I made a mixture of 3 parts powdered sugar and 2 parts milk powder, then put it my VitaMix to make the particles finer. I read somewhere that these ingredients dont actually dissolve in chocolate (they are water soluble) so to avoid a grainy texture it helps to do this extra step. I made extra that I put aside for a second batch in the next few weeks.
2) Then I started melting the cocoa butter in a double boiler setup (metal bowl on top of a saucepan with an inch of simmering water). Then I whisked in the sugar/milk powder mixture, then the cocoa powder. I was pleasantly surprised that it all came together into a smooth mixture very easily.
3) With cocoa butter chocolate, you need to "temper" the chocolate for best results - otherwise it wont look smooth and it will have a lower melting point. Tempering is generally a big pain in the ass, but I recently saw a Serious Eats article where Kenji came up with a sous vide technique to temper it thats relatively foolproof. So after mixing it all the double boiler, I poured the chocolate into a vacuum bag and sealed it up (notice in the pic I had some trouble with it coming out of the bag before sealing):
4) After following Kenji's tempering steps in the SV, I snipped off a corner of the back and squeezed the chocolate into molds:
5) Then I stuck these in the freezer for a few hours, popped them from the molds, and bagged the bars individually. I also was able to collect the scraps and stick them in a bag for recycling during the next batch.
With a very minimum of finger linking and scrap eating, I can tell already that these are pretty potent. My guess is that 2 little squares from the thin bar will be a very healthy regular dose. With the bigger bar sizes, a single "square" will probably be too much and will probably need to get cut in half at least. In terms of flavor, its good but it still tastes like ABV dark chocolate. You can barely tell that the milk powder is in there, and it could use more sugar plus the salt/vanilla to mask the ABV taste a little more. So for Batch #2 which I'll try in the next few weeks, I might double the sugar/milk powder proportion, which should also bring the potency down a little. Might also add some nuts for the bigger molds. Stay tuned.
Going to have to give that a try next sous vide session.
